You should not need to worry about frost heave with your WamBam no-dig fence for two reasons:

1. Concrete footings have way more surface area for frost to get underneath and heave up the footings. A pipe anchor has a much smaller diameter, making it much more difficult for frost to get enough leverage to heave.
2. In the rare event that a pipe anchor does heave due to frost, it’s relatively easy to fix. You just need to remove a few screws to remove your panel or gate from your post and remove post from pipe. Fix the heaved pipe anchor (likely with a few whacks with a sledgehammer) and reinstall your post and your panel or gate.

The no-dig fence concept was developed and popularized in Canada, in part due to its ability to withstand extreme frost conditions. No matter how deep fence installers dug concrete footings, they would still heave out of the ground. And when cement footings heave, they are virtually impossible to fix without the back-breaking work of a complete concrete footer removal and post re-install. As such, most vinyl fencing in Canada today is installed with no-dig pipe anchors to mitigate the damage frost can do to a fence.  Since the beginning in 2010, we have sold a ton of our fence to homeowners in the upper Midwest and Northeastern United States and customer calls about frost heave being a problem never happen.

We can’t promise that a WamBam fence post will not be affected by frost heave. But, we can promise that fixing it will be WAY EASIER than if you had installed posts using concrete … that’s for sure!

So, how deep do they go then?

Alright, if you are reading this and gotten this far, we know you are (smartly) going to ask, “OK then, how deep in the ground do your pipes need to go?” Well, it depends on the style and size of the WamBam fence you are installing. The short answer is anywhere from 24″ to 40″ into the ground depending on style.

Refer to the corresponding install guide for all of our fence styles to see how deep the pipe anchor for the post needs to go.

For more about frost heave and our no-dig system, see this blog entry.