I made a mistake at the farm store, and bought a battery-powered fence charger. It was very frustrating because I’d gotten help from a store employee and finished with “Is there anything else I need to start using this fence today?” and the employee said “No.” I didn’t have a battery, because I didn’t know they came in battery only options. Got home, tried to hook it up, couldn’t figure out why it had such a funny power plug.
So I ended up converting it into a 110/battery fence. I got a battery – went to the auto parts store and asked for their cheapest battery. They sent me home with a motorcycle/snowmobile battery, and I opened the box and found a bottle in it – diy battery. I put acid into the battery, charged it up, put the battery on a Battery Tender (a trickle charger), and hooked it up to the fencer. Our barn electrical system looks kind of scary, so we cut the fuse box off at night. The fence battery charges all day (as needed) on the battery tender, and the battery keeps the fence going 24/7. (They’re designed to run a week or two off a battery charge.) A deep cycle boat battery would be better, but the cheapo is good enough and works with the cheapo junior battery tender.
While figuring this all out, I found myself over by the farm store (without the battery unit on hand to return it) and bought a solar charger to get us through. It’s always a good idea to have a spare, anyway. We use that for locations where we don’t have electric line available yet. It was the first electric fence we ever used. It grounded out on weeds and put out a weak zap.
Now I’m kind of glad I made that first mistake and got a battery fencer. I don’t have to put the fence charger where I have reliable power, and I don’t have to worry about a coyote getting in during a power outage and then getting trapped inside when the power comes back on. But, and this is a big but, batteries can be dangerous. So I need to get the fence battery into an enclosure, just to be sure that it can’t hurt us or the critters if it fails catastrophically. And the nature of our usage – drain slightly overnight, charge during the day, drain more if the fence grounds out – makes me prefer a refillable battery. Since they’re designed to be filled, the fluid level is visible from the outside and we can see if the drain/charge cycles are causing it to dry out.
I’m planning to use a 5-gallon bucket as the battery enclosure, I use those suckers for everything. The bucket can provide at least some containment if the battery spews acid, but I need to put a strap over the lid so it can’t blow off, and there definitely needs to be vent holes so air can escape rather than building pressure inside. But, of course, the vent holes need to be small enough that the enclosure won’t become a mouse house. I’m in for a lot of drilling.
The solar chargers have a reputation for going bad quick. I think it’s because they get wet, as in ground moisture penetrating the bottom when the system is designed to withstand falling rain. And solar panels wear out. I try to keep it on a post, off the ground, but the nature of its portability makes it sit on the ground sometimes. There are t-post mounts available, but that never seems to work out for us. The non-solar battery unit is semi-portable, and it resists a decent amount of weeds/dew, plus it puts out a real solid zap. If I wanted to make it solar, I could add a solar battery maintainer – and the battery would be replaceable (and I could throw it on a charger during prolonged overcast weather), and the solar panel would be replaceable. When our solar charger eventually dies, I’ll replace it with another battery fence charger, and just build a solar-panel charger system for it, with the whole system connected via a 5-gallon bucket (battery inside, power lines feeding up through the bottom, lid snapped on, use the bucket handle to hang it off the ground).
On the other hand, some fence chargers are rated for indoor use only. (?!!) They would be just as susceptible to weather damage as the solar chargers. Barns can have very outdoorsy atmospheric conditions, too, so it’s probably a good idea to house the charger inside an enclosure in the barn if it’s not weatherproof (the charger OR the barn!).
Sometimes, it feels like farming isn’t rocket-science, but that’s just because rocket science isn’t this complex. Indoor, outdoor, 30 miles (but really only a few thousand feet), impedance, volatage, grounding… Lots to learn.
Grounding rods
And I keep reading that grounding rods are the key to the whole thing. I’ve got a grounding rod near the hose, so I can dump stagnant bucket water onto the grounding rod before cleaning water buckets. Keeps it nice and moist. Works alright with just one, but I recently picked up a couple tips…
If the ground is dry, put a 5-gallon bucket of water over the grounding rod, with a small leak. It will drip-hydrate the grounding rod.
Put the grounding rods at least 10′ apart, or else they’re basically a single grounding rod (rats, I’ve got to measure and see if I have to pull 2 8′ grounding rods out of hard, rocky soil). Keep them at least 50′ from other grounding rods (like for the building electric panel), underground plumbing, etc.
Sometimes, a t-post and metal fence is a good enough ground for a portable fencer. I’m using one right now to fence off the compost pile. Without physically testing it, I wouldn’t use that technique for a critical fence, but it works where a fence breach would be non-catastrophic. And it highlights why t-posts are always grounding out electric fence (broken insulator, line zigging over the insulator, etc.).
Dry and frozen soil don’t conduct energy well, so a grounding rod needs to penetrate below the frost line and into the moist subsoil to be most effective.
Grounding rods should be 3′ per joule of output. My Magnum 12 charger puts out 3 joules, so I need 9′ of grounding rod in the ground. See previous tip – better to use two 6′ rods than three 3′ rods.
germantownpdx 