Craftsman style cedar fence update

The craftsmen style cedar fence is now about 16 years old. By about year 10, it started having some issues that needed attention. These could have been handled by better design at the beginning so see below for some remdedies.

The first major problem was the posts rotting out where they touched soil. Perhaps this could have been mitigated by having the concrete anchor rise up higher to keep soil away from the posts. The way that I chose to remedy the problem was to dig out the concrete post bases and put in steel brackets anchored in concrete, leaving a couple inches of clearance between the base of the post and ground. This was very labor intensive, as it required removing the previous blob of concrete that anchored the posts, but it was a good way to save the fence itself, which remains in good condition.

I used post bases produced by Campbell Fencing in Portland, Oregon. They sell these through Mr. Plywood in Portland but I'm not sure if they are available anywhere else. Basically, they are 34" and half of the length goes in the ground and into the concrete anchor and the other half is above ground. After digging out the globs of concrete I'd poured 15 years ago, I used concrete tubes to keep things a bit neater.

Simpson makes a similar post base as well, though they don't recommend it for fences and it is only about 17 inces long. They also have these EZ-post bases that are meant to be screwed into to concrete from the sides.

The other problem with the fence was some rot on the horizontal 2X4s. I think this was due to sitting water between the trim strips that are nailed into those 2X4s. I replaced the 2X4s and put them in at a bit of an angle so that the water would tend to flow off them. I also replaced the trim strips and used a paint mixer to leave a 1/16" gap between the 2X4 and the trim strip so the water could flow out.

Furthermore I cleaned off the mildew on the fence with water, bleach and a scrub brush and repainted it. I used this PPG ProLuxe Cetol SRD Exterior Wood Finish product in Natural 078, which used to be called Sikkens Cetol. I found that this held up amazingly well over the years so I was glad to use the decendent of that original product that I put on the fence and didn't touch for basically 15 years. In the case of the replacement pieces on the fence, I painted them with this finish (including ends) before putting them on.

Assembling and reassembling parts of the fence wasn't fun, but at least I had a nail gun this time around.