Farm Fencing: Electric fence controllers...Solar? DC or AC what's inside them!

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome to the farm today we're gonna be working inside the shop today I've got as a Reba brand fence controller that has a burnt-up circuit board we're gonna go through and talk a whole lot about electric fences different types of electric fence controllers the experiences that I've had with electric fence controllers and we're going to show you how to fix one so come along on the farm blog today we're gonna have a little bit of fun learning about electric fence controllers for your farm all right [Music] first of all folks I want to welcome you to the channel today we're in the shop it's a nasty old rainy day we've had a lot of nasty old rainy days this year I want to talk to you a little bit about the experiences that I've had with fence controllers now it might seem like I'm sponsored by zareba fence controllers but I'm not I just bought tractor supply out of zareba fence controllers when they went on sale so tractor supply company changed brands and they put this stuff on half price and I knew I'd meet it for the rest of my life so I just bought every one of them that they had just in case I might need them or a friend might need them so sitting on the work bench here today we have a 30-mile zareba brand solar fence charger and we're going to get into the guts we're going to learn a whole lot about that one today we have a five-mile one that you plug in to AC power we have a 10-mile one that you plug into AC power the five-mile let's point one joules of output the 10-mile is 0.5 joules of output now the joules is what the shocking power is of these machines in other words this one is five times more powerful than that one that's something to think about when you have large livestock now the 30 miles solar fence controller is also 0.5 joules as I step back over here you'll see the premiere one fence brand I am a huge fan of premiere one products and we'll get more into that as we go this here is also a DC powered zareba brand this is a 15-mile and it puts out one Joule so that means ten times more power than this guy right here and basically you just hook it with these clamps onto a 12 volt battery like a car battery or a deep-cycle marine battery probably be recommended so the reason we're doing this video today is to educate you a little bit as to what your options are if you're considering purchasing livestock if you're using the premiere one fencing for your chickens to keep them in it gives them a little zap to keep the chickens in to keep your goats up to keep your cows up these are the things that you're going to need to know about in order to do that now the jewels are very important if you look at this one the point one jewels it says it'll keep in dogs rabbits and chickens if you look at the one with 0.5 horses cows pigs go dogs chickens cats whatever he want to put in there I don't know if he can put cats in an electric fence I don't think you can however the joules are very very important so the more powerful the joules on your fence controller the better it's going to work the more effective it's going to be you're not looking so much to shock the animal you're looking to train the animal to stay off the fence especially animals like pigs that can root and destroy fences really really quickly animals will learn to respect that fence and that's what you're looking for with an electric fence a lot of folks think that they're cruel that you're trying to shock or zap animals or that they're leaning on it all the time or that they're going to get shocked they learn really quickly that little strand of wire is something we got to keep our eyes out for and they learn to respect the fence pretty cool goats especially will learn that they can sneak around and get away from getting shocked by the fence by going under it really really fast so you really have to watch it one thing about fencing goats and that's what we use these for goats will get in trouble they are just always in trouble if you can build a fence and take a glass of water and throw it through the fence the goats can get out so let's get into the meat and potatoes we're gonna take apart this 30-mile fence controller I'm gonna show you how it all works inside and we're gonna replace the circuit board before we get into performing our circuit board ectomy right here I want to talk to you a little bit about reliability of these two pieces of equipment this is the premiere one brand there'll be a link down in the video description to premiere one you can check it out you guys have probably all seen that electric poultry netting or electric goat netting or goat fencing they also have fencing for your garden they have all kinds of fun stuff from a reliability standpoint I'm finding the premiere one products to be much more reliable much more adjustable much more user-friendly and a much better product for getting parts I called zareba about this circuit board issue that I had and I could not get the parts for it they sent me around through ten different loops to different repair shops in order to find parts for this thing for me to repair it I ended up having to buy it through a secondary or tertiary medium instead of just going right to the company and saying hey here's the part I need here's the part number can you send it to me no you can't with premier one you can you can get the company that makes them and they'll take care of you that is very important we have three zareba brand controllers that are solar-powered and two out of the three zareba brand controllers have had malfunctions and I couldn't get parts for them so that's something to really think about when you're considering making a purchase these things are not cheap now the zareba brand basically has a wire system and you just hook up two wires to these little leads right here the green to the ground and you need to have a ground rod in place and the red to the fence with the premiere one fencing you have the same