Features of slab fences, types of such fences, their advantages and disadvantages, preliminary wood processing and construction installation technology. A slab fence is a budget option for a beautiful wooden fence. Material for it can be found on any sawmill for free or at a ridiculous price. Today we will tell you how to make a fence from a slab, about its features and types.
Features of slab fences
Croaker is a woodworking product. This is a board, the outer side of which remains part of the tree trunk with an intact texture. The material is divided into two types: wood-fired slab, which is used as fuel, and business. Temporary walls and partitions, formwork and fences are made from business slabs.
An unrooted business croaker has a pronounced texture. However, over time, its crust flakes off and falls off. Skillful owners of backyard plots use debarked and polished croaker for their fences, which has a more noble appearance. Its price depends on the type of wood, the quality of processing, the length of the board and the size of its cross-section.
The type of fence from the slab determines the location of its dies. It can be horizontal and vertical, with gaps, overlap or butt. The edge of the fence can be made with a hacksaw curly: a pointed palisade, a truncated top of the "cat's ears" type, convex, concave.
Advantages and disadvantages of a slab fence
A slab fence, despite its simplicity and low cost, has very tangible advantages. It is environmentally friendly, with sufficient massiveness it can provide high reliability. The service life of such a fence can exceed 15 years, provided that its wood is properly processed.
Special knowledge is not required to install a slab fence. And if you show a little imagination, many design solutions can be embodied in the fence.
A blind slab fence perfectly protects the yard from street noise and dust. In addition, it is not interesting in terms of disassembly to vandals - the fence cannot be sold as recyclable materials, like metal.
The disadvantages of such a fence include the need to select suitable boards from a large amount of lumber, since the slab cannot have the same dimensions.
Another problem is the need to prepare slab boards before making a fence. They need to be handled more than once by hand with protective equipment. Otherwise, the service life of the structure will be limited to 3-5 years.
Slab fence mounting technology
Before building a slab fence with your own hands, you need to acquire an unedged board, support posts, nails, and also prepare a simple set of tools, including an ax, a shovel, a hacksaw, a tape measure, a cord and a building level. Supports can be made of wood, concrete, brick or natural stone. Further actions must be performed sequentially.
Preparatory work
They include the preparation of the material and the marking of the area for the fence. First you need to remove the bark from the slab. All this can be done with a sharpened shovel or a scraper. Peeled boards need to be dried in the fresh air. Depending on the weather, this procedure can take about three days.
The dried material should be treated with an antiseptic to protect it from wood pests, and then with a varnish or composition, the recipe of which is described below. It will help the wooden fence to withstand the sun and precipitation.
There is a good recipe for making your own slab protector. If you do not deviate from it, the resulting composition will guarantee the safety and strength of the wood even after a single application. It is more durable than oil paint, it can even process freshly sawn wood. The plasticity of the applied coating is due to the fact that the protective composition is not on the surface in the form of a film, but penetrates 1-1.5 cm deep into the lumber.
You need to cook it like this:
- Pour 2 liters of water into a clean bucket, then heat it, add 190 g of rye flour and stir until a paste is obtained.
- Then 90 g of ferrous sulfate and the same amount of salt should be poured into the resulting mass.
- After stirring the mixture for five minutes, add 90 g of iron red lead to it, and then - 100 ml of drying oil. The resulting paint will be thick, so it should be diluted with 1.5 liters of water.
While the impregnation dries, you can start breaking down the site for the construction of the fence. To do this, a detailed diagram of the fence must be available on paper indicating the location of its entrance group, support pillars and all sizes. According to this scheme, the amount of material required must be calculated in advance.
When marking a fence from a slab for a summer residence, it is necessary to transfer from the drawing to the terrain all the characteristic points of the future fence. To make it smooth, this work should be done using a tape measure, pegs and a cord stretched between them. The distance between the support posts must be taken no more than 2 meters. In the places where they are located, it is recommended to dig holes about 0.7 m deep
Installation of supports for a fence from a slab
The method of installing the supports depends on their type:
- Wooden supports … As a starting material for them, pine, oak, and even better - larch wood are suitable. The diameter of the logs should be at least 200 mm, and their length - 2, 3 m. Before installation, the bottom of the support, which will be in the ground, should be treated with an anti-rotting agent and wrapped with roofing material in several layers. Instead of roofing material, you can apply hot bitumen. After processing, the logs must be installed strictly vertically along a plumb line and fixed in this position with stops from the bars. Then the pits can be filled with broken brick, cement mortar, carefully ramming everything.
