Fence Post Pulling Rig with a Harbor Freight Farm Jack 

hahaha

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1rst thing I noticed..

Excellent comments. Thanks for sharing your experience and recommendations!

That's a heck of fence! Congrats on getting the post out! Glad the video was helpful. :-)

Right on!

And that's not even his worse pair! 🙄

The problem with him is that he'll drop the ball about 10' from you and expect you to always go over and pick it up. I try to reason with him but he doesn't seem to care. Oh wait, you're talking about the dog! I was thinking about my son for minute ;-)

The only downside is that it weighs more!

That's great to hear that it worked well for you!

He has an unusual way to pee. He basically just stands with his rear legs sort of extended to the rear and pees that way - it's not always obvious that he peeing. I never have seen him raise his leg on anything! That's sort of good... but apparently he knows what spots in the yard are going to turn brown in a couple days and he only pees in those exact spots :-(

Man, what a bummer! I wonder what the 12" plug even weighs????? Good luck with that one!

Thank you! Cheers!

He was over today with my son and the dog gave me a sore arm from me throwing th ball so much! Good timing on your comment! :-)

You'll still feel it after moving the jack assembly around all day. But it definitely is less of a pain (physical/time wise) than digging those post out by hand!

I pulled some bushes out with it a few years ago. It works, but you will probably have to alternate between jacking and cutting some of the roots as you pull it out. It's not as fast as a fence post, but it's about as fast as any other way of getting the main part a root system out of the ground. I ended up jacking once or twice, finding the roots that were too big to pull out, cut/dig around those, and then jack some more. good luck - let us know how it goes!

@@fishpotpete 👍 Thank you so much for the tips! Will follow your instruction.

Glad it was helpful!

Believe me, he gets plenty of "energization"! It take 3 adults and 2 children to wear him out!

Hows it treating you 8 months later?

@@edwardtoal5783 Not OP, but I got the HarborFreight 48" Badlands ~5K Lbs. rated farmjack. I did two posts in swampy soil which didn't even have concrete bases. The bar already has noticeable bend in it. This'll be going back to HarborFreight, especially at the inflated $85 price...

LOL!! I hope that's not from personal experience! :-)

Awesome! I'm glad it worked for you!

The legs are about 6" longer than the jack. It's awkward to carry and set up - but you need to do that so the jack is more parallel to the post.

Ouch! The price really went up! I guess everything is getting more expensive, like or not :-(

Thanks! I definitely appreciate the vote of confidence :-)

I think I need to borrow him from my son every time I do a new video :-) Thanks for the comment!

Yes, you can! In fact I pulled out several mature burning bushes last year. It is a lot of work (much more than the fence post). But with enough digging, cutting, hatcheting, you can eventually pull out the main part of the stump. I started by cutting the top of the bushes off to about 1' or so. That way you've got enough to wrap your chain around.

@@fishpotpete Will give it a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

That's a cool idea. you could almost temporarily add some kind of bigger wheels instead relying on the caster wheels on the lift.

It really depends on the soil type and soil moisture. But you are correct that some posts can simply be rocked back and forth and eventually come out. Most of mine were not rockers 🙂

That sounds like it should work. Dealing with 2 jacks might get awkward. But depending on what you're pulling out, your idea makes a lot sense!

Thanks for the clarification!

Grab hook would be faster.😅

Yeah, the "locking cabaneer?" 😂

Those things keep going up! I noticed the same price in St. Louis a couple of of weeks ago.

Thanks!

He lives to chase the ball :-) Now my neighbor got a new puppy recently and she always waits at the fence for me to throw her the frisbie. So is life :-)

Bummer! I'm not fan of jack hammers. But they do what they do!

Glad you liked it!

Sorry to hear about the accident. Hope this works out for you!

@@fishpotpete - Unfortunately, this didn't work for me. Turned out, the concrete plug was so solidly in the ground that pulling the post just snapped it off right at the surface of the concrete. The soil here is about 75% clay, 10% sand and the remainder gravel. Removing old concrete fence post plugs almost always involves digging them out with a backhoe. Or, if you have to do it with hand tools, busting them up with a jackhammer, then digging out the pieces with a post-hole digger. Fence installers here don't even try to use hand tools: they all have a Bobcat with a hydraulically powered post hole augur and a backhoe. The use the backhoe to dig out old concrete plugs, then set a new post. Thanks!

