17 February 2010

How much for a fence?

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Today’s Canberra Chimes carries an article about a breach in the fence around the Mulligan’s Flat wildlife sanctuary, to quote:

“ACT rangers will be on the look-out for foxes and feral cats at the Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary in Forde tonight after the weekend’s downpour washed away sections of its predator-proof fence.

The $1.3 million, 12km-long fence enclosing the nature reserve was completed in June last year, and on Sunday it suffered its biggest test with 115mm of rain falling in three days at Mulligans Flat.”

This is not a rant about provision of the fence per se, for it is a commendable initiative, rather I am intrigued by the price tag of $1.3m for a 12 km fence. My trusty $3.00 calculator insists that this works out to $108,000 per km of fence, for what appears to be little more than a good quality chain mesh fence.

Seems a bit excessive to me. Or am I just out of date with the current costs of fencing? If not maybe I need to get me a fencing licence and bid for future lucrative guvvie contracts.

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That is a interesting video arthurD. That really is quite a decent fence, no wonder it cost that much.

The cave at the start is Punchbowl Cave (2WJ-8) at Wee Jasper, I’ve spent many day wandering around in there.

I just watched an interesting csiro video on youtube that features the mulligans flat wildlife sanctuary, and they describe the fence toward the end of the film. You can see why it’s not a cheap fence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWI60oYJYnk

Gungahlin Al6:47 pm 20 Feb 10

Special gates, electric lines, and remote sensing and video gear, all adds up.

Pity about the wash-over – possibly could have been prevented if they had put a few trash fences (low lines to catch trash from overland flows) upstream from the main fence.

Planting out the swale area with tussock grasses and the like would be a more long-term trash filtering solution.

Feb17, you are better off getting into the domestic fencing business. Our 23 meter (1.8 meter high) comined brick peir & merbau courtyard fence cost (inclusive labour) around $5000. Then we had the double swinging matching gates at end of fence installed, which cost just shy of $2000. From what I here, colourbond (although ugly) cost similar, about 80% the cost of what we had erected. Avoid Guvie work and all the paperwork and loopholes that go with it, and go for domestic cash in hand work.

troll-sniffer2:34 pm 18 Feb 10

astrojax said :

Inappropriate said :

I’ve seen the fence and it’s no mere chainlink fence. And to add to what others have said: it’s not in a readily accesible location, would taken a lot of man hours to build.

‘person hours’, surely; though it is strangely inappropriate to use this sort of sexist language… 😉

Musta been man-hours. I work with a bunch of chatty women and I reckon by the time they got through their quotas of committe meetings and OH&S rants, the cost would’ve doubled easy.

Inappropriate said :

I’ve seen the fence and it’s no mere chainlink fence. And to add to what others have said: it’s not in a readily accesible location, would taken a lot of man hours to build.

‘person hours’, surely; though it is strangely inappropriate to use this sort of sexist language… 😉

Inappropriate12:49 pm 18 Feb 10

I’ve seen the fence and it’s no mere chainlink fence. And to add to what others have said: it’s not in a readily accesible location, would taken a lot of man hours to build.

I would like to think that the $1.3m was not just for a good quality fence, but all planning, mapping etc work that would have had to go through the bureaucracy for it to happen.

Yes you are out of touch with the cost of modern fences.
For what it is, that would be about standard for a fence that must keep feral animals out.

Have you seen the fence? Slightly more to it than ‘good quality chain mesh’.

Vermin-proof fencing is always more expensive. You have to dig a trench and embed decent quality mesh into that – it has to be deep enough to stop foxes and rabbits or even wombats from digging underneath. It has to be high enough to keep out cats and (possibly) humans. It has to be solid enough to withstand wind, being pushed over, and local flooding if it crosses a drainage line (oops).

I haven’t done any fencing for more than two decades, so I’ll leave it to someone else to say whether that is reasonable or not these days. It does sound a little on the high side, though.

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