similar setup right here on the side however you have a ground clamp that comes with it it's really really handy so this is a ground rod for moving a mobile fence like the Premier one fencing now of course you could hook this to a standard ground rod the way this works is you hook this to the ground a little alligator clip that to the fence and the grounding portion you put this in the ground and step on it and then you're able to connect your fence just like so you just slide the fence controller right into place and it sits on the stand in other words this is a totally self-contained unit that you do not have to drive a ground rod for you do have to drive a ground rod for these that's enough of my advice on these two controllers I'm very very happy with both controllers but for reliability purposes I found that premiere one has been best and for getting parts and stuff like that I know I can contact premiere one and I've contacted zareba and they referred me out to other places once again folks I want to make mention I am in no way associated with zareba brand fence controllers this is layperson advice if you get hurt mill in this then it's your own fault it's not mine I'm going to show you how I take it apart so back here are two panels this panel comes off and it has batteries in here this panel right here comes off and it has a circuit board and controller in here that circuit board and controller translates to the front here where you have your two leads and you have your little shocker this one is functioning properly and when you turn it on it has a summer and winter setting where is that switch there it is when you turn it on you should hear it pop and you'll see a flash there we go trust me there's a little flash there's a little light bulb when we'll show you that once we get the circuit board out so we're gonna turn this off there we go and basically the difference in the summer in the winter I think is the output I think it puts out a little less power in the winter time than it does in the summer time because in the summer time it would have to contend with grass and weeds and stuff like that so this is the t10 Torx and this is just a craftsman brand that I use basically it just comes apart now these aren't machine screws these are like a wood screw almost or a plastic tightener screw take this guy apart here's a little tip guys if you've got a screw that's down in a deep hole and you want to magnetize your screwdriver or your Torx in this case all you have to do is set it on a powerful magnet for just a few minutes or a few seconds really and then you're able to pick up whatever you want to pick up it'll be magnetized now the magnetization doesn't last too awful long but it does work for just a little bit long enough for you to get that screw out that's stubborn and stuck in there now underneath here should be the battery compartment you can see this wire right here there's a little notch cut out for the wire and that is the power supply from the solar panel back here don't be afraid you're not gonna hurt anything get down here and kind of pry up with your fingers you'll just pry them right up and off this covers our batteries and this covers our circuit board so I had it backwards right here is our circuit board we're going to get a little bit closer look at it I took this one apart just for an example to show you how simple these are so if you're gonna work on this device or you're gonna replace batteries the first thing I would suggest is just going on and pulling off the battery terminals just like so they just slip right off and I tape mine up so whatever is exposed the negatives are exposed I went on and taped those up right here is our circuit board will get you a little close-up and you can see there's a little bit of a spider's nest or something in there we want to get that out that's what the problem with our other circuit board was ants had nest across right here so you want to get this up off the ground far enough that ants can't nest inside here and cause a short on your circuit board so inside here everything is very very simple this is a very simple circuit board you have some transformers in here and you have a capacitor in here that stores energy from the batteries and sends that little spark out to your electric fence now contrary to what you may think an electric fence does not have a constant stream of power it sends a pulse of power and that's what happens inside this circuit board is designed to save up power in the capacitor and send that pulse boom down the line boom down the line it's a low amperage high voltage system now in order to remove this circuit board you first need to go on this side and you need to remove these two pins and it's very very simple just take the nuts a loose from these pins the next thing you need to remove is this torch that's right here in the center of the circuit board so you'll take this guy loose very very simple and the entire circuit board will come out folks that's all that's inside a fence controller this little circuit board that I'm getting ready to take out right here that some people might fuss because I'm touching with my bare hands but this little circuit board and on the backside of that circuit board is the little light that I was talking about and that's the little light that you see flashing indicating that your fence controller is working properly be sure if you're doing something like this and you don't know whether you're gonna have to order parts use that phone those pictures are free take pictures all along the way if you're doing something if you're rebuilding something use that phone be smart so I've already removed my nuts from the front of the circuit board and this is what comes out this is the way it comes out we'll get you a little close-up it comes out like this and it still has a switch assembly on it right here so I'll have to pull the switch assembly off of these tabs and install it onto those tabs should be pretty simple I might have to put a little bit of grease on there