I have found over many years and hard knocks that a pressure washer is the way to go in hard ground. In the winter and early spring its easy to dig (North Louisiana) but the rest of the year its like digging in concrete. The only shortcoming in using a pressure washer is that it won't cut roots. Use a 4 foot length of 6 inch pvc pipe and you won't splatter yourself and the hole will be straight sided. Dig several holes at a time and when you go back to the first hole enough water will be absorbed to just dump in a sack of Quickcrete fast setting concrete, stir up a little, and the pole is ready to be inserted. In an hour the poles will be strong enough to start adding the top rail. Using a high pressure rotating nozzle also speeds up the work.
@@je-fq7ve I do use a saws-all for rhe first foot with Diablo blades which don't dull much. For the next few feet I use a tamper bar with the end ground fairly sharp. I hoped my fence laying days were over (I'm 72) but now my neighbor is putting up a chain link fence. I'm more of an advisor than a worker bee now.
@@je-fq7veAbsolutely! Save your old blades for this. I cut out a 20’ row of 50’ year old boxwood bushes this way. Ate up roots like nothing. Very satisfying too.
Would there be an Interest in a pressure washer attachment, that would dig the hole? Something similar to a pressure Washer Surface Cleaner could do the trick.
I appreciate a skilled high standards tradesman who makes no compromises on quality and shares the hard won lessons of years in the trenches...Thank you sir!
So this is obviously a very niche channel for a small population and an even fewer will appreciate the effort but I have to say I’m always impressed not only with the information but also the presentation. Good stuff.
Long ago, I helped my grandfather build a corral with old telephone poles dug into red dirt/clay here in west Texas. We only used post hole diggers since my grandfather was totally old school (this was in the '50s). We would dig a starter hole until it was tough to dig, then fill the hole with water, and go on to starting the next hole, on and on, round and round. Looking back, it sure was a heck of a job, but digging then adding water made it a lot easier. Some of the techniques he uses in the video would have made it even easier on the old man and the kid. It wasn't until I was grown that I realized how cool it was to accomplish that task with the tools we had.
I just dug out old chainlink fence posts using a pressure washer and a shopvac. We went this route due to a buried streetlight electrical cable buried near the fenceline. The best upgrade to this setup is to include a dust separator to the vacuum that attaches to 5gal buckets. This collects the mud slurry into a pails for easy disposal and keeps the vacuum from fouling up too often. Works like a charm, even below 4ft depths.
Those little bucket top cone separators are 1000% worth it. Even with drywall dust, hardly any makes it to the actual vacuum can. Hadn't thought of it for wet stuff. Thanks!
This should be a required video for any laborer or apprentice to watch. This is what I learned from an old timer when I was in my early 20's. Retired contractor of 38 years. Great video!
I'm generally going to choose whichever method requires the least amount of effort. When it comes to digging postholes, that means paying someone else to do it while I stand to the side and offer all the advice I just got from this video.
In 25 years as a SoCal county hiway sign person, I set hundreds of 10 and 12 foot 4X4's in 24" holes (no frost) using a sharp digging bar, posthole diggers and a tamping bar. Too often it required digging thru native decomposed granite and the tip about punching a center hole and breaking away the sides was a hard learned trick. The mistake people make with posthole diggers is using them to dig--all they do well is remove previously loosened soil from the hole. The biggest drawback to hand digging for me was learning to recognize that I was digging in a roadside utility trench and stopping, relocating or proceeding with caution. Cutting a line can REALLY ruin your day and is why I've seen city crews using pressure water wands and vacuum systems to dig signpost holes.
As a woman working in the trades, (electrician), I learned decades ago that whatever solution works well is the one to take, no matter how 'unconventional'. Love the pressure washer, shop vac. trick.
If you want an unconventional method that isn't as messy you can opt for a rotary hammer with the chisel function It will burn through batteries if you need to put in posts somewhere that an extension cord can't reach, but that's how forest service puts in trail markers in the middle of nowhere in unforgiving terrain
Actually any grandma gardener is more competent to comment on using water to soften the soil 😂 but I guess we need to know what trades electrician want to teach them lol
Agree about adding water on hard ground, I do this all the time. Form the top of the hole and dig about 6 inches deep with the bar and then fill with water and leave it a good while. I sometimes perforate the hole with the sharp end of a crow bar to allow the water to seep in quicker - it works well. Appreciate your videos !
A shop Vac can suck even from really deep holes, you just have to dip it in & pull it out in pulses, so you suck up small slugs of water at a time. A septic tank guy taught me that when sucking out a tank down a 200 foot hill with about a 50 foot rise (at a lake side cabin near the shore with no vehicle access).
I was planting several shrubs and also had my 10 year old neighbor with me who wanted to help. I admired the boy’s perseverance and enthusiasm as we live on a hill with thin, rocky soil and limestone bedrock and outcroppings. I worked on another nearby project and he was using a pry bar after he had shoveled and used a small garden trowel to get whatever he could but was deterred to get the rock. I came over to help and even with our combined weight, the rock wouldn’t budge. I suggested moving over a bit in the opposite direction but he thought removing the rock would work if he started loosening the outside edge. It was a foot and a half in diameter as he exposed the edge and I told him it wasn’t necessary that I had random plantings not measured distances in a straight line, but he was determined. He worked several hours and it took the 2 of us to eventually shift it out of the ground and he was triumphant. I admired his determination and only hope he carries that into adulthood but also learns that sometimes things can be done through less effort. If it had been a fence post hole, it would have been worthwhile, but for a shrub to be shifted a few inches wasn’t going to affect the landscaping.
Thank you for helping this young man learned about work. Was hope from them like you this boy might grow up to be a real man and raise a family which is becoming harder and harder to find this country.
Back in the 1990s I was stationed aboard the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at 29 Palms, CA. The ground under base housing was very sandy. Because it was military housing I could not use cement to permanently set in my posts. I used a garden hose with straight sprayer on the end (as opposed to a pistol grip style). I set the spray tip to send out a focused spray. I then set the hollow fence post where I wanted it, shoved the hose through it until the sprayer hit the ground, and had my son turn on the water. I kept the hose tip level with the bottom of the post as it easily slid into the ground. I have since retired and live on a small farm in southern Idaho. The hose system does not work on caliche and lava rock. On caliche I cheat and use an electric Harbor Freight jack hammer with a wide blade. On lava rock I build a steel frame, wrap it with fencing style net wire, put it where I want it, and fill it with rock.
It's very true that it is difficult to find a sturdy shovel these days. My tip is to go to a masonry supplier. They tend to carry tougher brands like Bully (American made). Also, always mark 3 and 4 ft on your post hole digger and bar. Better then filling your tape with dirt. Nice video, thanks.
Having dug a whole bunch of post holes up in the Vermont mountains, it is a completely different story from digging in clay. For exactly one of the holes, the powered post-hole digger actually succeeded in a clean bore of a hole. . In all the other post holes for the whole fence line, I ended up digging very wide & deep by hand with shovel & tamping pole & pick axe in order to fish out big giant rocks. Some so heavy they required some engineering just to get them out. I then had to use forms and backfill to make the 'holes' for pouring.
I'm not a fence pole hole digger expert, but 24 years ago I did my own fence. After placing the post in the hole, I filled the hole with concrete to the top (several bags per hole) and did a crown slope to allow water to drain away from the post. Today, it's still holding strong. However, my neighbors fence was done by a fence company, and they did it completely different and cheap. They dug a hole so deep, put a post in it, mixed some concrete into the hole (only filling it a fraction of the way). Once the concrete set up, they filled the remaining hole with regular dirt. Over the years, the dirt retained moisture (rain, snow, etc.). Now the posts have rotted and the fence is falling down. I firmly believe had they filled the entire hole with concrete, the fence would be solid as mine. So in your video at 9:13 I disagree with filling any hole to the top with dirt. Eventually the moisture in the dirt from the elements will rot the post.
Excellent video. Clear instructions, easy to hear, and specific. He didn't just say what to do but explain why with examples. This helped me a lot. Thanks.
Reminds me when I was in Afghanistan as a contractor. I made a outdoor covered area for DFAC. It took us all day to dig 6 holes! I had I think 5-6 guys too! All by hand!
@@myfavoritegroomer If the ground is dry and hard it takes a lot longer. You gotta take the garden hose and water it real good about a day or two before you dig or dig after it rains. Let the water soak in real good so it's not muddy but the soil is just moistened and damp. Really though gas powered post hole auger is probably the way to go if you want to get it done real fast and efficient with as little manual effort as possible.
I wish I would have watched this video 60 years ago, LOL. Thank you for taking the time and effort to produce well thought out useful videos. After watching a few of your other videos like ("This Farm Fence Is So Fast and Easy It's Embarrassing"), I see that you have a lot to offer me and likely many other people. I am now subscribed. Back in the early 70's, I worked for a commercial fence construction company that did federal, state and large scale residential work. Mostly guardrail, chain link, property parameter fences, and large gates. We didn't have shop vacs back then, so when the job was in an area that we could not get our 5-ton truck with hydraulic drilling machine into the area, we used breaker bars and a shovel. However, as I have gotten older, I now pay someone to drill or otherwise hand dig holes. Then I do the balance of the construction, because building stuff that is strong, straight, and useful is very satisfying to me. Also, I have used a water hose and steel or PVC pipe to bore access holes under sidewalks and other small cement areas so I could run plumbing or electrical services, at my home mostly. Thank you again
Fiskars makes a steel post hole digger with a design that’s made for digging deep holes. They’re amazing and we’ve been using them for years on my fence crews. We’ve never had to use a shovel for digging post holes.
