{"id":1635,"date":"2014-08-08T12:08:39","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T16:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/?p=1635"},"modified":"2014-08-17T15:24:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T19:24:50","slug":"underground-wire-attachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/attachments\/attach-miscellaneous\/2014\/08\/underground-wire-attachment\/","title":{"rendered":"Underground Wire Attachment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Approximately 30 years ago we installed an underground \u201cinvisible\u201d fence to contain our dogs.\u00a0 The fence encompasses several acres and requires a little over 1800 feet of wire in 500 foot sections.\u00a0 Over time the signal strength has slowly weakened and recently became too weak to contain our dogs.\u00a0 I checked the transmitter and it wasn\u2019t the problem.\u00a0 I was sure the connections had become corroded over time and was the cause of the problem.\u00a0\u00a0 I tried cleaning up some of the connections but that didn\u2019t help.\u00a0 The wire was going to need to be replaced.<\/p>\n

There’s a video of the attachment in the Videos section of this website.<\/p>\n

When we installed the wire 30 years ago, they were two important differences.\u00a0 First, I was 30 years younger!!\u00a0 Second, I had two young sons that could crawl along on the ground and help bury the wire.\u00a0 We had used a Cub Cadet pulling a walk behind plow that I\u2019d converted for the job.\u00a0 I\u2019d removed the plow shovel and replaced it with a blade<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a>that made a \u201cslot\u201d in the ground so that the wire could be pushed by hand down into the bottom of the slot.\u00a0\u00a0 That method no longer seemed too appealing.<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 As you read through this article and look at the pictures, you\u2019ll notice that this attachment just sort of evolved.\u00a0 I used pieces of scrap metal I had laying around and kept adding pieces as the design got refined.<\/p>\n

I was looking for something that would make the trench and apply the wire in one pass.\u00a0 After several iterations, I came up with attachment shown in the picture.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s mounted using the sleeve hitch on the tractor.\u00a0 I originally had only the \u201ctongue\u201d with the attached blade.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

But when I tried it out it had a very inconsistent depth.\u00a0 In places it would dig in too deep and in other places it wouldn\u2019t be deep enough.\u00a0 By making multiple passes to loosen the soil I could get enough depth everywhere but then most of the trench would be deeper than desired.\u00a0 The problem was overcome by adding the two wheels.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

The wheels seemed to really help, but it required too many passes to get the depth I wanted. So I added a weight support and two 40 pound weights.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a>\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

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With the \u201cdigging\u201d figured out, I worked on getting a method of applying the wire.\u00a0 I had thought ahead and made a slot in the rear of the blade that would help hold a 90 degree section of \u00bd inch PVC conduit.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

I placed the section of conduit in the slot and secured it with hose clamps.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

I added two plates to hold a pivot for the wire.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

You might notice in the picture that there\u2019s an extra hole for the bolt.\u00a0 That\u2019s one of those things that \u201cevolved\u201d as I was refining the design.\u00a0 In the lower hole the reel is too close to the conduit.<\/p>\n

I actually built this attachment about two years ago realizing the wire signal was weakening.\u00a0 It was in the Spring and everything seemed to work fine.\u00a0 But, when it actually came time to replace the wire, it was August.\u00a0 August is not a good time to work in the soil \u2013 the ground is dry and hard.\u00a0\u00a0 I had originally made the attachment with a rear pivot for going around corners.\u00a0 When I tried it in the spring, everything worked fine.\u00a0 But with the hard ground in August, the rear section would lay \u201csideways\u201d because of the added weights, and the point wouldn\u2019t stick in the ground to straighten it back up.\u00a0 It would just drag sideways.\u00a0 So I welded the rear section in the straight ahead position.\u00a0 It made it a little more difficult to make corners, but the point was always straight ahead and would easily start penetrating\u00a0the ground.<\/p>\n

\"Underground<\/a><\/p>\n

The other thing about working August is that the blade doesn\u2019t just cut a slot.\u00a0 In the spring when the ground is moist, the blade simply makes a slot.\u00a0 The wire can even be applied in one pass.\u00a0 In August the hard ground tends to crumble to powder and grass roots tend to drag.\u00a0 It required two passes with just the blade before I could apply the wire.\u00a0 That was no biggie since I was just riding, but it is hot in August!!!<\/p>\n

And, that\u2019s it.\u00a0 The attachment worked great.\u00a0 I did have to spend a little more time back filling the trench since it was August, but that was a pretty simple, fast task.\u00a0 When I tried it out in the spring, I could just run my tractor wheel over the slot in the ground and the earth \u201csqueezed\u201d back together.\u00a0 In August, I had to walk along with a hoe and pull the dirt back over the slot.\u00a0 But, the wire didn\u2019t need replacing in the spring.\u00a0 Too bad it didn\u2019t go out then!!!<\/p>\n

As always, I hope you found this article informative and useful.\u00a0 If you have any questions or comments, you can contact me through this website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Approximately 30 years ago we installed an underground \u201cinvisible\u201d fence to contain our dogs.\u00a0 The fence encompasses several acres and requires a little over 1800 feet of wire in 500 foot sections.\u00a0 Over time the signal strength has slowly weakened and recently became too weak to contain our dogs.\u00a0 I checked the transmitter and it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-attach-miscellaneous"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lT6g-qn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1730,"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cubcadetman.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}