@@laura-ann.0726 Wow, that sounds expensive! Sorry the jack didn't work :-(

@@laura-ann.0726 sometimes when the post breaks you can drill a hole in the concrete and put a anchor in it with a bolt and hook the chain to the bolt and pull it out with the farm jack like this.

@@TheBeStLifehomestead - Yes, I'm familiar with concrete wedge anchors, but I have heard that they often won't hold under high pulling loads in fence-post mix, which is usually no better than 400 pounds portland cement per cubic yard. Foundation mix, which is used for driveways, sidewalks, house foundation slabs, and other applications where the concrete is fully supported by the ground and not subjected to any bending or tension forces, is typically 517 pounds of portland cement to 1,560 pounds of sand and 1,600 pounds coarse aggregate per cubic yard. This concrete has a compressive strength of 400 psi after 28 days. Structural concrete, used for manufacturing pre-cast/pre-stressed I-beams, cast-in-place/pre-stressed highway bridge girders, and cast-in-place retaining walls, has 4,000 psi of compressive strength, and the mix is Portland Cement - 611 pounds, Sand - 1450 pounds, Aggregate - 1600 pounds. There are specialty mixes that can have compressive strength up to 12,000 psi, but these require special sand, special aggregate, and very precise mix ratios and curing temperatures. And needless to say, they are very expensive. Anyway, what I did, was to use a 1-7/8", 16 gauge chain link post, which just fit the inside diameter of the broken off stub of the original 2-3/8" fence post, which had not been backfilled with concrete and was still clear of dirt and debris. I cemented the new post in, and it works perfectly. Due to the slightly smaller diameter, this new post won't have quite as much bending strength under wind load as the original post did, but it should be more than enough. And I didn't have to dig the old post plug out, or offset the new post, which would have meant uneven support of the fence. This experience has made me realize that one should never assume that it will never be necessary to dig up or pull out an old fence post; so that making provision to pull the concrete plug out is a wise idea. In future, I might pour fence posts with a loop of 3/8" rebar or 5/16" chain embedded in the concrete, to give something other than the post itself to hook the farm jack too.

It was pretty heavy chain. I don't recall the size, but it was the thickest that would easily fit in the jack opening.

I was lucky to even say it sort of right 🙂 Thanks for the comments!!!

Ha! That's exactly what I did this weekend! I took out four 15 year old burning bushes. Just trimmed off the tops so I had about 1 foot left to wrap the chain around. Worked like a champ. I used a "beater" ax to cut through the smaller roots in the soil as I jacked it up to make extraction easier. Harder than the fence posts, but still worked just fine.

@@fishpotpete I have a mattock I can use. May I ask, How long did you make the 2x4s and what size bolt did you use to hold them together. Thanks, Great video

@@DOCREAL1118 I just measured them this weekend. The 2x4s are 4'9" - because that's what I had on hand. I think anything that's about 6"-12" longer than your jack would work. I used a 1/2" x 6" bolt to hold them together. Be sure to make the holes large enough and leave the bolt loose enough to let you move the 2x4's to be able to make the tripod shape. Please let me know if you have any other questions. thanks!

@@fishpotpete Thanks so much buddy. That helps alot

@@fishpotpete Just subscribed

Sad but true! :-(

Thank you!

A dog and his ball :-) He never stops with that thing! Sometimes in the middle of the night you'll feel a ball drop on your head and wake up to see him looking at your ready to play :-)

The dark spots are actually his skin color - but ticks certainly been a watch out with him. Sometimes you may not notice them until they get bigger than they should! Keen eyesight on your part though! :-)

SEems like the price of everything at HF keeps going up :-(

I saw a few of the no-tripod methods before I came across this method. Without the tripod they were basically just knocking the post over, not really up. That's wild that yours were breaking!

Glad it helped!

Not sure how that would work? Seems like a fence punder is a one-way tool?

@@fishpotpete google it. I remove t posts all the time as I set up temp fencing quite a bit.

That's a good suggestion! I never thought of something like that. Thanks for sharing 🙂

Our pleasure!

@@fishpotpete, on the strength of your video, my eldest son (with whom I share a home) and I bought our own farm jack . We have many large shrubs and some old fence posts to pull up on our new property, and have set it up just like y'all did. It's really been a great help. God bless you!

@@sharonpeek4578 That's awesome to hear!

What size bolt did you use?

@@aimeetorres1. my son put the whole thing together. I just asked him your question, and he says he can't remember for sure, but he believes the bolt was a half inch by three inches, and he got the big flat washers to fit, as well. Looking at the video, I think that's about right. If you don't want to trust my son's memory, Fishpotpete is really good about answering these posts. Good luck with your farm jack endeavors!