to get her done thing is on there baby well what I just did was probably not ideal but it worked there we go baby so we got it off there now we'll slide it on the new one once again I'm so glad I have this here because I should have looked that the way this thing's laid out before I took it apart it's really simple but man I could have messed it up again let me show you how this goes back together so this has four little electrical connections and a switch on it right here and this has the four electrical connections and basically just put them together and we press down just like so let's give you a close-up of what the problem was so ants had built a nest right across here and shorted this little guy out probably a simple electronics repair guy could fix this for me and this is about $100 part maybe a little bit more than a hundred bucks okay reverse order of installation we have a little switch tab and that little switch tab goes right here and that's your summer and your winter switch right there we're going to put it right in the center and then we're gonna set down our circuit board appropriately lining up our little switch we're not gonna tighten it all the way down just yet we're not quite ready for that we want it in there just a little loose and then we're gonna take these two guys and these are the leads that will go through the machine out the front and that's what you'll hook your positive and your negative to so we'll drop those right down these little holes just like so hopefully can see that those guys right in there now we're holding these in place and each one of these has this little locking kind of washer that goes on there very simple and then we'll start I believe it's a little quarter inch nut once we get that nut started on there we can go ahead and release the back side and we don't have to worry so much we will torque this nut down not too awfully tight probably about ten pounds something like that torque those two nuts down and then we'll slide on our washers these washers go just like this another washer like that and then this is ground so this will get the green and this other side will get the red so you don't ruin your circuit board you need to pull these and turn them and set them in place because the circuit board is set up with a little square area that will drop those guys back into place then we'll just tighten them down a little bit and we'll basically be done replacing the circuit board we'll go ahead and put our batteries back in and we need to set this thing out in the sunshine so these things need to get some sunshine if you're going to store them in your shop or your garage then you need the storm near a window so that they can keep a little bit of charge trickling on those batteries because if you leave them alone you're gonna be replacing lead acid batteries and that's no fun I think the battery replacement cost is somewhere around fifty to a hundred dollars for both batteries that's a bit expensive so there's a little plastic wing tab that slides right into place over top of these little connectors to protect them basically slides right in there and protects those two little tabs and I'll pull it out so you can see it there we go so those are the two little tabs we just tightened down and that's a protector that holds it in place now the screw that holds the cover over top of this holds that in place so the circuit board serves as a charging system and a discharging system in other words as a charging system to feed the batteries to make sure that they stay charged and a discharging system to send out pulses of electricity to your fence pretty cool now if you've got as a Reba brand fence controller like this and you're having troubles with it I'd say the first thing you need to check is your battery system so make sure that your batteries are good what we did is we took good batteries and put in here and we found that we still had the same problem so check the simplest thing first and then go to the more complicated thing contact zareba if you need to replace your circuit board and they can refer you to the next guy down the line that hopefully will send it to you what they're going to do is try to get you to take this in and have it repaired which is probably going to cost you just about as much as the piece of equipment cost you when you bought it and now we're gonna turn it on and listen it's working awesome and it didn't blow up so guys basically we're gonna install the covers here I hope you learned a little bit about fence controllers about what you need to think about with fence controllers if it were me and I had a power system at the place I'm doing my electric fence I would definitely use one that I could plug in if you want a little bit less maintenance for a place that's very rural without in the middle of nowhere and you want to have power to your fence like a deer food plot or something like that I recommend one like this with the solar panel with the battery setup also the fence controller that works on DC voltage so you can hook a deep-cycle marine battery to it and it'll run for weeks and weeks and weeks you'll just have to judge off the power of your marine battery and just go over and check it every so often to make sure that it's still working properly and if you need to charge your battery bring it home charge it up set it out there should be good to go for another month or so cool stuff guys thanks a lot I hope you learned a little bit about fence controllers I hope you learned a little bit about disassembly reassembly battery replacement circuit board replacement and all this fun stuff here in the shop today so come on back and see us on the Stoney Ridge farm found that like button subscribe to the channel if you don't have a fence controller and you're just watching this just having fun watching me work thanks a lot guys I appreciate you we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge I made a mysteri [Music] you stayed leaving on a seven-letter train and that you're headed out to Hollywood