Thanks for this video. I got a great tip today. We have a project that we will run into many areas where we are trenching and when we come up to a pipe of any kind we can power wash past the pipe ,after we dig deeper in the trench backwards from the pipe for 3-4 ft and then we can let the slurry settle and dry in the trench bottom in the Texaco heat. So we don't have to trench pump or vacuum that slurry out. So all in all Clean, Safe and no mess pouring out the slurry. Thank you Kenny
I've worked with pro Hydrovac crews so when I needed to dig around tree roots I improvised using a shop vac and my air compressor, with a 2ft air wand. To get deeper I used a 6ft piece of 1/4" pipe and put a ball valve and air cuck on it. By using air I was only sucking up loose dirt and not mud. Air didn't go through the dirt as easy as a pressure washer, but way less mess, and I was often able to use a shovel to remove the loosened dirt when a root wasn't in the way.
I volunteered to help a neighbor put in a fence separating her front and backyard. I'm really dreading trying to put these post holes in and I don't have an auger. But this right here was an awesome video
Buy a 16 inch spade, they're not easy to find these days but it puts those 3 methods to shame, my dad dug holes for a living with one, and I inherited his shovels, nobody can dig a hole as fast and as cleanly as I can, and I'm a boomer!
Great video….much respect for a guy that doesn’t shy away from hard work. As a guy that does try to get around hard work as much as possible, I dig your pressure washer and vacuum solution (see what I did there). I almost tried the vacuum the other day when I was digging, but my 11 year old son was there and didn’t want him to think I was the kind of guy that shies away from hard work….also, I let him do most of the digging. Good luck getting that kind of hole in upstate NY though, even with 11 year old laborers. The hole is the size and shape and depth that the rocks want it to be. A 9” hole in an area where you’ll pull 3 or 4 12” rocks out before you get to the bottom is pretty much a fantasy. Sono tube and back fill is the name of the game here.
First off, ALWAYS water the area before digging. I've found that 36 hours leaves the perfect soil conditions. Mud is dried, the water dispersed deeper. Second, use a rotary auger. Harbor Freight has one on sale for $180 a couple times a year. You can be done with your holes in about a minute apiece if you water first. It takes only one (fairly strong) person and it removes the dirt from the hole for you. The 6" will dig out rocks as large as a cantaloupe, the 8" will suck out football sized rocks. I still have mine from my handyman days.
Love your videos! I’m new to fencing and learning lots from you guys! I replaced a damaged shovel handle today with a 1-3/8” heavy gauge top rail steel post pipe, welded it together, and put a dome cap on the end 😂. Strongest shovel ever! I’m gonna weld a heavy flat steel piece to the top of my breaker bar for tamping. Thanks for the tip!
I have a 9” manual auger on a 4’ t-handle that I use in conjunction with a bar. It’s a very shallow auger, just around a twist and a half maybe. Works amazing as a clean out tool, twist and lift… very fast process and consistent hole size.
Great video. Only thing I would mention is that if you are somewhere much wetter, you want to bring the concrete out of the hole and form a cone around the post to shed water and extend the post life.
I bought a 1 man auger from harbor freight 5 years ago and it still works great. For about $300 you can get the auger, extension, and a 9 inch bit. Super useful on small jobs or places where you can't get larger machines in. It will dig Alabama red clay all day.
I’ve bought the harbor freight one a few times over. It is by far the best one man auger I’ve used. Our crews use it on small projects and tight spaces
Grenaded the "lower crankcase" recently but the hills of the Ozarks are rocky and rough on equipment. (HF does sell the parts reasonablely but Vevor has a $170 auger I'm tempted to try.)
I picked one up, also about five years back. It works a treat. Yes, there are limits (not much torque) but for me, by myself, it's perfect. Not going to snap my wrists and does an hour of that awful clam-shell work in 5 minutes.
Omf i clicked so fast! You can use a PVC pipe with a carb valve to pull water out afterwards, like putting your thumb on a huge straw, and fling it out of the way or into the next spot to soften it up while you work the hole you're emptying You can also sink a pvc pipe, fill it with water and pull the whole hole out with the suction, dead straight sides
I agree with you about shovel quality. I used to be able to use them as a lever with my full weight on the handle , and they either worked or not , but they didn't break, but now I manage to snap the handles off just digging!
Thanks for this video. Learned a few things. Got to 12:00 and other than your preference for the shovel over post hole diggers I had that all covered. I have found a shovel occasionally worked better for me, but use a digger 90% of the time. Spud bar and shovel used as needed. Not a contractor, but have put a few fences in. I guess the cowboys in WY I worked for when I was 16 did a good job of teaching me. In my 30's I put a lot of fence up in N Minnesota. I had seen a lot of fences with posts pushed up and even out by frost in the area, so I recall researching frost depth to avoid that. Ask a grave digger how deep the frost goes and then dig 6" deeper. N MN can be pretty wet, so I like to put a few inches of rock at the bottom of my holes so the end isn't sealed in concrete. In N MN I set my posts down to a minimum of 40", so dig the holes 45", add a couple inches of gravel, drop the post in and put in my concrete. Yes, I also bell out the holes at the bottom. The fences I put in back in the 1990's are still standing straight. When I worked in WY as a kid, one of the ranchers told me that the posts I was replacing, because they rotted off, had been set using trees cleared when the land was settled by white folks, so about 70 years those posts where in the ground. I worked on the ranch in 1977 & 1978.
Here in the Texas desert our caliche is like concrete and water is scarce. Forget shovels or phd's. I took a chance and bought a Makita brushless earth auger for post holes. Still need a digging bar to get the occasional big rock but the Makita can bore a 36-40 inch post hole no problem. Best thing since sliced bread.
Awesome video. I grew up on a farm. I tell my three boys the two job that I liked the least were stacking balls and setting wooden posts for (livestock) fencing. I agree with all of your thoughts and learned a couple of things. I thought your vacuum was a silly method until at the end you recommended it for digging around utilities. That is brilliant! I love your matter of fact approach with your dry sense of humor. Very enjoyable to watch your videos. Keep it up!
Wife..."Honey, can you put up a fence out in the back field? Husband..."Sure, let me run out for some tools". W...."Honey, why is there a new truck in the driveway" H....well, I needed something to carry my new water tank, pressure washer, genset and shop vac....and your fence posts."
Guilty. We have an understanding. I ignore her shoe collection, and she ignores the tools and guns. The trucks and motorcycles are getting hard to explain.
I living in FL have soft sand but also have rocks. The post gole digger works well enough here. But I have used the pressure washer the same way for years and it makes it even easier. I have even used a pvc pipe and pressure washer to dig a hole under a sidewalk horizontally. Its not something you can do with a shovel but with a preasure washer and some lengths of pvc pipe you can push your way through easily. Oil rigs use water pressure to dig as well. The loose dirt from the water is by far the easiest to move through.
Great video. May seem obvious but very important tip is to place dug up soil in a neat pile and not too close to the hole. (You did) Makes backfilling much easier.
I found a good post hole digger at a garage sale years ago that turned out to be a godsend. I started looking after that and found one more since then and picked it up instantly. Basically is a straight pipe handle with a T plumbing fitting at the top with a wood handle through that's about 36 inches long. At the bottom is a ring with 4 blades bent in at the bottom at different angles so that as I spin the tool it cuts into the ground like an auger but it collects the soil inside the cupped blades so that you can pull it up/out. It does require you to tip the tool sideways to dump the soil out but you can screw attachments onto the handle in order to go as deep as you want. I was younger when I found it so had the energy to spare. On a test run I dug a 6 inch diameter hole that went just about ten feet deep with straight edges all the way down. It isn't the most useful right at the surface but by the time I go about 8 inches down I always switch to that
I am always looking for an easier way to dig or haul anything! You could say im obsessed to the point of building my own posthole diggers brush pullers you name it! Once I learned to weld it was on! I would love to see a picture of your digger or pictures! Is it whats known as a boston digger or gibbs digger! It kind of sounds like it might be! Maybe you could email some pics to me ? or whatever is easiest for you! I am in new mexico! Thx!
@@StonemanRocks if you go to for one online and browse images you can find something similar by looking for twist post hole diggers though none are exactly like what I have. The ones I'm finding have two shovel type blades that are forked at the bottom and bent in rather than 4 different smaller blades going all the way down.
A pure positive presentation. I'm certain there are plenty of us who've learned what you demonstrate on our own with no guidance or shared insight. I grew up with my grandfather's pick and shovel. It just dawned on me picks were for trenches. A university professor stated to his audience once several years ago that he had a class in which only 3 students out of 80 had ever used a shovel or dug a hole. Rivers and geography were the topics being covered for us in the audience. It also dawned on me you could mark your shovel and bar-ram at the 32 inch mark if a permanent marker pen would not fade. I became curious if a welding bead along the edge of the shovel an inch in would not only keep the blade sharper longer, but also help the shovel relieve a wet spoonful that sticks to the blade. Wyoming must be a blessing. I read its women demanded the right to vote in federal elections which made Wyoming the first state to do so after Wyoming was approved to join the Union. These women were as humble as the woman who touched the robe of Jesus.
I’ve found that in many situations (I’m not a commercial guy though) that the post hole digger type that you screw into the soil is often the fastest/easiest. It’s not an auger it’s cylindrical with a couple cutters on the bottom. Bought it at a farm store. I’ll start the hole with a shovel then switch. Even in our rock hard Colorado clay it’s surprisingly effective if the rocks aren’t too big and you can go as deep as you like. Otherwise I’m with you- old school shovel and bar with judiciously applied water is the way to go.
