Post Hole Digging in Wasaga Beach

Wasaga Beach is the one place in our service area where the usual reasoning about frost does not apply, and people get caught out by it. The town sits on a sand plain left behind by glacial Lake Algonquin. It is sand almost everywhere, right back from the shore, and sand behaves nothing like the clay we dig in Barrie.

That is good news and bad news. The good news is that sand drains, so frost heave is much less of a threat. The bad news is everything else.

Sand gives a post almost nothing to hold

Clay grips a post. Sand does not. It compacts unevenly, shifts under load, and gives far less lateral support than a clay or loam soil, so a post that would stand in Barrie on depth alone will work loose here.

What holds a post in sand is the concrete collar and how much of it there is. The pour has to be full depth and generous enough in diameter to act as a proper footing in its own right, because the surrounding ground is contributing so little. That is the opposite of the instinct people have, which is that sand is easy digging so it must be an easy job. The digging is easy. The setting is not.

Close to the shore there is a second issue: the water table sits high in places. A hole that starts finding water partway down changes how the pour behaves, and it is worth knowing about before the concrete goes in rather than after. If we find it, we will tell you on the day.

Then there is the wind

A six foot privacy fence is a sail. On an exposed lot in Wasaga Beach it is a sail with the full run of Georgian Bay behind it, and the load goes straight into the posts.

Put those two facts together, weak lateral hold from sand plus real sustained wind load, and the posts on a Wasaga Beach privacy fence are working harder than the same fence anywhere else we go. It is why we will not cut depth here even though the auger goes through the ground like it is nothing, and why we would rather talk you into a spaced or semi privacy style on the most exposed runs than watch a solid one lean.

The same wind is hard on holiday lighting on these rooflines, and it is one of the reasons in season maintenance is worth having here.

Seasonal and rental properties

A large share of Wasaga Beach is cottages, seasonal homes and short term rentals, and that changes what a fence or a deck has to survive. It has to stand up to a winter with nobody there to notice something has come loose, and it has to be ready the week the owner comes back.

• We work with absent owners. Photos before and after, and we do not need you on site as long as we can reach the yard and the locations are marked.
• Beachfront and near shore lots, where setbacks and shoreline rules apply. Confirm those with the Town before the line is set.
• Deck piers to 48 inches, poured wide, because sand under a concentrated deck load is exactly where a skinny footing gives way. See deck piers and footings.
• Composite comes up more here than anywhere in the county, because nobody is around in April to sand and stain. See deck construction.