Continuous Fencing and perimeter enclosures – What can go wrong? 

It’s important that we point out: this is not about making fun of other welders, or those who don’t have the equipment or materials to build a robust fence that can last decades – it’s a post intended to be used to help you understand why there are best practices in fencing for agricultural purposes. 

Additionally, we want to explain how much harder it is to repair a fencing installation that hasn’t been properly done in the first place. 

In order to do that, we are including some photographs and talking about the shortcomings of the original design. Our critiques don’t necessarily mean that there are not some installations where the type of fencing or the design couldn’t be utilized, rather, it is to show some of the difficulties with the design and implementation. 

Why Round steel tubing may not be ideal for a continuous run fence

• Round Tubing can bend relatively easily
• Round tubing has to be notched and properly sealed with welding joints to keep moisture from easily entering the interior of the structure, where oxidation can significantly decrease the lifespan
• Round tubing is harder to weld properly – even with proper notching cuts, so it costs more to implement
• Round tubing is not as easy to level, engineer, and build in square, so it increases total cut time and weld time, as well as engineering design time

How square tubing can be as cost efficient, and still last longer on a fencing project than round tubing – with some caveats

• Square tubing is bend resistant, thanks to the corners, which provide rigidity
• Square tubing cuts easily and welds in a 90 degree fashion, generally, which means the welder can go faster on the welding
• The fact that the weld gaps are so much smaller in width, and easier to hold in place (as opposed to round, notched tubing), means that interior oxidation can be minimized
• Square tubing is about the same price on a per pound or per foot basis – the materials are substantially similar in price
• Because the square tubing (or rectangular tubing for that matter – though rectangular material is usually quite a bit more expensive) is able to be welded on four sides the welds are strong, stable, and don’t shift with heavy weight from cows or other livestock leaning against the fencing

Here’s a potential caveat of steel tubing in the square configuration though:

Most round tubing suitable for continuous run fencing can be sourced in galvanized finish, which is particularly easy to maintain over the longer term, while square tubing generally is more difficult to find in a galvanized finish.

An additional note about round tubing for use in livestock fencing panels:

Historically, and especially for modular purposes (temporary housing of animals), round tubing has been used because intricate bends can be (easily) automatically or robotically put into welded panels prior to final welding and finishing – because round tubing is easily bendable. 

This allowed for multi-use panels to be created quickly, cheaply and efficiently. Because of this, it became a sort of standard in the livestock fencing arena. from a structural rigidity perspective, however, the format is not optimal. And these modular pieces are certainly meant to skew towards temporary use cases, or mobile fencing use cases (horse corrals, nursery setup for small volume livestock needs, etc.).

Twin Angel Welding is a Welding Services Company based in Pella, Iowa, with a diversified offering and workforce. We can help you with your welding project today. 

Here are some pictures of this recent fence we repaired – and some thoughts about each of the pictures and repair solutions

The above picture is of an agricultural fencing installation that requires repair or replacement. At first glance it doesn’t look that bad, but read below for some observations that could be improved from the first instance, or in addressing it at this stage.

Note: Twin Angel Welding did not install or engineer this fence. You can read about our fencing and perimeter solutions for livestock and more HERE.

The above fence is fairly typical in the heartland of America. It’s a steel fence that is welded with standard off the shelf tubing, and usually doesn’t have a ton of extra infrastructure outside of the steel. It’s a series of posts, mostly square/plumb that are welded perpendicularly, to each other. The result is a quick, easy to implement design.

The horizontal posts are generally connected with an inner insert sleeve of other tubing to keep the sections sort of aligned, and in place. The resulting structure, even though it doesn’t have footings, stays in place for the most part because there are multiple pressure points caused by the weld-in-place workflow.

Here are some issues with the design:

The actual strength and “plumbness” of the fencing is not particularly high. The lack of footings means that in floodplains you have to drive the posts pretty deep, and you still risk having problems with movement, and ultimately structural rigidity, during heavy wet seasons.

(We’ll talk about other weaknesses of this fencing design later). For a simple steel design, it is relatively inexpensive to install, and can last several years. If you have prolonged dry seasons after rain, it can also help to secure the fence in place, and usually livestock respect the boundaries.

A fence in an agricultural setting should be relatively immune to the environment it’s being installed into

The above picture is of an agricultural fencing installation that requires repair or replacement. You can see that there are exposed ends on the pipes, and the top cap of the post is not adequately sealed from moisture.

Note: Twin Angel Welding did not install or engineer this fence. You can read about our fencing and perimeter solutions for livestock and more HERE.