Gonna try the pressure washer technique next time I dig a post hole. Years ago When I worked for a landscaping company, we dug post holes using forestry tree planting spades. These are heavy all steel spades with a narrow spear point blade and shock absorption D handle. They are designed to spear in deep then act as a lever for a planter who will spear the spade in the ground one step in front of himself, lever the spade one handed as he walks forwards, drop the seedling tree I with his left hand, pull out the spade and firm in the tree with his trailing boot as he walks past already in the process of planting the second tree. The weight and cutting ability of these spades made it possible to dig an 800mm deep post hole in about 5 minutes in normal ground and 10 in hard ground.
Best way to dig a post hole is watch some young stud do it. At 75 a hole is just somethin to fall into. I'm in Montana, we shipped all the soft soil down to Wyoming. 🤗 BTW, I didn't like digging them ever, but I used a mules foot to clean out the holes. Still have it to look at.
@@dsmith3134 I couldn't find it either. What I did find was a post hole digger that behaved like scissors so that when the handles were apart, the scoops at the end were open and when the handles were together the scoops were closed. Looked like a better way of getting the dirt out of the bottom of a hole.
@@dsmith3134 A mules foot is a contraption that scoops loose dirt out of a post hole. It consists of a half round shovel part that enters the hole vertically, then by an attached handle it swivels 90 degrees under the loose dirt at the bottom of the hole and "scoops" it up. Hard to describe, but it has a main handle with a lever attached to a rod that goes along side down to the scoop. The little handle is parallel to the main handle, then swivels 90d which swivels the scoop at the bottom. It's like putting your hand down a hole, scooping up a handful by sliding your hand under the loose dirt. Whew!
Also called a boston digger or gibbs digger! Surprised they ever sell any based on the price! But ya they work! You sure you weren’t talking about a cougar foot? Lmao!
Awesome! I saw the shop vac / pressure washer in the background and knew I had to watch this video. Been contracting for 45 years and agree with everything thing you said (I have seen a ‘bottom out’ post hole digger, with a plate that keeps the material from sliding out) but they still hurt your hands. I’m in So. Cal. We have caliche & adobe along with plenty of clay. As you were digging, I recognized the soil. Yeah, have a race between your assistant with a bar & shovel. You get the pressure washer & shop vac. Betcha he loses. I do a fair amount of irrigation & used to refill the subterranean boxes with soil, until I had to replace valves. Then I left them empty ( it actually freezes here, 5 miles from the coast, & 20 miles North of TJ) for a few hours on a few days in the winter) just enough to blow off the supply lines, & I get to fix the flood . Now, I fill them with sand or river pebbles. I can use a pressure nozzle on a garden hose & a shop vac & clean them out in minutes with 12 valves in a box. 24 pipes in & out. Or safely unearth gas lines on new construction. It also works great for setting ‘gopherhawks’ between large rocks (50-200 lb). Where you can’t get a shovel. I’ve wanted to make a similar video, but you did a fantastic job! Thank you.
Solid content, minimal fat, quality information. Some of the info might seem trivial to those with experience, this vid will save years of learning for many.
Very entertaining! 🤣🤣🤣 And I highly appreciate these since I was born in Cheyenne 60 years ago now! Most importantly, I DID learn something! Time to go change my oil now which is a Good Dang Day! God bless you and your crew! Safe digging!
That big river place has a 32x2 auger drill. Drill multiple holes around perimeter of hole and dig out. Reasonably priced. Also, with use of auger, pressure washer, vacuum, helpful in DIY removing tree stumps.
It's always nice to have 1 call check the area for utilities, (should still be cautious digging) and if the ground is too tough i rent a hole auger and save my back. 🙂👍🏻I also try to put a dome shape on my concrete so it tapers up to the pull.
Here in PA, our soil is rich, fertile, and soft! And that gets you to about 5" deep; under that is just clay and rock-all the way to Australia. Best way I've found to dig straight down involves five things: a shovel, sweat, a bar, your hands, and a demo hammer. For medium rocks, the pry-bar I use is a 42" DeWalt wrecking bar, because a full-length digging bar just wears you out faster, and it has no 'handle' on the backside. But the secret to beating a big rock is to simply break through it with a good demo-hammer: since it's made for concrete, it'll bust apart embedded rocks like peanut brittle. Only problem is the extension cord.
Sounds similar to western Poland. First 10 to 20cm is quick. After that you gotta dig through hard clay. Power drill with hammer mode works great, at least in my experience. After that it is soft loose powder. Shovel works great on that.
You are the only talking about dealing with the rocks. These videos are never real life. He has a few baseball sized stones. Irl, it's a few bowling ball sized, and hopefully nothing bigger than a wheelbarrow.
as an old fencer I was very interested in this video. Thanks and we in Australia dig holes almost exactly the same way you do. I live in the far west and no chances of frost ever........ very, very hot. anyway the only difference is that I like a square hole shovel, and of course square holes. Everything else is as you do however as we are in the middle of nowhere putting in strainer posts for cattle fences, no concreting, just put two inches of dirt in at a time and ram it with the other end of the bar. If you don't take shortcuts doing this, the posts never get loose of fail. Great vid and thanks for sharing
I have never been more grateful for the dirt we are blessed with in the Midwest after seeing this guy struggle to dig down a few inches with the same effort I regularly dig to get down 3 feet in Illinois.
I've never tried this on fence post, but a electrician showed years ago that he could take a cup of water and put a ground rod in the ground here in our black gumbo. Just pump it up and down and the rod acts as a piston and uses the water to push the mud up and the rod keeps going down with each pump. The black gumbo requires a digging bucket full of water using either the post hole digger or a shovel. Lots of fences down around my area after Hurricane Beryl. Plenty of other damage also.
Like you; I've dug a lot of holes in my life. I always say, "give a man a shovel and say dig, and you'll know his measure in under 2 minutes". Most places in Australia don't have a frost layer, but I always go down 600mm (23") - 800mm (31 1/2") minimum pending earth type. Or I'll aim for virgin ground. The ground here in Australia is mostly hard and well compacted so posts hold really well.
Thanks, you have taught me something. I have a shovel, a bar, post hole diggers, shop vac and pressure washer, but I have to dig by the highway to put up a larger Mailbox and post. They packed this road with heavy machinery. The last hole took nearly half a day at 97 degrees. I believe I will just hire somebody to do it and watch from the camera from the living room on the big screen now.
You really need to find a spade and spoon combo, spade for chipping and soon for bailing. Works 10 times better than spud bar/ shovel. Power pole and telephone pole contractors use them for holes they can’t access with equipment. I know, I’ve used both
@@ChuckD59 I had trouble finding this, too. YT usually won't let commenters post links. The most promising I think I found comes up if you look for Oshkosh spoon shovel.
I wish I had watched this two days ago. I just finished digging holes for a 6-foot fence in AZ soil(rocks and sandy soil). I bought the bar for the tamping and rented a jackhammer to bust through layers. It looks like all I needed was the bar and shovel. Plus, it's way lighter than a jackhammer to get in and out of the hole. You're right, I was used to using a post-hole digger in Iowa soil, which works fairly well, but not here. Live and learn. Thanks for vids Heading to the foam vs concrete vid next.
Sorry to be pedantic but a shovel is not intended for digging, they are meant for moving loose material. A spade is intended for digging and cutting into the ground.
I’ve been digging post holes on and off for 50 years. I learned long ago to disturb the ground around the hole as little as possible. I use a cat bar and a tin can. If the post is 4”, then the hole. Is maybe 6 or 7”. Getting the dirt out is the trickiest part. I like the pressure washer and vac trick for that. Never thought of it before seeing your video. Once the post is in the hole I force rocks down between the post and the undisturbed soil with the blunt end of the cat bar. I rarely use concrete….too expensive and not needed in most cases. Folks around here use backhoes to dig post holes. After a hard winter their fences look like waves on the ocean! Our soil is just like yours, a thin layer of top soil and then clay with embedded rocks. I try to dig my holes in the early spring while the clay is still fairly moist. My summer it’s as hard as concrete. Digging holes is almost as much fun as splitting knotty pine firewood! Thanks for the video. It’s good to work hard.
Nice video and presentation. I saw a UA-cam guy pull (dry) dirt/sand below ground with shop vac from a deep several times deeper than the vacuum-head height of the shop vac. I agree with you the maximum depth we can do with water-dirt mix is limited to the shop vac’s vac head height. Try it without water. In that two concentric PVC pipe are involved. To the bottom of the wider pipe, add a hollow steel hole saw (low teeth count). This will not obstruct the smaller diameter pipe from evacuating loose dirt from the bed. Such that the cross section area of the large pipe is twice that of the smaller one. Pipe diameter ratio rounding up to 3:2 or 3 inches every 2 inches of diameter. Draw back? Encountering pebble size wider than the core pipe, we need to pull pebble manually.
I’m retired from a power company and would have to dig holes in clay and rock soil manually, including setting the pole. We could not get our hole digger truck to the site for various reasons. We would use what’s called a spade and spoon and pin (steel) bar. Spade and pin bar to dig and the spoon to clean out the hole. Our holes were normally 4’ to 5’ deep. I agree with you that the shovel and bar are the best tools to use. You might try searching for the spoon that I referenced for clean out. If I lived in your area and needed a fence installed, I’d be calling you and only you. Good job!
My preferred method is a pry bar and a shop vac but no water. A contractor buddy of mine turned me on to the idea for digging sonnet tube holes. We have very boney soil here in MA. Handling dry dirt is way simpler than sludge. Only draw back is that if the dirt gets sticky it wants to clog up the vacuum hose. I love the pressure washer idea for digging around utilities, etc. Thanks for the nice video tutorial.
This was a great video. I'm a landscaper and have done thousands of holes. I 100% agree with you on a bar and shovel is the way to go. Post hole only the very bottom when it gets tough to get that last little bit out. Pressure washer would be a huge freaking mess I don't want on my projects.
