“Wood fences need constant repair… Note the painting back then could be had for a home cooked meal from a hobo or bindle stiff.”

– Bud Mackinga, in a hand written letter to WamBam

Our oldest known customer didn’t want to maintain a wood fence so purchased and installed a vinyl one

Say hello to Bud, our oldest known customer. Not wanting to deal with wood fences anymore due to the painting and staining hassles, he decided to go for maintenance-free vinyl. Thus, at the age of 81 he single-handedly installed his Jiminy Picket Vinyl Fence. Although he has an email address (with “1935” appended to it), Bud’s not one for email so all communication between us and him was done via phone or snail mail. He had a great experience and wanted to share a review, so he wrote a letter and utilized technology by having someone fax it to us. Check out his letter here.

Here’s an excerpt from his letter:
“When I was a child, I can still remember my mother and her friends talking about the green shuttered house & white picket fence.

Now, all these years later my wife wants the white picket fence.

Wanting nothing more than to please Sue (my wife) I start looking (o yah).

Wood fences need constant repair because of deteriation, rot, peeling paint, etc. Note the painting back than could be had for a home cooked meal from a hobo or bindle stiff. Now I would have to do it myself. “No thanks.”

Not able to afford a contractor what to do, what to do. I needed something better than wood. Digging holes lifting heavy bags of cement mixing with water, and pouring and stamping it in the hold to hold post’s upright

All of this lead to my quest for something else.

I started to search the internet not an easy task for an 80 year old senior citizen

After bumbling thru the internet checking Lowe’s, Home Depot, local fence companys for what seams like forever I somehow stumble across this funny name Wam Bam Fence Co (what the h***) give it a go…” Read more.

Bud was a pleasure to work with, and we are very impressed at his energy, drive and handy man skills!

Why No-Dig Fence Works Well in Frost

Many moons ago, Clever Joe was a frustrated fence installer in Western Canada. The frost conditions are so bad up there that no matter how deep he dug his cement footings, they would still occasionally heave out of the ground. When a cement fence footing heaves out of the ground, it is virtually impossible to fix and can make the entire fence look bad.

A traditionally installed vinyl fence where the cement footing has heaved out of the ground due to frost

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Joe needed to find another way to install vinyl fence to avoid the chronic problem of heaving cement footings. This is what ultimately birthed no-dig vinyl fence. Once he perfected the installation method of driving pipe deep into the ground, his frost problems virtually went away for 2 reasons:

1. Cement footings create a “lip” that makes it much easier for frost to heave. A pipe anchor doesn’t have as much surface area so the frost has a much more difficult time heaving it.
2. If for some reason an occasional no-dig fence post did heave out of the ground, it was relatively easy to fix. One could easily dismantle the post and reset the leveling donut or even the pipe if necessary. It’s virtually impossible to fix a heaved cement footing but it’s very feasible to fix a heaved pipe anchor.

In short, no-dig fence works extremely well in areas with bad frost. WamBam’s no-dig fencing has been installed in some very cold climates with very few issues- from North Dakota to Winnipeg, Canada. While we can’t promise that a pipe will never heave, we can assure you that it will be fixable, which is not the case with a cement footing.

If you would like to discuss this in greater length with one of our fence specialists, feel free to call us at 877-778-5733.