Surface rust isn’t really an issue for steel tube fencing – it would take many years for most areas to be oxidized to the point of absolute failure. But when moisture can collect inside of a tube and sit there for months at a time, it can cause premature failure. Furthermore, open tubing can be a place where snakes, scorpions, spiders, wasps, etc. can dwell.

From the welder’s perspective, this particular fence doesn’t align well, and has a lot of room for improvement, both aesthetically, and from a practical engineering perspective. For a little bit of extra planning time, and some additional cuts, this could have been a very good fence. The benefit of a fencing installation like this is that it was significantly cheaper, because it wasn’t installed by a welder, even though it has welding. It was also light on actual welding, and the amount of total welds to install it was about a third of what it would take to build a fence capable of lasting many decades. If you are not worried about aesthetics, you can get away with a lot. And even if you want to cut down on paying for a professional welder to weld in place, you can still minimize some of the welding through design – we can show you how to do that if you contact us.

Fences that don’t align can still be practical – but they definitely won’t be optimized

The above picture is of an agricultural fencing installation that requires repair or replacement. The inner sleeves make more entry points for moisture, and still don’t look all that aligned

Note: Twin Angel Welding did not install or engineer this fence. You can read about our fencing and perimeter solutions for livestock and more HERE.

This is almost like a makeshift livestock panel that has been “tacked” in place. it’s a great temporary solution, and could even last a few years, but ultimately we are of the opinion that you’ll regret the costs associated with the installation, after months or years of looking at the poor aesthetics, and realizing for just about 25% more, you could have installed footers, or utilized a more pleasing design.

And since this fencing was already pretty expensive, even while cutting corners at the initial installation, it probably just makes sense to do it right in the first place.

But what are the real issues here?

• Poor welds
• Lots of extra welds to get sleeves to align
• Poor Aesthetics
• “Drift”, and “sink”, due to earth movement and no solid footings (which doesn’t have to be a problem – and can be mitigated with proper techniques)

Here are some other pictures showing the crude alignment and sleeved architecture of the fencing

The above 3 pictures are of an agricultural fencing installation that requires repair or replacement. The inner sleeves make more entry points for moisture, and still don’t look all that aligned. In the picture closest to this, you can see the welding on the sleeves between the two different tubes. It’s crude, and invites more rust. The adhesion and quality of the weld is poor. 

Note: Twin Angel Welding did not install or engineer this fence. You can read about our fencing and perimeter solutions for livestock and more HERE.

The wrap up about this style of agricultural fencing

Here you can see the weld quality. It’s not sufficient for heavy loads, and the porosity of the weld invites more oxidation, and doesn’t look very clean from an aesthetic perspective.

Note: Twin Angel Welding did not install or engineer this fence. You can read about our fencing and perimeter solutions for livestock and more HERE.

A couple quick points about this fence to  wrap up our thoughts about it:

The sleeved joints left un-welded also create a weak point in the structure of the fence where if leaned against by livestock, is likely to fail, possibly resulting in the escape of livestock animals or injury.

Additionally, an improper build for a continuous run like the one used here for an example may hold up for a few years with the pain of regularly re-checking the entire run for needed repairs. Whereas, a fence of superior quality and workmanship is going to last decades with minimal if any attention needed. 

In fairness, we are nitpicking. This fence could serve several years for a makeshift ranching operation, suffering mostly in aesthetics, and possibly a bit on the rigidity in muddy conditions, or the overall squareness and ability to maintain a plumb posture.

Generally if you have normal livestock and aren’t breeding bulls in Madrid, you’re likely to not have any difficulties with a fencing installation like this staying in place.

The main argument in this post is to talk about what’s possible, and usually for not that much more money. A square tubing fence offers easier installation, with better interior tube protection from moisture as well as far superior looks.

And even if you decided that you MUST HAVE round tubing (say for the galvanization that comes standard for cheap on some steel tubing, or for the styling), you could notch the ends and level the sections to ensure that it looked good the day they are welded into place.

We think you’re probably going to enjoy a completed look, and a bit more inherent engineering strength. And we can help you with that. We install weld-in-place fencing, and we produce off-the-shelf modular livestock fencing and panels. For similar money, you have have a far superior fence, and you will be able to feel confident in a 20+ year life-cycle generally – depending on finish quality and environment.

We’d love for you to consider a quote from us. And we promise to take your project seriously, and devote the appropriate amount of time to building a legacy fencing solution for your needs.