- Concrete supports … They do not need additional processing. If these are prefabricated products such as piles or beams, they should also be set up in a vertical position, fixed with stops, and the sinuses in the pits should be partially covered with broken brick and tamped. After that, the rest of the recess should be poured with concrete. For the manufacture of monolithic supports, it will be necessary to make a vertical formwork-box, place a volumetric reinforcing cage in it and pour concrete in the same way. After it has set, the formwork must be removed.
- Metal supports … These can be pipes or channels. Before installing them at the bottom of each pit, it is necessary to make a cement-crushed stone cushion. Dry components must be tamped, placed in the pits of the support, fixed with stops and the sinuses must be filled with a solution with a ratio of cement and sand of 1: 3.
- Stone supports … They are quite massive and therefore require a full-fledged strip foundation. First, along the perimeter of the future fence, it is necessary to dig a trench about 0.5 m deep. Then it must be covered with plastic wrap, and a wooden formwork must be installed on top, which will form the above-ground part of the foundation. After that, you should install metal racks that serve as reinforcing rods for stone supports, reinforcing cages and fill the trench with formwork with concrete. The racks should first be connected by welding to the frames. When the concrete hardens, the formwork must be removed, and the metal racks must be revetted with stone or brick. After finishing the masonry, it is recommended to put on protective decorative caps on the supports, and tiled the concrete base with tiles, porcelain stoneware or other suitable material.
Fastening purlins and fence sections
After the installation of the supports, there is a reason to start installing horizontal girders and a wooden fence. When making crossbars, i.e. runs, you need to choose the longest slab boards. On each workpiece, draw two longitudinal parallel lines delimiting the bar, and carefully cut off the excess with a circular saw. The cross-sectional size of the resulting bar should be 50x30 mm.
The croaker can be attached to it horizontally and vertically. For horizontal installation, the beam must be fixed on supports on both sides. After that, an overlap should be attached with 150 mm nails to the slab. Before hammering, it is recommended to lubricate fasteners with linseed oil.
For vertical installation, the slab must be cut lengthwise. Then the resulting parts should be fixed on the girders with the convex part inward. It is necessary to leave gaps of 40-50 mm between the boards. Then they must be closed with the rest of the boards, which should be fastened outward with a convex part.
Initially, the croaker repeats the shape of a tree trunk: at the bottom it has a wide part, and at the top it tapers. Using this, when installing a fence near the previous board with widening, you need to install the next one with a narrowing. For maximum adhesion of the boards, protruding knots should be suspended during work with an ax.
If you trim the pieces to align them in width, you can add a sophisticated decorative touch to the wooden fence. Tight-fitting and horizontally positioned boards create the appearance of a round timber fence. And the vertical joints of the slab closed with overlays give the fence a good quality.
Slab fence decoration
It is advisable to think about the design of your wooden slab fence even at the stage of preparation for work. With artistic taste and irrepressible imagination, the appearance of a completely budgetary fence can be made stunning.
The upper edge of the fence can be made straight or curly, removing extra centimeters, equip it with a gable roof, which will cope not only with the function of decoration, but also protect the wooden fence from rain and snow.
In order to radically change the type of fence, it is enough to simply paint it, and not necessarily in a solid color. For example, you can practice graffiti or paint a landscape. It will be exclusive and unusual. If you do not have such talents, a guest artist can help in this matter.
If you have experience in woodcarving, the fence can be decorated with bizarre figures, and if you add forged details to them, the beautiful effect of an old fence will be ensured.
The durability of a wooden fence, as mentioned above, is given by protective compounds. These are various varnishes, paints or impregnations. They can be bought ready-made or made yourself. Varnishes need to be rubbed into the wood three times in dry weather, the impregnation is applied from a sprayer, mixing it with a colored stain.
How to make a fence from a slab - watch the video:
In conclusion, I would like to express the opinion that with a creative approach and adherence to the technology of working with wood, even from such a cheap material as a croaker, you can make a wonderful fence for your site. And with the money saved as a result, you can buy something useful for your backyard economy.