I’ve used a pressure washer to bore under driveways and sidewalks but never thought to use the shop vac to dig holes..great idea! Especially as you said when you’re worried about power lines or water lines in the area. Great video!!
And here I've been all these years thinking that digging a hole was as simple as digging a hole. Man, I learn something new every day. Thanks for the lesson!
the flat part on the shovel is to use your foot to basically put more force in to the shovel head to get it deeper in what ever you working with doesn't work all the time but it is helpful
i love your non-nonsense videos. Mark, keep up your straight to the point videos and i appreciate knowing what to use and when. Here in Arizona we hit rock straight away and it's dry, dry and a pain in the rear to dug up. So again, I appreciate your vids they really help out.
I've been using a pressure washer for years here in southern Arizona. Where most of the ground is shattered rock. Hence the lack of vegetation in most of the mountain's. Shop vac is also handy as long as you have a secondary container to trap most of the bearing killing fine particles. I also use compressed air. This way helps remove the debris from in between the rocks for easy removal. I've done alot of watering systems where drip line must be a min. of 6". So in the rocky yards I've found that compressed air works best.
Good stuff. I'm in Massachusetts and I'd tell the hole digger good luck. Out here, you reach a maximum of 2 inches below the top soil and you find out you're pretty damn screwed w/o out some sort of machine to do the work. That's because at 2 inches you reach pure bedrock. In my neighborhood, I watched a construction crew dig and clear some land to build a house. Obviously, they needed to go quite deep for the foundation. Took them like a month digging every single day with a couple huge (industrial size) backhoes to finally get deep enough for the next step in the digging process. The next step was an even bigger machine (Caterpillar brand) with an industrial size bar attachment (that ends in a blunt point). That thing had a bigger diameter than my body. They took another 1-2 months of chipping away at literally solid bedrock. And this was only for a modest-sized house, 3-stories including the basement (2 stories living, 1 for garage and utilities. I myself dug a trench around my house for a DIY French drain by hand, and it sucked big time. I basically needed the bar the entire time to loosen up the dirt and break up the countless rocks. At one point I somehow pulled out a rock heavier than I was. It was small boulder that must've weighed at least 250 pounds. Problem was that I had to go through it to finish the exterior French drain. But it was so hard and solid that it wouldn't break no matter how much I smashed it w/ a sledge hammer - and I was near a window and didn't want to break it, lol. It took me 2 whole days to dig around the damn boulder and slowly pry it up inch-by-inch. Before I got it out, I measured the depth of where it began. It was only about 8-10" below the top soil! And yet the thing was so massive it was at least one foot thick by about 2 feet wide, somewhat circular. Thing was so heavy I left it in the yard right next to the trench, lol. It's now an oddly placed decorative rock. A couple summers ago I went to Wyoming where a friend from the university was digging out mammoth bones. They got down to a layer that was near an extinct river or lake system, so the soil at that depth was somewhat sandy and easy to dig through. But the top 15-20 feet they had to go in w/ a backhoe. The top soil was actually similar to Arizona soil, except that in Arizona there's a lot more rock, known as Kaliche (sp?). Still I was interested to note that they both had similar soil - dry, clay-like and hard-packed. Whereas Massachusetts has very good top soil w/ tons of nutrients, but only a couple inches down it's literally almost pure bedrock. Sorry for the long post. This video just brought back lots of memories.
The best tip from this video is using a shop vac to clear the dirt from the hole. Here in New England, the ground is hard clay and stone. Using a post hole digger has its limitations. Switching to a Johnson bar and the shop vac in dry ground below 24” depth , works very well and goes quickly. Very useful.
If you can find one get a Boston Digger. Its a straight shaft with a clam shell lever . Workers better but is heavier than the double handled scissor type.
Americana, do you have the long narrow shovel that we do in Britain? It's about as wide as your foot, 16 inches long at the metal, and it cuts into the ground really well. Spear and Jackson. Newcastle shovel/spade. Grafting or Newcatle shovel for draining - digging drains. American shovels look so difficult to use it you want to dig fast. Are they good or bad?
I used to dig holes for a living in my early 20s. To this day ( 68 yrs old) it's one of the most enjoyable things for me to do. I've never forgotten what that fencing contractor told me. "there is nothing worse than a sub-standard hole".
Great tips. I spent many summers as a kid digging 3’ deep holes for fence posts in Wisconsin. All rocks from the glaciers that deposited them. Only had the post hole digger and bar. Would rejoice whenever I’d get lucky and hit sand.
When using post hole diggers, keep the handles together and wrap both hands around the outside of both handles. It will drive deeper and grab more dirt that you already loosened with your bar. Although they can be hard to find, they do make spud bars that are flat on one side, chisel on the other. If you keep the flat side against the edge of your hole, it will help keep it from pinching out. Touch up the chisel point periodically and it also cuts roots pretty well. Great video!
Well done! Thanks. I've dug some holes with each method you showed today except the pressure washer and shop vac. I thought of using that method (on my own) for digging around gas or power lines. I'm happy to know that it's actually a known way to dig holes. Verifies my idea. Thanks again. Well spoken. Clearly shown, Great job!
That first 12 minutes was so brutal I had to take a nap. :-) Then I carried on to the pressure washer option and I knew this was good for digging or plowing vertical runs for sprinkler pipe under sidewalks, but never really thought of using it for post holes! You're such a good You-Tuber...keep up the good work!!
The pressure washer and vac is also the way to dig out tree roots. Had a 29 foot Hollie tree so the root ball was huge, also large gravel mixed in with the roots. Used demo saw to cut roots- use a dead dull blade and sharpen with file. To defeat the splatter I've used 2 foot square plywood with a two inch hole in the middle. For larger areas a chunk of carpet, tarp, or cloth with small slit. Easiest way to drain shop vac is epoxy a pvc drain or ball valve to connect hose or ducting.
Great video. Having a bar to break the dirt loose is key for sure. I admit, I have always used the bar method and cleaned it out with a post hole digger I'll try the shovel method next time
Old school. Breaker bar for digging and post hole diggers for clearing out loose dirt only (unless you have that rare loose, soft soil). Even with an auger, you need the bar when you hit a rock in tight soil . Dropping the bar in (sliding through a loose grip) tells me whether I can bust through or need to pry out. The bar is also essential for slit trenching to have a perfectly straight top line or when installing chain link on a bias and dealing with minor grade changes on a straight run. I haven’t done fence work in decades, but still own a trusty breaker bar.
Didn't know the rock bar trick of small box in center of the hole making it easier to break out the sides. Applied it digging a flagpole hole and really appreciate the insight. Do have a pressure washer to apply that insight but am sure it is greatness. Really enjoy all the videos! Also Successful Contractor! Having a good dang day here and out!
This guy is awesome. I grew up digging fence post holes as a kid. My dad had three kids. Every new home he bought he installed a swing-set and enclosed the entire yard with a wooden fence to keep us safe. Back then, there was no easy way to dig a hole. My challenge today… Besides being older… I’m 6’5” so it gets hard to dig the holes, without hurting my back, once the holes get deep. I usually have to dig the last foot on my knees.
I have found over many years and hard knocks that a pressure washer is the way to go in hard ground. In the winter and early spring its easy to dig (North Louisiana) but the rest of the year its like digging in concrete. The only shortcoming in using a pressure washer is that it won't cut roots. Use a 4 foot length of 6 inch pvc pipe and you won't splatter yourself and the hole will be straight sided. Dig several holes at a time and when you go back to the first hole enough water will be absorbed to just dump in a sack of Quickcrete fast setting concrete, stir up a little, and the pole is ready to be inserted. In an hour the poles will be strong enough to start adding the top rail. Using a high pressure rotating nozzle also speeds up the work.
A cordless saws-all with a 12" blade cut a circle in the ground with it. cuts roots easy.
@@je-fq7ve Nice idea. Thanks!
@@je-fq7ve I do use a saws-all for rhe first foot with Diablo blades which don't dull much. For the next few feet I use a tamper bar with the end ground fairly sharp. I hoped my fence laying days were over (I'm 72) but now my neighbor is putting up a chain link fence. I'm more of an advisor than a worker bee now.
@@je-fq7veAbsolutely!
Save your old blades for this.
I cut out a 20’ row of 50’ year old boxwood bushes this way. Ate up roots like nothing. Very satisfying too.
Would there be an Interest in a pressure washer attachment, that would dig the hole? Something similar to a pressure Washer Surface Cleaner could do the trick.
I appreciate a skilled high standards tradesman who makes no compromises on quality and shares the hard won lessons of years in the trenches...Thank you sir!
I appreciate those words! Thank you! 👍🏻
If you build a guy up too much, he moves on to something else. You have to tell him he cant handle the pressure of the next gen or likewise.
@@mxracer4130I watched him sweat in order to teach me something…I appreciated it.
I second that. Thanks swi
So this is obviously a very niche channel for a small population and an even fewer will appreciate the effort but I have to say I’m always impressed not only with the information but also the presentation. Good stuff.
Thank you!
Right!
Completely agree!
Long ago, I helped my grandfather build a corral with old telephone poles dug into red dirt/clay here in west Texas. We only used post hole diggers since my grandfather was totally old school (this was in the '50s). We would dig a starter hole until it was tough to dig, then fill the hole with water, and go on to starting the next hole, on and on, round and round. Looking back, it sure was a heck of a job, but digging then adding water made it a lot easier. Some of the techniques he uses in the video would have made it even easier on the old man and the kid. It wasn't until I was grown that I realized how cool it was to accomplish that task with the tools we had.
