Replacing wood fence posts with concrete ones - advice please

Hi all,

We have a fence between us and a neighbour at the front of the house. This has been patched up multiple times. However recent winds were the last straw and one of the wood posts snapped completely. They're all rotting and have had it.

I'd like to replace all the wood posts with concrete ones and put in new fence panels.

I have experience of doing this in my back garden but the problem at the front is the wood posts are set in a concrete divide between me and my neighbour. Can someone advise how to get the wood posts out with the least amount of effort? I could get myself a breaker and break up the concrete around each post but that is going to be quite a lot of effort, and tricky were the surround driveways. Is there an easier more specialist tool for the job?

I've attached some pictures to help visualise what I'm talking about.

Thanks
Jon

Not sure it’s a goer but my initial thought is to use concrete fence repair Spurs.
You can mount them in front of the concrete divider. Check out YouTube for inspiration

You can try plucking out the rotten wooden stumps. Wait for a dry period so their swelling will reduce.

Drive a large screw-eye into them. Pull on it. You can use a jack. If you are lucky they will pull out. If you are not lucky they will lift the concrete.

You can weaken and loosen them by drilling deep, large-diameter holes down them. This will also generate heat that will help them to dry out and shrink.

plastic_peanut said:

Not sure it’s a goer but my initial thought is to use concrete fence repair Spurs.
You can mount them in front of the concrete divider. Check out YouTube for inspiration

Click to expand...

Thanks for the idea. Could work, but part of me thinks I’ll just have further problems down the road as the wooden posts get worse.

JohnD said:

You can try plucking out the rotten wooden stumps. Wait for a dry period so their swelling will reduce.

Drive a large screw-eye into them. Pull on it. You can use a jack. If you are lucky they will pull out. If you are not lucky they will lift the concrete.

You can weaken and loosen them by drilling deep, large-diameter holes down them. This will also generate heat that will help them to dry out and shrink.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips. I’ll try that when the time comes for trying to get them out. The more I think about it the more I think maybe there’s no shortcut here. Even if I got them out would I actually be able to get concrete posts into what would be a very tight hole, would I be able to concrete them in.

Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and angle grind the concrete for clean line cuts either side of the posts. Then break up the concrete around the posts themselves, leaving the concrete divider intact between the posts themselves. Get them all out, dig the holes deeper if need be, concrete the new posts in. Sounds simple enough but lots of effort I fear. Was hoping there’d be a magic drilling tool the pros use for this sort of situation.

Let’s see if I can explain this right. This is how I pulled mine out

drill a 12-18 mm hole right through the post, about 150mm above the soil line. Put a rope through and tie into a loop so you have a 600mm diameter hoop of rope. Make a stump of bricks about 5 or 6 courses high (or a stump of timber the same height) and then get a nice long piece of 8x2 joist, or such like. Put the end in the hoop of rope and push the other end downwards, using the stump of bricks as a fulcrum.
I managed to pull out several post with relative ease using this simple rig.

Furniture Restorer said:

Let’s see if I can explain this right. This is how I pulled mine out

drill a 12-18 mm hole right through the post, about 150mm above the soil line. Put a rope through and tie into a loop so you have a 600mm diameter hoop of rope. Make a stump of bricks about 5 or 6 courses high (or a stump of timber the same height) and then get a nice long piece of 8x2 joist, or such like. Put the end in the hoop of rope and push the other end downwards, using the stump of bricks as a fulcrum.
I managed to pull out several post with relative ease using this simple rig.

Click to expand...

Thanks. Sounds like a good plan. I’ll try that on mine. The exception being the post that has snapped at ground level.