ok on this forum? electric fence dysfunction

[Badasssapper67]

Not sure if this violates anyones softspot, but I cant get my electric fence to work and I always see great tips and great advice on this site.

Just bought a small farm/ranch and cant get the danged fence to carry voltage. I thought I understood electricity well enough to handle this but no matter what I try it wont carry voltage, or I just dont know how to check it. In fact I broke down and just grabbed the danged thing to see if my brand new fence checker tool was broken. Nope, no power.

I have put 2 energizers on the fence and none of them made any power. I got them off of ebay and one was said to be brand new but when I measure the voltage with the five light tool it shows no power.
My question is this, if the fence was grounded out somewhere would all the wire carry voltage, or would there be voltage all the way to the ground and then no voltage past that? Thanks.

 

[Mr_fixit]

Disconnect them from the fence itself and see if you get shocked. I'd guess that you can't tie 2 to the same fence, and I'd guess that if the fence is grounded it's not going to work. Don't they usually have a light on to see if they're on?.

 

[Badasssapper67]

I took the first one off when I saw there was no power and tried the second one to see if it was the first unit. Im guessing it's grounded out somehow but I didnt if I am missing something....

 

[G_P]

Check the continuity of the fence wire? Maybe it is broken somewhere that you have not noticed.

 

[larry_g]

Do you have the ground connected to the charger?

When connecting to the fence go out some distance and break the fence so your working with a known good section of wire. If that works then re hook and go out further and break it again. Check for power. When we had better that a mile of electric fence we had it set with disconnects every few hundred yards. It made it easy to break it into smaller sections and go along till the problem was found. Do you have any pictures of your setup? or link to the charger your using?

lg
no neat sig line

 

[slip knot]

1st off, the biggest problem with electric fencing is a crummy grounds. Do you have a ground rod in place? possibly 2 or 3 ? 2nd thing. do you have enough charger for your fence? is the charger rated for the amount of fence your charging ? a small 1/4 mile charger wont charge 15 miles of fence. Look at the joules of force here. @ 1 joule for every mile of fencing.

Don't use a DVO meter to check fencing. get a voltage meter to test fencing. some fence chargers put out 10K volts and that'll fry a normal DVO meter.

I've got @ 10 miles of efencing on line and don't have much trouble with it.

 

[CNGsaves]

Did you "Test" the fence by urinating on it ??? . . .

You'll soon determine if you have proper ground !!!

 

[slip knot]

did you "test" the fence by urinating on it ??? :d . . .

You'll soon determine if you have proper ground !!!

ouch!! Btdt!!!

 

[laser3kw]

My step brother tried to impress me by showing how he could "time" his squirts between the chargers pulses (you could see the charger's lights when the door was open). He was all good till he started to laugh and messed up his timing, took a zap throught his johnson. I still laugh about it, watching him writh on the ground, half laughing and half crying, with pee all over his jeans!

 

[McFarmer]

Is the charger one of the newer low impedance chargers ? Make sure the ground is good, 6 feet into the ground, copper or galvanized rod and a good connection on the charger. Get a cheap fencer checker that reads voltage and do as the above fellow said, have some breakers so you can check in intervals. You should have at least 3k volts or more.

I have several miles and will have 6k volts. There are testers that will tell you in which direction the short is.

 

[Mattlt]

As others have said, ground, ground, ground! You've got to have a good ground. Keeping the ground rod wet doesn't hurt either. In my area, many farmers put the ground rod for the fencer under in the ground under the eaves of the barn or some other outbuilding. Any moisture dripping off the roof would help keep the ground wet and therefore keep the ground rod wet.

Another test method is to touch a screwdriver handle to one of the steel posts and then slowly move the end of the screwdriver toward the fence wire, all the while maintaining contact with the steel post (ground). At some point, you should be able to see the arc jumping to the screwdriver from the fence wire (you should also hear the "snap." )

Obviously, keep any and all grass and trees off of the hot wires. Every blade of grass acts as a mini ground rod, shorting out the fence wire.

 

[Gary S]

To answer your original question.
If the fence is grounded at any point, then there will be no measureable voltage anywhere on it. It works only into ungrounded lines

 

[Thruxton]

Get a portable radio, tune it to a spot in between stations (AM pref)- you should get a lot of static right next to the charger. If not, disconnect the fence and try again (most chargers don't care about minor shorts- weeds, twigs, limbs, the occasional deer carcass) If you get static with the fence connected, just walk along it with the radio on, and if there is a break you'll find it. But it sounds like you have another bum charger to me. BTW, long runs are sometimes intentionally grounded at their ends. And have you made sure that you have good electrical connections charger>fence and charger>ground?

 

[Falcon67]

When I used one to control the dog, I got a cheap fence tester from Tractor Supply. It uses neon bulbs that let you see how much the fence it getting pulsed. It had a ground lead that's required. As above - grounding is the #1 thing to making those work. #2 is insulators for the hot wire(s). And yes, it may well need to be spaced off wooden posts with plastic insulators to be effective.

 

[Badasssapper67]

Here's how this ended. I bought the most powerful charger I could get off amazon. Hooked it up and everything worked.
Lesson learned; DONT buy a charger off of ebay even if it says it's new.

 

[ForceFed70]

Glad you got it figured out.

Just wanted to mention that a regular multimeter won't work for checking fence line voltage as it comes is short spikes.

Country boy myself. As a kid we used to check fence lines by touching the line with a long piece of grass or a wet twig. You could still usually feel the shock, but much reduced. We didn't care about the cows - just wanted to make sure it was safe to climb over.

 

[jkwilson]

Best tool I ever bought was a current indicator for electric fence. You touch it to the wire and it tells you how much current is flowing and which direction it is going. Makes it easy to find shorts to ground. I've had it for 7 or 8 years and I bet it has saved me 100 hours of hunting in that time.

https://www.kencove.com/fence/Voltmeters_detail_VPX.php