I just dug out old chainlink fence posts using a pressure washer and a shopvac. We went this route due to a buried streetlight electrical cable buried near the fenceline. The best upgrade to this setup is to include a dust separator to the vacuum that attaches to 5gal buckets. This collects the mud slurry into a pails for easy disposal and keeps the vacuum from fouling up too often. Works like a charm, even below 4ft depths.
that is the missing link for this method for sure
The special lid & short vacuum hose is already available at Home Depot for their orange buckets...
Thanks!
Those little bucket top cone separators are 1000% worth it. Even with drywall dust, hardly any makes it to the actual vacuum can. Hadn't thought of it for wet stuff. Thanks!
It's pail. Back to school for you.
This should be a required video for any laborer or apprentice to watch. This is what I learned from an old timer when I was in my early 20's. Retired contractor of 38 years. Great video!
You worked too hard too long
I'm generally going to choose whichever method requires the least amount of effort. When it comes to digging postholes, that means paying someone else to do it while I stand to the side and offer all the advice I just got from this video.
🤣🤣
You got all the advice you need and then some 😂
You really improve the world dude
You don't like shoulder workouts
@@kd9937 I don't like workouts!
In 25 years as a SoCal county hiway sign person, I set hundreds of 10 and 12 foot 4X4's in 24" holes (no frost) using a sharp digging bar, posthole diggers and a tamping bar. Too often it required digging thru native decomposed granite and the tip about punching a center hole and breaking away the sides was a hard learned trick. The mistake people make with posthole diggers is using them to dig--all they do well is remove previously loosened soil from the hole. The biggest drawback to hand digging for me was learning to recognize that I was digging in a roadside utility trench and stopping, relocating or proceeding with caution. Cutting a line can REALLY ruin your day and is why I've seen city crews using pressure water wands and vacuum systems to dig signpost holes.
Did you ever use a gibbs digger?
Yes results WILL very according to how many rocks you hit!
That pressure washer shop vac trick for working around utilities is genius. I would have never thought of that. Thanks for the tip!
It’s a massive anxiety reliever to be able to dig without worry around utilities and other delicate buried infrastructure.
As a woman working in the trades, (electrician), I learned decades ago that whatever solution works well is the one to take, no matter how 'unconventional'. Love the pressure washer, shop vac. trick.
If you want an unconventional method that isn't as messy you can opt for a rotary hammer with the chisel function
It will burn through batteries if you need to put in posts somewhere that an extension cord can't reach, but that's how forest service puts in trail markers in the middle of nowhere in unforgiving terrain
I dig holes using a pressure washer . same idea as they used in gold mining with pressurized water.
I just spin the shovel and shave soil off the edges, it's fun
Actually any grandma gardener is more competent to comment on using water to soften the soil 😂 but I guess we need to know what trades electrician want to teach them lol
what does being a woman have to do with that? do i have to say "as a man" every time i give an opinion?
Agree about adding water on hard ground, I do this all the time.
Form the top of the hole and dig about 6 inches deep with the bar and then fill with water and leave it a good while. I sometimes perforate the hole with the sharp end of a crow bar to allow the water to seep in quicker - it works well. Appreciate your videos !
Done that often.
I respect you for sharing your technique knowing so many of us will argue based on our own experience and theories. You made a fantastic video.
Thank you!
A shop Vac can suck even from really deep holes, you just have to dip it in & pull it out in pulses, so you suck up small slugs of water at a time. A septic tank guy taught me that when sucking out a tank down a 200 foot hill with about a 50 foot rise (at a lake side cabin near the shore with no vehicle access).
Used to such up the last bits from the bottom of the tank after cleaning on tank ships with a vacuum. At least 30ft up to the deck - no problem!
I was planting several shrubs and also had my 10 year old neighbor with me who wanted to help. I admired the boy’s perseverance and enthusiasm as we live on a hill with thin, rocky soil and limestone bedrock and outcroppings. I worked on another nearby project and he was using a pry bar after he had shoveled and used a small garden trowel to get whatever he could but was deterred to get the rock. I came over to help and even with our combined weight, the rock wouldn’t budge. I suggested moving over a bit in the opposite direction but he thought removing the rock would work if he started loosening the outside edge. It was a foot and a half in diameter as he exposed the edge and I told him it wasn’t necessary that I had random plantings not measured distances in a straight line, but he was determined. He worked several hours and it took the 2 of us to eventually shift it out of the ground and he was triumphant. I admired his determination and only hope he carries that into adulthood but also learns that sometimes things can be done through less effort. If it had been a fence post hole, it would have been worthwhile, but for a shrub to be shifted a few inches wasn’t going to affect the landscaping.
Thank you for helping this young man learned about work. Was hope from them like you this boy might grow up to be a real man and raise a family which is becoming harder and harder to find this country.
Kid built some character I tell you what
Back in the 1990s I was stationed aboard the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at 29 Palms, CA. The ground under base housing was very sandy. Because it was military housing I could not use cement to permanently set in my posts. I used a garden hose with straight sprayer on the end (as opposed to a pistol grip style). I set the spray tip to send out a focused spray. I then set the hollow fence post where I wanted it, shoved the hose through it until the sprayer hit the ground, and had my son turn on the water. I kept the hose tip level with the bottom of the post as it easily slid into the ground.
I have since retired and live on a small farm in southern Idaho. The hose system does not work on caliche and lava rock. On caliche I cheat and use an electric Harbor Freight jack hammer with a wide blade. On lava rock I build a steel frame, wrap it with fencing style net wire, put it where I want it, and fill it with rock.
It's very true that it is difficult to find a sturdy shovel these days. My tip is to go to a masonry supplier. They tend to carry tougher brands like Bully (American made). Also, always mark 3 and 4 ft on your post hole digger and bar. Better then filling your tape with dirt. Nice video, thanks.
Having dug a whole bunch of post holes up in the Vermont mountains, it is a completely different story from digging in clay. For exactly one of the holes, the powered post-hole digger actually succeeded in a clean bore of a hole. . In all the other post holes for the whole fence line, I ended up digging very wide & deep by hand with shovel & tamping pole & pick axe in order to fish out big giant rocks. Some so heavy they required some engineering just to get them out. I then had to use forms and backfill to make the 'holes' for pouring.
I'm not a fence pole hole digger expert, but 24 years ago I did my own fence. After placing the post in the hole, I filled the hole with concrete to the top (several bags per hole) and did a crown slope to allow water to drain away from the post. Today, it's still holding strong. However, my neighbors fence was done by a fence company, and they did it completely different and cheap. They dug a hole so deep, put a post in it, mixed some concrete into the hole (only filling it a fraction of the way). Once the concrete set up, they filled the remaining hole with regular dirt. Over the years, the dirt retained moisture (rain, snow, etc.). Now the posts have rotted and the fence is falling down. I firmly believe had they filled the entire hole with concrete, the fence would be solid as mine. So in your video at 9:13 I disagree with filling any hole to the top with dirt. Eventually the moisture in the dirt from the elements will rot the post.
Use galvanized pole instead of wood.
Excellent video. Clear instructions, easy to hear, and specific. He didn't just say what to do but explain why with examples. This helped me a lot. Thanks.
Reminds me when I was in Afghanistan as a contractor. I made a outdoor covered area for DFAC. It took us all day to dig 6 holes! I had I think 5-6 guys too! All by hand!
Thank God I’m not the only one feeling like a hole takes forever to dig!!!
@@myfavoritegroomer If the ground is dry and hard it takes a lot longer. You gotta take the garden hose and water it real good about a day or two before you dig or dig after it rains. Let the water soak in real good so it's not muddy but the soil is just moistened and damp. Really though gas powered post hole auger is probably the way to go if you want to get it done real fast and efficient with as little manual effort as possible.
The auger is useless if it is very rocky, trust me I own one. 24 or 30 " SDS max bull point and a PHD is the only way to go in rocks.
I wish I would have watched this video 60 years ago, LOL. Thank you for taking the time and effort to produce well thought out useful videos. After watching a few of your other videos like ("This Farm Fence Is So Fast and Easy It's Embarrassing"), I see that you have a lot to offer me and likely many other people. I am now subscribed.
Back in the early 70's, I worked for a commercial fence construction company that did federal, state and large scale residential work. Mostly guardrail, chain link, property parameter fences, and large gates. We didn't have shop vacs back then, so when the job was in an area that we could not get our 5-ton truck with hydraulic drilling machine into the area, we used breaker bars and a shovel. However, as I have gotten older, I now pay someone to drill or otherwise hand dig holes. Then I do the balance of the construction, because building stuff that is strong, straight, and useful is very satisfying to me.
Also, I have used a water hose and steel or PVC pipe to bore access holes under sidewalks and other small cement areas so I could run plumbing or electrical services, at my home mostly.
Thank you again
You're welcome! Thanks for watching. 👍🏻
Fiskars makes a steel post hole digger with a design that’s made for digging deep holes. They’re amazing and we’ve been using them for years on my fence crews. We’ve never had to use a shovel for digging post holes.
Thanks for this video. I got a great tip today. We have a project that we will run into many areas where we are trenching and when we come up to a pipe of any kind we can power wash past the pipe ,after we dig deeper in the trench backwards from the pipe for 3-4 ft and then we can let the slurry settle and dry in the trench bottom in the Texaco heat. So we don't have to trench pump or vacuum that slurry out. So all in all Clean, Safe and no mess pouring out the slurry. Thank you Kenny
I've worked with pro Hydrovac crews so when I needed to dig around tree roots I improvised using a shop vac and my air compressor, with a 2ft air wand. To get deeper I used a 6ft piece of 1/4" pipe and put a ball valve and air cuck on it. By using air I was only sucking up loose dirt and not mud.
