Removing a Stake or Fencepost
Posted by Wayne
Planting a tree yesterday made me consider how I would remove the support stakes I pounded in with a sledgehammer once they’re no longer needed. I used the steel tee fence posts, and they’re not exactly meant to be easily removed (they’re impossible to simply pull out by hand).
“Tee Fence Post”
I have used two ways to pull posts back out of the ground without much effort, both of which I learned, randomly enough, in Australia. In my earlier years I spent a bit of time as a laborer at my parent’s farm near Bingara in NSW.
The first technique I learned from a local was fairly ingenious, in fact I remember believing it was bullshit when it was explained to me until I actually saw it work. My brother and I later used this technique to pull a basketball hoop pole straight out of the ground at our house in college to the surprise of other several of our friends standing around who also believed it was BS.
This technique is very low tech, but it really works. Basically all you have to do is wedge a piece of wood against the vertical post at a 45 degree angle, attach a chain/rope to the vertical post and pull it with a truck.
Without the wedged piece of wood the vertical object would just bend right over/break off and probably wouldn’t pull out. The wedged piece of wood actually makes the fencepost, stake, basketball hoop, etc., pull straight up in the air and out of the ground without bending over. It’s amazingly easy. Of course the wedged piece needs something to “grab” onto to have any effect, so if you’re dealing with a smooth post you could cut a little notch to wedge the piece into. When we pulled the metal basketball hoop pole it happened to have a bolt a few feet above the ground which we wedged the piece of wood against.
The technique mentioned above is most useful for wood fence posts and basically anything that isn’t a steel tee fence post, although you could easily use it for that as well. Tee fence posts actually have several tools which are specifically designed for removing them. The one I have used is basically like a car jack but with a short chain at the end of it. The chain is wrapped around the post and grabs on to the notches of the post, you start jacking, and it’s easily pulled out of the ground. Of course if you needed to just pull a few posts out of the ground it wouldn’t be worth the investment in one of these jack-type tools, and you’d be better off using the technique described above. That, or bust out a shovel and start digging.
One Response to “Removing a Stake or Fencepost”
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May 21st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
well i have removed fence post as shown with a 2×4 tied near the base and by lifting the other end i easily pulled it out
also i did the same with a post with a cement base i did losen the dirt around the cement a bit lifted it out