Saved by the Steel Pipe

I was walking down the hill behind the fence in our back yard. The hill is on my property. It is just not fenced in. I have been working on clearing the area on the hill. I pick up sticks and branches. I cut down other low hanging branches that get in the way. This is a slow process. But at least the county comes to collect sticks and branches every week. I keep them busy with my full trash cans of sticks.

I noticed a steel pipe on the hill. It seemed loose. Must have been part of a previous fence. I know a past neighbor once mistook the shape of the back yard and put a square fence around part of the yard. The fence went over into the neighbor's yard in one section. The neighbor had them take the fence down and reconstruct it so it stayed on my property. I guess this pipe was from the old disassembled fence. I saw other evidence of the fence such as other steel pipes, and even part of a pipe coming out of a concrete post area.

Today I got tired of dealing with my faulty gate to the hill. The gate itself is fine. But the pole that the gate latches onto is not secure. It falls down (taking the fence with it) if the gate is not shut holding up the pole. I figured I would eventually replace this faulty fence. This broke fence is a result of the Home Depot boys damaging it when they installed my shed.

So I figured I could put a 4x4 post in the ground, secure the gate pipe to the post, and hope thing become stabilized. Then I had a better idea. I checked the bottom of the wobbly pole. It was hollow. Great. I went to retrieve the loose pole I found on the hill. I used a hammer to bang that loose pole down into the ground. Then I set the gate pole on top of the secured one, inserting the secure one into the bottom of the gate pole. Voila. My gate is once again secure.

I might still put the 4x4 post in the ground and further secure the gate pole. It all depends on how soon I am going to replace this fence and gate. Fixing is much cheaper than replacing for now.