Air didn't go through the dirt as easy as a pressure washer, but way less mess, and I was often able to use a shovel to remove the loosened dirt when a root wasn't in the way.
I volunteered to help a neighbor put in a fence separating her front and backyard. I'm really dreading trying to put these post holes in and I don't have an auger. But this right here was an awesome video
Buy a 16 inch spade, they're not easy to find these days but it puts those 3 methods to shame, my dad dug holes for a living with one, and I inherited his shovels, nobody can dig a hole as fast and as cleanly as I can, and I'm a boomer!
Great video….much respect for a guy that doesn’t shy away from hard work. As a guy that does try to get around hard work as much as possible, I dig your pressure washer and vacuum solution (see what I did there). I almost tried the vacuum the other day when I was digging, but my 11 year old son was there and didn’t want him to think I was the kind of guy that shies away from hard work….also, I let him do most of the digging. Good luck getting that kind of hole in upstate NY though, even with 11 year old laborers. The hole is the size and shape and depth that the rocks want it to be. A 9” hole in an area where you’ll pull 3 or 4 12” rocks out before you get to the bottom is pretty much a fantasy. Sono tube and back fill is the name of the game here.
First off, ALWAYS water the area before digging. I've found that 36 hours leaves the perfect soil conditions. Mud is dried, the water dispersed deeper. Second, use a rotary auger. Harbor Freight has one on sale for $180 a couple times a year. You can be done with your holes in about a minute apiece if you water first. It takes only one (fairly strong) person and it removes the dirt from the hole for you. The 6" will dig out rocks as large as a cantaloupe, the 8" will suck out football sized rocks. I still have mine from my handyman days.
Sounds like a good plan.
Love your videos! I’m new to fencing and learning lots from you guys!
I replaced a damaged shovel handle today with a 1-3/8” heavy gauge top rail steel post pipe, welded it together, and put a dome cap on the end 😂. Strongest shovel ever!
I’m gonna weld a heavy flat steel piece to the top of my breaker bar for tamping. Thanks for the tip!
I have a 9” manual auger on a 4’ t-handle that I use in conjunction with a bar. It’s a very shallow auger, just around a twist and a half maybe. Works amazing as a clean out tool, twist and lift… very fast process and consistent hole size.
Great video. Only thing I would mention is that if you are somewhere much wetter, you want to bring the concrete out of the hole and form a cone around the post to shed water and extend the post life.
I bought a 1 man auger from harbor freight 5 years ago and it still works great. For about $300 you can get the auger, extension, and a 9 inch bit. Super useful on small jobs or places where you can't get larger machines in. It will dig Alabama red clay all day.
100%. Cuts it down to a couple of minutes and less work.
I’ve bought the harbor freight one a few times over. It is by far the best one man auger I’ve used. Our crews use it on small projects and tight spaces
Grenaded the "lower crankcase" recently but the hills of the Ozarks are rocky and rough on equipment.
(HF does sell the parts reasonablely but Vevor has a $170 auger I'm tempted to try.)
I picked one up, also about five years back. It works a treat. Yes, there are limits (not much torque) but for me, by myself, it's perfect. Not going to snap my wrists and does an hour of that awful clam-shell work in 5 minutes.
@@ethelryan257 had enough torque to throw my little ass halfway down a hill one time 😂😂
Omf i clicked so fast!
You can use a PVC pipe with a carb valve to pull water out afterwards, like putting your thumb on a huge straw, and fling it out of the way or into the next spot to soften it up while you work the hole you're emptying
You can also sink a pvc pipe, fill it with water and pull the whole hole out with the suction, dead straight sides
I agree with you about shovel quality. I used to be able to use them as a lever with my full weight on the handle , and they either worked or not , but they didn't break, but now I manage to snap the handles off just digging!
Thanks for this video. Learned a few things. Got to 12:00 and other than your preference for the shovel over post hole diggers I had that all covered. I have found a shovel occasionally worked better for me, but use a digger 90% of the time. Spud bar and shovel used as needed. Not a contractor, but have put a few fences in. I guess the cowboys in WY I worked for when I was 16 did a good job of teaching me. In my 30's I put a lot of fence up in N Minnesota. I had seen a lot of fences with posts pushed up and even out by frost in the area, so I recall researching frost depth to avoid that. Ask a grave digger how deep the frost goes and then dig 6" deeper. N MN can be pretty wet, so I like to put a few inches of rock at the bottom of my holes so the end isn't sealed in concrete. In N MN I set my posts down to a minimum of 40", so dig the holes 45", add a couple inches of gravel, drop the post in and put in my concrete. Yes, I also bell out the holes at the bottom. The fences I put in back in the 1990's are still standing straight. When I worked in WY as a kid, one of the ranchers told me that the posts I was replacing, because they rotted off, had been set using trees cleared when the land was settled by white folks, so about 70 years those posts where in the ground. I worked on the ranch in 1977 & 1978.
Here in the Texas desert our caliche is like concrete and water is scarce. Forget shovels or phd's. I took a chance and bought a Makita brushless earth auger for post holes. Still need a digging bar to get the occasional big rock but the Makita can bore a 36-40 inch post hole no problem. Best thing since sliced bread.
Awesome video. I grew up on a farm. I tell my three boys the two job that I liked the least were stacking balls and setting wooden posts for (livestock) fencing. I agree with all of your thoughts and learned a couple of things. I thought your vacuum was a silly method until at the end you recommended it for digging around utilities. That is brilliant!
I love your matter of fact approach with your dry sense of humor. Very enjoyable to watch your videos. Keep it up!
Wife..."Honey, can you put up a fence out in the back field? Husband..."Sure, let me run out for some tools". W...."Honey, why is there a new truck in the driveway" H....well, I needed something to carry my new water tank, pressure washer, genset and shop vac....and your fence posts."
I went and bought a new tractor, so I can get a post hole digger and other implements for the tractor. 27k later and I'm all set to farm the land. 😂
You write that like that's a problem. 😂
Guilty.
We have an understanding. I ignore her shoe collection, and she ignores the tools and guns.
The trucks and motorcycles are getting hard to explain.
Most men already have the truck….as well as the other tools.
Truer words were never spoken...
I have holes to dig today and this appeared in my feed, unprompted.
Scary.
And helpful!
I living in FL have soft sand but also have rocks. The post gole digger works well enough here. But I have used the pressure washer the same way for years and it makes it even easier. I have even used a pvc pipe and pressure washer to dig a hole under a sidewalk horizontally. Its not something you can do with a shovel but with a preasure washer and some lengths of pvc pipe you can push your way through easily. Oil rigs use water pressure to dig as well. The loose dirt from the water is by far the easiest to move through.
Great video. May seem obvious but very important tip is to place dug up soil in a neat pile and not too close to the hole. (You did) Makes backfilling much easier.
I found a good post hole digger at a garage sale years ago that turned out to be a godsend. I started looking after that and found one more since then and picked it up instantly. Basically is a straight pipe handle with a T plumbing fitting at the top with a wood handle through that's about 36 inches long. At the bottom is a ring with 4 blades bent in at the bottom at different angles so that as I spin the tool it cuts into the ground like an auger but it collects the soil inside the cupped blades so that you can pull it up/out. It does require you to tip the tool sideways to dump the soil out but you can screw attachments onto the handle in order to go as deep as you want. I was younger when I found it so had the energy to spare. On a test run I dug a 6 inch diameter hole that went just about ten feet deep with straight edges all the way down.
It isn't the most useful right at the surface but by the time I go about 8 inches down I always switch to that
I am always looking for an easier way to dig or haul anything! You could say im obsessed to the point of building my own posthole diggers brush pullers you name it! Once I learned to weld it was on! I would love to see a picture of your digger or pictures! Is it whats known as a boston digger or gibbs digger! It kind of sounds like it might be! Maybe you could email some pics to me ? or whatever is easiest for you! I am in new mexico! Thx!
@@StonemanRocks if you go to for one online and browse images you can find something similar by looking for twist post hole diggers though none are exactly like what I have. The ones I'm finding have two shovel type blades that are forked at the bottom and bent in rather than 4 different smaller blades going all the way down.
A pure positive presentation. I'm certain there are plenty of us who've learned what you demonstrate on our own with no guidance or shared insight. I grew up with my grandfather's pick and shovel. It just dawned on me picks were for trenches. A university professor stated to his audience once several years ago that he had a class in which only 3 students out of 80 had ever used a shovel or dug a hole. Rivers and geography were the topics being covered for us in the audience. It also dawned on me you could mark your shovel and bar-ram at the 32 inch mark if a permanent marker pen would not fade. I became curious if a welding bead along the edge of the shovel an inch in would not only keep the blade sharper longer, but also help the shovel relieve a wet spoonful that sticks to the blade. Wyoming must be a blessing. I read its women demanded the right to vote in federal elections which made Wyoming the first state to do so after Wyoming was approved to join the Union. These women were as humble as the woman who touched the robe of Jesus.
I’ve found that in many situations (I’m not a commercial guy though) that the post hole digger type that you screw into the soil is often the fastest/easiest. It’s not an auger it’s cylindrical with a couple cutters on the bottom. Bought it at a farm store. I’ll start the hole with a shovel then switch. Even in our rock hard Colorado clay it’s surprisingly effective if the rocks aren’t too big and you can go as deep as you like. Otherwise I’m with you- old school shovel and bar with judiciously applied water is the way to go.
Gonna try the pressure washer technique next time I dig a post hole. Years ago When I worked for a landscaping company, we dug post holes using forestry tree planting spades. These are heavy all steel spades with a narrow spear point blade and shock absorption D handle. They are designed to spear in deep then act as a lever for a planter who will spear the spade in the ground one step in front of himself, lever the spade one handed as he walks forwards, drop the seedling tree I with his left hand, pull out the spade and firm in the tree with his trailing boot as he walks past already in the process of planting the second tree. The weight and cutting ability of these spades made it possible to dig an 800mm deep post hole in about 5 minutes in normal ground and 10 in hard ground.