That almost sounds like a defective part. They're pretty good about taking stuff back - I wonder if you got a different one it it would still have the same problem? Sorry about the HF fail!

Yeah, it bent after 2 cranks. So, I have a feeling it's defective lol But, we shall see! Thanks for the reply!@@fishpotpete

www.harborfreight.com/48-in-farm-jack-58395.html I think it's a "newer" version... which means slightly more expensive.

I'm glad you brought that up! Yes, the stupid mechanism to get it to lower can be a total pain! It's one of those "squeeze this while doing that" kind of things that you have to figure out. It shouldn't be that difficult. Obviously a lot of people have figured out how to deal with it... But why do we have to "figure it out" in the first place? I agree and I probably should have spent a few seconds on that in the video because I deal with it every time I use the jack. And that's a major annoyance. Thank you for mentioning the issue!

For the most part, yes. If you just hook up the jack/chain, the post moves the opposite direction and you may not get a good angle to pull it out as effectively. So you would have to manually try to keep the post more or less straight as you do this. With the 2x4's, there's no fighting with the post/jack as you jack it up. There are videos out there doing it with the jack only and it looks like A LOT more work.

As far as pulling out fence posts? No, not specifically. But these are rated at a high capacity (5,000 lbs!) for dealing with farm equipment, etc. So pulling out a fence post is really an easy task for the jack on something like this.

Thank you! 😊

My posts were all over the place on depth because of the clay/roots/rocks in that area. Some where 3' and the one in the video wasn't very deep at all.

:-) He actually likes wearing torn up paints on some jobs. I guess you can't ruin them!

Maybe. It depends on how much of the post is rotted. BUT it's worth starting out with this method. Worse case in you still need to dig out next to the base (concrete in my case) and you can eventually pry the base over to the side and still get enough chain around the base to use the jack. I had about 20 post total and I think maybe 5 or 6 needed to use this method because they were rotted out. But it was still easier to get that chunk of concrete above ground level using the jack.

That's certainly on option. But that entire side and back row with mine are thick with roots. I'll take doing this over digging through roots any day of the week. But if I had a post hole digger and clear open land, that would certainly be something I would consider!

in most cases, pulling it up lets you re-use the old hole for the new post, thus saving a ton of time and work, especially if the other fence pieces are to be re-used (same spacing).

That's where the REAL fun begin.. NOT. I had a few that were broken off at the top of the concrete base. I dug out one side of the concret so I could eventually lean the base over a little. At that point you can work the chain around the concrete and lift it out. I think that took a couple of tries. But they eventually came out easy enough without lifting them out by hand. At first I tried putting a big lag bolt in the remaining wood post and use the chain with that, but they were always too rotted out to hold the lag bolt.

@@fishpotpete thank you

I'm glad you brought that up and the rotted post. I did exactly what you said during that fence project... more times than I wanted 🙂

Did you drill the redheads into the side of the concrete or the top? Also, do you know if the concrete was "fence post" concrete or "high strength"?

@@chuckzissman I drilled straight down from the top.

Actually the D-ring is load rated. I don't know what it was off the top of my head - but it was one of those ridiculously high ratings that I would never expect to reach. It's not one of those spring lever jobs. The ends screw together to close it. I probably should have clarified that in the video since it wasn't obvious.

@@fishpotpete Thanks for clarifying that. I spent many years in theater, and we were extremely careful with all of our load bearing gear. Great design on the post remover, btw!

Thank you! Cheers!

It works exactly the same. The key is that the chain self tightens. With wood, you can see it dig into the wood. You just won't see it dig into a metal post - but it will be tight. If there's oil or some kind of coating, that might cause an issue. Otherwise, you should be fine.

Works great unless your chain link fence posts are concreted in 6 feet deep.

@@s6juggs Wow! That's some serious anchoring! I think you're right, this method probably wouldn't work on that. Maybe 2 or 3 jacks :-)

Welcome!

I dig out enough next to the base so I can tilt it with a big pry bar. Then I wrap the base as well as I can with the chain. It might take a few tries to get everything in position/etc. But it basically comes out just the same as one that's intact. I should have shot video one of those, but this was the last post I had.

@@fishpotpete good idea thanks for the video

Translates to: We pull concrete stepping stones like that... Fishpotpete: That's a another great application for this! Thanks for the suggestion.