Fence building photos - July 2008

I built a backyard fence last summer, with a fair bit of help from my father-in-law and a guy who installed the posts (big job, that one, and totally worth the $500).

Knowing that a few people will be planning to build their own fence in a few months, I thought that I'd post a few photos and some info to be helpful.

But first, I have to point out the very cool playhouse that was given to us - and then moved into our back yard in two pieces - just one day before the fenceposts went in (a day later, and we wouldn't have been able to get the playhouse into the yard).

The quick version of how we got the playhouse? A neighbour down the street wanted to get rid of it. They asked another neighbour - who owns a sign business and a crane - to move it. The crane-owning neighbour knows we have kids and asked if we'd be interested in having a playhouse. Our answer was "yes!" and the photos below tell the rest of the story.

The playhouse (and my four-year-old daughter):



The crane that our neighbour used to drop it onto our lawn (the roof was separated from the base during the move - both were hauled down the street on a big trailer):



And now for the fence. While I like to do as much of my own work as possible, I'm a realist. Setting the posts properly is the key to a good fence, so I hired that job out. What would have taken me days to finish took the pros just over an hour. The company I hired used three guys and a bobcat with a post-hole auger attachment. (See the ad to the right for contact info - it's not a paid ad, by the way.)

I supplied the posts, of course. All they required was that I stake out the post-hole locations and have MB Hydro mark out the gas lines and any underground electrical cable (not an issue in our neighbourhood). They did the rest. The total cost was just over $500 for about 25 posts.

Here's a photo I took before they came in and placed the posts:



Here's another one:



And now for some fence photos. I decided to go with a very simple design. Rails on the top and bottom, boards spaced with about a 1/4" of daylight in between each one. The posts were set on a Sunday. Building the rest of the fence took two days plus an hour or two for the gates.








To sum up: getting someone else to set the posts was important to me. You can do it yourself, but you'd have to rent a power auger, buy your own gravel, and spend a whole lot of time getting the posts plumb and level. Definitely not worth it in my case.

The rest of it was straightforward, including the gates. It made for a fun July long weekend.

Any questions, leave a comment.

Ever wondered what condensation in the attic looks like?

Every winter, we've had issues with water leaking through the kitchen ceiling whenever the weather warms up.

I always thought it was ice-damming. Like many of the homeowners in our area, we've got huge ridges of ice along the bottom of the roof of our 1.5 storey. Given the thin (possibly non-existent) insulation in our roof, there's certainly the potential for leakage due to ice dams.

Last spring, however, a home inspector told me that attic condensation is the more likely culprit. My understanding of attic condensation is that it's caused by moist warm air leaking from the insulated area of the house, condensing on a cold surface in the uninsulated attic, and then freezing. When the outside temperature warms up, the ice and frost inside the attic melts and the water finds its way into the house.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to test his theory because it was spring already - too warm to check for the telltale signs of attic condensation.

Earlier this afternoon, I finally got around to doing some poking around. Below are a few photos of what I found. I'm pretty sure there's warm air leaking into the attic - we've got icicles in there that are bigger than Michael Clark Duncan's arms.








Apparently there are no easy solutions. My wife phoned several insulation contractors who said they don't do 1.5 storey houses because their design makes it difficult to eliminate problems like this.

This may be a job that I try to tackle on my own. I couldn't make it much worse . . .

Here's some pretty good information about ice-damming and attic condensation from CMHC.