Apologies ahead of time as I am not very good at reddit etiquette. I've been trying for over a week now to install my first electric fence. Deer came in and wrecked my mom's garden and made her cry so now I'm trying to be heroic.
I installed a Power Wizard PW25S fence energizer to polyribbon fencing (less than a quarter acre of it in three strands). (After reading the directions a million times I now know that poly is not the most ideal thing. But I didn't cut any corners on putting it up and now want to just try to make it work). The ribbon is not touching weeds, posts, or anything at all.
I have played with the connections until my fingers bled. Switching the order of the wires, only attaching one length of ribbon, disconnecting and reconnecting the ground wire.
I installed a single ground rod, 4 feet deep into the ground and admittedly close to a structure but other than that I ?believe? I did it right. I live in PA and the ground moisture should be sufficient.
I attached a video. I'm not very good at taking videos but its fine you can make fun of me. TY all 🙂
EDIT: That was some really fast advice! Your suggestions worked, and I still have daylight to spare. I trimmed the ends of the ribbon so they are no longer touching the wood. I rewired it so that it all goes in a straight line, no more daisy chaining. Poured some water, went barefoot, and got zapped. I plan on driving the ground down even further now. I may upgrade to 1 joule on account of the "zap" being pretty mild. Thanks reddit!
by notsoinsane
18 Comments
This has got to be a joke. For an electric, well anything, you must use good conductors of electricity. Poly is is an insulator, the opposite of conductor.
I have a 3 strand polytape setup on 5 acres for my horses. But the red off the box should be a single strand, and then daisy chained like you have the polytapes together. Like, you only need one wire coming off the solar box. 3 may be shorting it. Are YOU grounded when you touch it ? Like , go barefoot and touch it and thats when you’ll feel it. My polytape wont feel like anything til you’re grounded, which is why it works well for livestock because they’re always grounded. If you touch it while wearing rubber soles you probably wont feel it. I wish I could upload pics better , let me see what I can do.
Hard to tell, but the ends of your poly tape look like they’re touching the wooden post you have them tightened to… are they grounding out there? Middle looked fine, but upper and lower tape, it looks like the slack you pulled it tight with is against the post.
Pour some water around your ground rod. Then walk about 20 feet away and take your shoes off and touch the ribbon. If you don’t get zapped the ribbon is grounding out somewhere
If the generator is clicking, take your shoes off, grab that tape, and see if it works! Poly tape is not the best, but install appears fine
This fencer is *tiny*. I’m not sure if you were standing in a puddle of water, barefoot, that you could feel it. Anything less than .5 joule is worthless. And preferably at least 1-2+.
Thus, you need some sort of metal to conduct the current. Most electric fences that I’ve seen simply run strands of wire at two different heights (like 2 ft and 4ft high) around the area to protect. No need to electrify an entire run of, say, chicken wire. If your posts holding the wire are also conductive, you’d want an insulator separating the post from the wire.
You need more than 4ft of copper in the ground. Drive the entire rod all the way down. If its shorted out you can sometimes hear the “snap” of the short as it pulses.
If you want to test if the generator is working, remove the red wires and touch the red probes with your hand and good contact with the ground.
Take a shoe off and test it again
Try touching the ground rod with one hand and then touching the poly. Or as others have suggested, take your shoes off. the rubber in your shoes is more than enough to insulate you.
This is a smaller energizer but it should be fine for what you’re doing.
Put the grounding rod in the ground further. We have three of those in the ground with only a few inches sticking out (it’s incredibly dry here). The better you ground it the stronger the charge. Your poly tape is touching the posts which could be grounding them. Are you positive the tape you got is conductive? Does it have any metal wire in it because the video doesn’t show any. Lastly, normally you only have one + wire coming off the charger to the fence, then your fence wires would be connected together.
That looks like 16 gauge wire to the ground? I always use 12g minimum for the ground. Just my thoughts
Get a fence tester. It will give you voltage on the fence. Start by disconnecting the fence from the energizer and test the energizer with no load on it. Is it producing acceptable voltage? If yes connect your fence and test the fence close to the energizer and keep moving down the fence to too see if can find a shorted path. Also i would connect one poly tape to the energizer and then connect each tape to the tape above it
Pound the grounding rod in further and consider an additional ground rod. I have three five foot ground rods all totally in the ground, it hasn’t rained here in a month and the fence still delivers an awesome shock.
Does it give you a good zap if you touch the two leads while they are not connected to anything else? If so then its likely grounding out somewhere. Anything that is metal or that can hold moisture can be a conductor(wood, fabric, string, a branch, a plant/grass, etc). In order for it to work you need no conduction going. Try adding one section at a time to find your cross connection.
Get a heavier ground wire. Wet that post and sink it deep.
It’s pretty dry out, pour a bucket of water down by the grounding rod (you should at least have two), let it soak into the ground, then try’er
Ribbon seems to be grounding somewhere