Category Archives: Information sheets

Introduction
Congratulations! Your decision to paint your own fence is a wise one for two reasons, Firstly think of the money you will save (Often upwards of $1,000.00) and Secondly, The best painting jobs are done by those owners who have shown the patience, attention to detail and persistence to reap the rewards of a quality job.

What’s so important about the painting?
The dry character of our summer heat wave can be devastatingly cruel on “organic timber product”. Quality painting goes a long way in addressing post splitting and shrinkage, surface checking, water traps creating “dry rot” and warping timbers.

A good foundation job will save many hours of labour down the track by protecting and binding together the fences individual elements.

Painting Instructions
It is important not to delay in starting the paint job. You should aim to commence one initial coat within a week of completion. For best results give the fence a light sanding ensuring the fence is clean from dust and dirt.

We recommend that no less than 5 coats of paint to be given to any green timbers (those that aren’t kiln dried) like the feature posts which importantly will build up a genuine seal. If not, the post will try and lose its moisture through “surface checking or cracking”. Even after repeated coats watch for cracking in the first summer and attend to.

After the first coat is complete any filling should take place using a professional poly filler. When applying the second coat it is important to build up the paint in areas where overlaps and junctions occur to help avoid water traps.
A final coat should now be applied concentrating again on areas of overlap and junctions not forgetting the picket top’s which is a freshly cut end grain.

Ongoing maintenance
Having completed a good foundation job you should be free from painting for a good 6 – 8 years which by then the fence may need to be sanded and cleaned followed by one more top coat. This is always a good opportunity to regrease any gate hinges your fence may have. If you have followed the above instructions we are only too happy to offer a firm and formal 1 year guarantee from completion which will see you through one full cycle of the seasons.

At Paramount Pickets we use high quality Cypress Pine fence posts in the construction of your fence. The versatility of Cypress has allowed us to cut, shape, rout, sand and form your posts into an unlimited variety of shapes for both function and appearance.

Unlike steel posts, timber is a natural product and as such can be affected by the sun, moisture and ageing. In Australia fence posts are only available in an unseasoned or green state.

Seasoned means just that. The timber has aged one, two or more years since it was cut from the living tree. “Green” or “Unseasoned” timber is full of water. The moisture is slowly released from the cells in the fibres of the wood and gravitated to outside of the timber and eventually become stabilized to the environment in which it is placed.

During seasoning all timbers shrink due to the cells drying and becoming smaller in volume. Cypress Pine has uniformed shrinkage which is amongst the lowest rates of all Australian Commercial Timbers. To add to this Cypress comes with a Class 1 Durability rating, greater than all other softwoods and most hardwoods and is termite resistant meaning no nasty chemicals are needed to protect the timbers.

During seasoning process Cypress will often exhibit “movement”. This may be in the form of twisting, bending, distorting and surface cracking. This cracking is known as checking. This movement during the seasoning period does not affect the strength or durability of the timber. It cannot therefore be considered a defect.

Any changes to the appearance of the fence post, which are the result of seasoning are not possible to predict and in any case are part of the natural products of timber.

A Cypress post can often take up to 12 months to fully season and become stable. Surface checking will almost always close up and become invisible. During this period if you are concerned you can fill the highly visible checks with a soft type of filler like Polly filler. This is because when the seasoning process has finished, soft filler can be easily squeezed out by the post to be either sanded or scraped off.

Whether you leave your posts to naturally season, or you undertake minor cosmetic maintenance part way during seasoning, the outcome will be that you will have a beautiful long lasting timber post.