Best way to dig a post hole is watch some young stud do it. At 75 a hole is just somethin to fall into. I'm in Montana, we shipped all the soft soil down to Wyoming. 🤗 BTW, I didn't like digging them ever, but I used a mules foot to clean out the holes. Still have it to look at.
Unsure what a mules foot is, google no help, curious?
@@dsmith3134 I couldn't find it either. What I did find was a post hole digger that behaved like scissors so that when the handles were apart, the scoops at the end were open and when the handles were together the scoops were closed. Looked like a better way of getting the dirt out of the bottom of a hole.
@@dsmith3134 A mules foot is a contraption that scoops loose dirt out of a post hole. It consists of a half round shovel part that enters the hole vertically, then by an attached handle it swivels 90 degrees under the loose dirt at the bottom of the hole and "scoops" it up. Hard to describe, but it has a main handle with a lever attached to a rod that goes along side down to the scoop. The little handle is parallel to the main handle, then swivels 90d which swivels the scoop at the bottom. It's like putting your hand down a hole, scooping up a handful by sliding your hand under the loose dirt. Whew!
I knew what it was, but I was impressed you described it so well. Mines in the barn, ready for use.
Also called a boston digger or gibbs digger! Surprised they ever sell any based on the price! But ya they work! You sure you weren’t talking about a cougar foot? Lmao!
Awesome! I saw the shop vac / pressure washer in the background and knew I had to watch this video.
Been contracting for 45 years and agree with everything thing you said (I have seen a ‘bottom out’ post hole digger, with a plate that keeps the material from sliding out) but they still hurt your hands.
I’m in So. Cal. We have caliche & adobe along with plenty of clay. As you were digging, I recognized the soil.
Yeah, have a race between your assistant with a bar & shovel. You get the pressure washer & shop vac. Betcha he loses.
I do a fair amount of irrigation & used to refill the subterranean boxes with soil, until I had to replace valves.
Then I left them empty ( it actually freezes here, 5 miles from the coast, & 20 miles North of TJ) for a few hours on a few days in the winter) just enough to blow off the supply lines, & I get to fix the flood .
Now, I fill them with sand or river pebbles. I can use a pressure nozzle on a garden hose & a shop vac & clean them out in minutes with 12 valves in a box. 24 pipes in & out.
Or safely unearth gas lines on new construction.
It also works great for setting ‘gopherhawks’ between large rocks (50-200 lb). Where you can’t get a shovel.
I’ve wanted to make a similar video, but you did a fantastic job!
Thank you.
I like the soft digging (shop vac & pressure washer). As a friend would say to me, work smarter not harder.
Solid content, minimal fat, quality information.
Some of the info might seem trivial to those with experience, this vid will save years of learning for many.
Appreicate that!
Very entertaining! 🤣🤣🤣
And I highly appreciate these since I was born in Cheyenne 60 years ago now! Most importantly, I DID learn something! Time to go change my oil now which is a Good Dang Day! God bless you and your crew! Safe digging!
This was super helpful. I appreciate the effort, discussion points, and just your general approach to sharing information. 👏
Appreciate the kind words.
That big river place has a 32x2 auger drill. Drill multiple holes around perimeter of hole and dig out. Reasonably priced. Also, with use of auger, pressure washer, vacuum, helpful in DIY removing tree stumps.
It's always nice to have 1 call check the area for utilities, (should still be cautious digging) and if the ground is too tough i rent a hole auger and save my back. 🙂👍🏻I also try to put a dome shape on my concrete so it tapers up to the pull.
Here in PA, our soil is rich, fertile, and soft! And that gets you to about 5" deep; under that is just clay and rock-all the way to Australia.
Best way I've found to dig straight down involves five things: a shovel, sweat, a bar, your hands, and a demo hammer.
For medium rocks, the pry-bar I use is a 42" DeWalt wrecking bar, because a full-length digging bar just wears you out faster, and it has no 'handle' on the backside. But the secret to beating a big rock is to simply break through it with a good demo-hammer: since it's made for concrete, it'll bust apart embedded rocks like peanut brittle. Only problem is the extension cord.
Sounds similar to western Poland. First 10 to 20cm is quick. After that you gotta dig through hard clay. Power drill with hammer mode works great, at least in my experience. After that it is soft loose powder. Shovel works great on that.
You are the only talking about dealing with the rocks. These videos are never real life. He has a few baseball sized stones. Irl, it's a few bowling ball sized, and hopefully nothing bigger than a wheelbarrow.
There are cordless ones
In my pa yard I've discovered no matter what here I dig about 5 inches down is concrete....
as an old fencer I was very interested in this video. Thanks and we in Australia dig holes almost exactly the same way you do. I live in the far west and no chances of frost ever........ very, very hot. anyway the only difference is that I like a square hole shovel, and of course square holes. Everything else is as you do however as we are in the middle of nowhere putting in strainer posts for cattle fences, no concreting, just put two inches of dirt in at a time and ram it with the other end of the bar. If you don't take shortcuts doing this, the posts never get loose of fail. Great vid and thanks for sharing
All I can give you is a like on this video, you earned it man!
Hey thanks!
I have never been more grateful for the dirt we are blessed with in the Midwest after seeing this guy struggle to dig down a few inches with the same effort I regularly dig to get down 3 feet in Illinois.
Jealous. I am jealous.
Excellent demonstration... Thanks for sharing your expertise
You're welcome!
Your Utilities tip is golden! Especially near gas lines the shop vac method is a great idea
I've never tried this on fence post, but a electrician showed years ago that he could take a cup of water and put a ground rod in the ground here in our black gumbo. Just pump it up and down and the rod acts as a piston and uses the water to push the mud up and the rod keeps going down with each pump. The black gumbo requires a digging bucket full of water using either the post hole digger or a shovel. Lots of fences down around my area after Hurricane Beryl. Plenty of other damage also.
Like you; I've dug a lot of holes in my life. I always say, "give a man a shovel and say dig, and you'll know his measure in under 2 minutes".
Most places in Australia don't have a frost layer, but I always go down 600mm (23") - 800mm (31 1/2") minimum pending earth type. Or I'll aim for virgin ground. The ground here in Australia is mostly hard and well compacted so posts hold really well.
I'm a bar and shovel guy... I did swimming pools for a couple years ...before your helper was born. digging bar is always best and a great work out
I call mine “the ground spear” 😂 or “ground spike”
Makes it easy to yell out to helpers
Thanks, you have taught me something. I have a shovel, a bar, post hole diggers, shop vac and pressure washer, but I have to dig by the highway to put up a larger Mailbox and post. They packed this road with heavy machinery. The last hole took nearly half a day at 97 degrees. I believe I will just hire somebody to do it and watch from the camera from the living room on the big screen now.
You really need to find a spade and spoon combo, spade for chipping and soon for bailing. Works 10 times better than spud bar/ shovel. Power pole and telephone pole contractors use them for holes they can’t access with equipment. I know, I’ve used both
Ah yes, the old banjo and spoon. Hated digging pole holes that way. Even if it was only for a 25 foot pole (about a 5 foot depth)
I could use link to an example of this. All I'm getting is tableware.
@@ChuckD59 I had trouble finding this, too. YT usually won't let commenters post links. The most promising I think I found comes up if you look for Oshkosh spoon shovel.
@@ChuckD59google boston digger
I wish I had watched this two days ago. I just finished digging holes for a 6-foot fence in AZ soil(rocks and sandy soil). I bought the bar for the tamping and rented a jackhammer to bust through layers. It looks like all I needed was the bar and shovel. Plus, it's way lighter than a jackhammer to get in and out of the hole. You're right, I was used to using a post-hole digger in Iowa soil, which works fairly well, but not here. Live and learn. Thanks for vids Heading to the foam vs concrete vid next.
You never mention a shallow well digger. Out of all the tools used for digging I have found that to be one of the most useful.
That's a good point. I was trying to stick to things most commonly owned.
Which is why I (30 yr Texas DIY'er) use my "tree root feeder" hooked to a garden hose to pressure water into the soil where I'm gonna dig. 😅
I always thought about using a ptessure washer for it but never got around to testing that concept. Glad to see it works without breaking your back
Sorry to be pedantic but a shovel is not intended for digging, they are meant for moving loose material. A spade is intended for digging and cutting into the ground.
I have dug literally thousands of post holes over my 72 years. I tried to use a spade once. I will take a good shovel any day.
This really helped me - bar and a shovel for a straight hole with no bracing. Many thanks!
My challenge is for you to come to east Texas, and try these methods with our clay. The only thing that works is an auger on the back of a tractor.
Or concrete from centuries of backfill from previous owners
Lots of hole digging in Houston now.
I’ve been digging post holes on and off for 50 years. I learned long ago to disturb the ground around the hole as little as possible. I use a cat bar and a tin can. If the post is 4”, then the hole. Is maybe 6 or 7”. Getting the dirt out is the trickiest part. I like the pressure washer and vac trick for that. Never thought of it before seeing your video. Once the post is in the hole I force rocks down between the post and the undisturbed soil with the blunt end of the cat bar. I rarely use concrete….too expensive and not needed in most cases. Folks around here use backhoes to dig post holes. After a hard winter their fences look like waves on the ocean! Our soil is just like yours, a thin layer of top soil and then clay with embedded rocks. I try to dig my holes in the early spring while the clay is still fairly moist. My summer it’s as hard as concrete. Digging holes is almost as much fun as splitting knotty pine firewood! Thanks for the video. It’s good to work hard.
