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My old boss in Austin swore by using a 9-gauge wire for all chain link, but after a storm last spring took out 300 feet of our fence, I'm convinced 11-gauge is just asking for trouble.
He always said the extra cost wasn't worth it, but replacing that whole section proved him wrong, so what's the heaviest gauge you all actually use on residential jobs?
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elizabethg185mo ago
Ever think that storm was a freak thing? I've seen 11-gauge hold up for 20 years in places with way worse weather than Austin. Sometimes the posts rot out or the ground shifts, and that's what really fails, not the wire. Going heavier just puts more strain on everything else for a problem that might never happen again.
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kevin_dixon5mo ago
Exactly, that's what I've seen fail first.
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the_charles5mo ago
...and that's exactly what happened with my buddy's fence down in San Antonio. He had this old 12-gauge that looked fine for years, but after one bad storm the whole thing just snapped in two spots. Turns out the posts were actually fine, it was the wire itself that had gotten brittle from all that sun exposure over time. You never really know what's gonna give until it gives, you know? Sometimes going heavier isn't about the weather, it's about the little things you can't see that eventually catch up with you.
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