Post Hole Digging in Springwater

Springwater is minutes from our shop in Barrie and it is completely different ground to work. The township is a community of communities, Anten Mills, Centre Vespra, Elmvale, Hillsdale, Midhurst, Minesing, Phelpston, Orr Lake and Snow Valley, and the lots are acreages rather than subdivision back yards.

That changes the job in three specific ways: the soil is not the same from one end of the township to the other, almost every property is on a private well and septic, and the runs are long enough that any error in a post line is visible from the road.

The soil changes across the township

This is the thing most people are surprised by. Springwater does not have one soil type, it has two, and which one you are on decides how the hole behaves.

Around Midhurst and the County Road 27 corridor the ground is sandy loam and sandy clay. It drains well, it augers cleanly and frost heave is a smaller problem than it is in Barrie. The catch is that it shifts under load and it does not hold a hole open as obligingly, so a poured pier wants its form in promptly.

Out toward Elmvale, Hillsdale and Phelpston it turns to much heavier clay. That is the frost heave ground. Water sits in it, it lifts hard through a freeze and thaw and it is the least forgiving soil in the township for a post that stopped short. Full depth matters more here than anywhere else we dig.

Between the two you get everything in between, and rolling ground on top of it, particularly around Snow Valley and Anten Mills where the grade moves constantly. Sloped ground means every post sits at a different height above grade while all of them have to be the same depth below it. You cannot dig a Springwater line off a single measurement.

Wells and septic: locate before you auger

Nearly every Springwater property is on a private drilled well and its own septic system. There is no municipal water line to call in, which sounds like it makes digging simpler and does the opposite.

A septic bed is shallow, wide, and frequently nowhere near where the homeowner thinks it is. Putting an auger through a distribution line or driving a post through a lateral is an expensive afternoon and a very unpleasant one. Same for the water line running from a drilled well back to the house, which is often the only thing on the property with no locate paint anywhere near it.

So on a Springwater job the first conversation is about the septic and the well, not the fence. We want the bed, the tank, the laterals and the well line before we choose post positions, and where the plan is missing we will move the line rather than guess. We still do the standard locates for gas, hydro and cable on top of that.

Long runs on rural lots

A Barrie back yard fence is 60 feet. A Springwater property line is often several hundred, across ground that rolls, through trees, and with a paddock or a driveway gate somewhere in it. Over that distance a post that is a degree out of plumb is obvious from the road, and a line that drifts a few inches shows for its whole length.

• Property line and paddock runs, strung and set off a proper line rather than eyeballed post to post
• Farm and driveway gates, wide enough for equipment, hung on posts set for the load a wide gate puts on them
• Privacy sections close to the house, where the property is otherwise open
• Deck and gazebo piers on sloped lots, poured to 48 inches on undisturbed ground