Logic coming from experience makes it highly digestible. I learned too many useful instructions. Thank you.
You're welcome!
Very very good video. Thank you for sharing the education. Greetings from England!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Nice video and presentation.
I saw a UA-cam guy pull (dry)
dirt/sand below ground with shop vac from a deep several times deeper than the vacuum-head height of the shop vac.
I agree with you the maximum depth we can do with water-dirt mix is limited to the shop vac’s vac head height.
Try it without water. In that two concentric PVC pipe are involved. To the bottom of the wider pipe, add a hollow steel hole saw (low teeth count). This will not obstruct the smaller diameter pipe from evacuating loose dirt from the bed. Such that the cross section area of the large pipe is twice that of the smaller one. Pipe diameter ratio rounding up to 3:2 or 3 inches every 2 inches of diameter.
Draw back? Encountering pebble size wider than the core pipe, we need to pull pebble manually.
I’m retired from a power company and would have to dig holes in clay and rock soil manually, including setting the pole. We could not get our hole digger truck to the site for various reasons. We would use what’s called a spade and spoon and pin (steel) bar. Spade and pin bar to dig and the spoon to clean out the hole. Our holes were normally 4’ to 5’ deep. I agree with you that the shovel and bar are the best tools to use. You might try searching for the spoon that I referenced for clean out.
If I lived in your area and needed a fence installed, I’d be calling you and only you. Good job!
My preferred method is a pry bar and a shop vac but no water. A contractor buddy of mine turned me on to the idea for digging sonnet tube holes. We have very boney soil here in MA. Handling dry dirt is way simpler than sludge. Only draw back is that if the dirt gets sticky it wants to clog up the vacuum hose. I love the pressure washer idea for digging around utilities, etc. Thanks for the nice video tutorial.
This was a great video. I'm a landscaper and have done thousands of holes. I 100% agree with you on a bar and shovel is the way to go. Post hole only the very bottom when it gets tough to get that last little bit out. Pressure washer would be a huge freaking mess I don't want on my projects.
I’ve used a pressure washer to bore under driveways and sidewalks but never thought to use the shop vac to dig holes..great idea! Especially as you said when you’re worried about power lines or water lines in the area. Great video!!
Hey thanks!
And here I've been all these years thinking that digging a hole was as simple as digging a hole. Man, I learn something new every day. Thanks for the lesson!
You're welcome!
Love this video. I love technique comparisons. Flattens the learning curve. Kudos
the flat part on the shovel is to use your foot to basically put more force in to the shovel head to get it deeper in what ever you working with doesn't work all the time but it is helpful
i love your non-nonsense videos. Mark, keep up your straight to the point videos and i appreciate knowing what to use and when. Here in Arizona we hit rock straight away and it's dry, dry and a pain in the rear to dug up. So again, I appreciate your vids they really help out.
Thank you! I appreciate that. 👍🏻
I've been using a pressure washer for years here in southern Arizona. Where most of the ground is shattered rock. Hence the lack of vegetation in most of the mountain's. Shop vac is also handy as long as you have a secondary container to trap most of the bearing killing fine particles. I also use compressed air. This way helps remove the debris from in between the rocks for easy removal. I've done alot of watering systems where drip line must be a min. of 6". So in the rocky yards I've found that compressed air works best.
Good stuff. I'm in Massachusetts and I'd tell the hole digger good luck. Out here, you reach a maximum of 2 inches below the top soil and you find out you're pretty damn screwed w/o out some sort of machine to do the work. That's because at 2 inches you reach pure bedrock. In my neighborhood, I watched a construction crew dig and clear some land to build a house. Obviously, they needed to go quite deep for the foundation. Took them like a month digging every single day with a couple huge (industrial size) backhoes to finally get deep enough for the next step in the digging process. The next step was an even bigger machine (Caterpillar brand) with an industrial size bar attachment (that ends in a blunt point). That thing had a bigger diameter than my body. They took another 1-2 months of chipping away at literally solid bedrock. And this was only for a modest-sized house, 3-stories including the basement (2 stories living, 1 for garage and utilities.
I myself dug a trench around my house for a DIY French drain by hand, and it sucked big time. I basically needed the bar the entire time to loosen up the dirt and break up the countless rocks. At one point I somehow pulled out a rock heavier than I was. It was small boulder that must've weighed at least 250 pounds. Problem was that I had to go through it to finish the exterior French drain. But it was so hard and solid that it wouldn't break no matter how much I smashed it w/ a sledge hammer - and I was near a window and didn't want to break it, lol. It took me 2 whole days to dig around the damn boulder and slowly pry it up inch-by-inch. Before I got it out, I measured the depth of where it began. It was only about 8-10" below the top soil! And yet the thing was so massive it was at least one foot thick by about 2 feet wide, somewhat circular. Thing was so heavy I left it in the yard right next to the trench, lol. It's now an oddly placed decorative rock.
A couple summers ago I went to Wyoming where a friend from the university was digging out mammoth bones. They got down to a layer that was near an extinct river or lake system, so the soil at that depth was somewhat sandy and easy to dig through. But the top 15-20 feet they had to go in w/ a backhoe. The top soil was actually similar to Arizona soil, except that in Arizona there's a lot more rock, known as Kaliche (sp?). Still I was interested to note that they both had similar soil - dry, clay-like and hard-packed. Whereas Massachusetts has very good top soil w/ tons of nutrients, but only a couple inches down it's literally almost pure bedrock.
Sorry for the long post. This video just brought back lots of memories.
I have dug many a smaller hole as a landscaper in Florida and I must say that is a BEAUTIFUL hole!
Well thanks!
The best tip from this video is using a shop vac to clear the dirt from the hole.
Here in New England, the ground is hard clay and stone. Using a post hole digger has its limitations. Switching to a Johnson bar and the shop vac in dry ground below 24” depth , works very well and goes quickly. Very useful.
If you can find one get a Boston Digger. Its a straight shaft with a clam shell lever . Workers better but is heavier than the double handled scissor type.
I didn't expect to enjoy a video about digging holes but it happened! Thank you for taking the time to share your experience.
You're welcome! Thanks for enjoying it.
Americana, do you have the long narrow shovel that we do in Britain? It's about as wide as your foot, 16 inches long at the metal, and it cuts into the ground really well.
Spear and Jackson. Newcastle shovel/spade.
Grafting or Newcatle shovel for draining - digging drains.
American shovels look so difficult to use it you want to dig fast. Are they good or bad?
I used to dig holes for a living in my early 20s. To this day ( 68 yrs old) it's one of the most enjoyable things for me to do. I've never forgotten what that fencing contractor told me. "there is nothing worse than a sub-standard hole".
True words!
Great tips. I spent many summers as a kid digging 3’ deep holes for fence posts in Wisconsin. All rocks from the glaciers that deposited them. Only had the post hole digger and bar. Would rejoice whenever I’d get lucky and hit sand.
I always love the bar and shop vac method. Shop vacs also work great for slab plumbing
When using post hole diggers, keep the handles together and wrap both hands around the outside of both handles. It will drive deeper and grab more dirt that you already loosened with your bar. Although they can be hard to find, they do make spud bars that are flat on one side, chisel on the other. If you keep the flat side against the edge of your hole, it will help keep it from pinching out. Touch up the chisel point periodically and it also cuts roots pretty well. Great video!
Well done! Thanks. I've dug some holes with each method you showed today except the pressure washer and shop vac. I thought of using that method (on my own) for digging around gas or power lines. I'm happy to know that it's actually a known way to dig holes. Verifies my idea. Thanks again. Well spoken. Clearly shown, Great job!
Thank you!
That first 12 minutes was so brutal I had to take a nap. :-) Then I carried on to the pressure washer option and I knew this was good for digging or plowing vertical runs for sprinkler pipe under sidewalks, but never really thought of using it for post holes! You're such a good You-Tuber...keep up the good work!!
I'm in the middle of a bigger project. Was cool watching you guys do your thing.
Thanks!
The pressure washer and vac is also the way to dig out tree roots. Had a 29 foot Hollie tree so the root ball was huge, also large gravel mixed in with the roots. Used demo saw to cut roots- use a dead dull blade and sharpen with file. To defeat the splatter I've used 2 foot square plywood with a two inch hole in the middle. For larger areas a chunk of carpet, tarp, or cloth with small slit. Easiest way to drain shop vac is epoxy a pvc drain or ball valve to connect hose or ducting.
Great video. Having a bar to break the dirt loose is key for sure. I admit, I have always used the bar method and cleaned it out with a post hole digger
I'll try the shovel method next time
Old school. Breaker bar for digging and post hole diggers for clearing out loose dirt only (unless you have that rare loose, soft soil). Even with an auger, you need the bar when you hit a rock in tight soil . Dropping the bar in (sliding through a loose grip) tells me whether I can bust through or need to pry out. The bar is also essential for slit trenching to have a perfectly straight top line or when installing chain link on a bias and dealing with minor grade changes on a straight run. I haven’t done fence work in decades, but still own a trusty breaker bar.
Didn't know the rock bar trick of small box in center of the hole making it easier to break out the sides. Applied it digging a flagpole hole and really appreciate the insight. Do have a pressure washer to apply that insight but am sure it is greatness. Really enjoy all the videos! Also Successful Contractor! Having a good dang day here and out!
This guy is awesome. I grew up digging fence post holes as a kid. My dad had three kids. Every new home he bought he installed a swing-set and enclosed the entire yard with a wooden fence to keep us safe. Back then, there was no easy way to dig a hole. My challenge today… Besides being older… I’m 6’5” so it gets hard to dig the holes, without hurting my back, once the holes get deep. I usually have to dig the last foot on my knees.