Erosion Control and Silt Fence

wrong way to install silt fence. I'm going to cover that today. I'm going to talk about the orientation of the silt fence, the difference between standard silt fence, steel reinforced silt fence, and bologs. So, let's get started. We're out here installing silt fence. Now, we've already got one row of silt fence, which has been up and functioning for about 90 days now. But the city wants to see a reinforced silt fence, and I'm going to show you the difference between them and show you how to install them. Jake's doing the manual. He's just manually digging a trench. You can get a trencher. This way works good. You got to get about a 6- in deep trench to tow it in. And as we look at the one that's already been installed and in in service for a while now, you can see that it's actually buried right there. And that's a key element. The other thing is there which way you orient the silt fence. Fence will have wood stakes. A reinforced silt fence looks like this. It actually has wire mesh. It's more of a permanent structure. And then we use posts to frame those in. Let me show you the orientation on this site. So you can kind of get a feel for it. You can see that the posts are on the downward side. So what that means is as the runoff comes down the hill, it'll hit hit the fence and if you get a blowout, the stake remains in place and the fabric will tear in between it. fence. If we had flipped this around, fabric was oriented on this side of the stake, then the mud could go all the way down and through. So, it's important that you orient the silk fence the right way. So, what Jake's doing right now is he's getting the silk fence initially set, putting the bottom of the extra length in place. Now, this fence actually has a flap dedicated to fold over so you can kick it in and then cover it with soil. This is a great example of what I'm talking about orientation of the silt fence. Any of the silt that comes down the sediment will hit the silt fence fabric material on this side and then be stopped or reinforced by the wire mesh on the back side of this fencing. We're getting the new silt fence installed. Important point, you cannot forget no gaps. Look at the bottom of this silt fence. It's all been dug in 6 in deep. There's no gaps. A lot of times you'll see a silk fence flopping in the wind. That's not properly installed. Plus, green fence post, green fence post, green fence post every 6 ft. We're going to be reinforcing this silt fence with fence post because this is steel silt fence. This was standard sil fence. The wood stakes that are included are adequate. If you can't drive a silt fence in place, dig it and tow it in. Another option are these bol logs. I' recommend staking them in. Otherwise, they can wash away. You can stake them. In this case, this is the downward side. Or you can drive a steak physically through the bow log. I don't prefer to rip the fabric at all. I have seen it done. I like to keep it in place, keep it whole, keep it on to. I don't like to drive a steak through it if I don't have two sill fences in place. Erosion control set. Ideally, this should have been sold. Vegetation should have been established. Then we wouldn't have needed a sill fence. But sometimes it doesn't