Pressure treated wooden or concrete posts?

[mleggatt]

I have a 91' fence that will needs both fence panels and posts replacing (approx 17 posts). Currently the first panel (8' wide) that spans the patio is constructed of two posts one rawbolted to house and the other concreted in between our patio and neighbours and two piece of harris-rail with feather edge planks. The rest of the fence is a mixture of wooden and concrete slotted posts. I am intending on replacing all the posts and panels and having concave shutterboard fence panels.

I was intending on having concrete slotted posts fixed in concrete and concrete barge boards as they seem to last well and we have foxes, headgehogs e.t.c that burrow under the current fence. While I was looking on the web I found Jackson's fencing who do wooden barge boards and wooden slotted posts and claim they are pressure treated and so don't rot as quick but also don't crack with frost like concrete posts. I have noticed that some of these posts on other fences do have cracks where the re-inforcing has rusted and blown the concrete but I don't know how old these are.

Anyone have experience or opinion on whether concrete slotted posts are better than wooden slotted pressure treated?

Thanks
Martin

 

[JohnD]

I live on the coast where the wind can be very strong, and have mostly moved to concrete posts and gravel boards. I no longer have posts snapped off, although I have had a fence panel blow out and leave the posts standing (!)

I paint them all with dark brown masonry paint before fitting - to match the colour of the fence and also to give weather protection. It prevents rainwater saturating the concrete (especially on the top) so that it does not spall off the surface when it freezes, and to my eye, it looks better.

I would not use wooden posts again. Having had to dig out the old wooden stumps and the mass of concrete they were set in, it was such a terrible job that I vowed never to do it again

 

[masona]

I live on the coast where the wind can be very strong, and have mostly moved to concrete posts and gravel boards. I no longer have posts snapped off, although I have had a fence panel blow out and leave the posts standing (!)

I know the feeling, since I've used these type of fence panels, the wind doesn't bend the fence panels anymore as the wind goes through the gap of the staggered rails, also a bonus I've noticed, they dried very quickly as it's airated not holding any rainwater.