DIY Electric fencing - any thoughts?

The only sort of electric fence that would be legal is the sort that delivers short energy limited shocks, and would not kill a person. These normally look rather like a car ignition circuit, in that there is a transformer of sorts with the secondary connected to the fence and the ground, and the primary is pulsed, usually with a capacitor discharge circuit that is then refilled slowly between pulses.

You need several KV to reliably get a decent shock through glancing contact and fur, and you also need a pulse that is very short duration compared to human heart beat so that you do not cause fibrillation and death. Pulse energy of a few joules per zap maximum.

Even if you did not care about killing humans, and you should, there are legal implications to what is equivalent to mining or booby trapping a house, bare mains will not generally kill a fox, you need a lot more volts to be sure.

It is not a simple or very safe DIY task and unless your time is free, it will cost you a lot less to go to your local farmers merchant and pick up a commercial model on which all the safety testing has been done. examples

You also need to keep the fence earth contact well away from mains and telecommunication wiring and earthing. Pulses of even a just  few kV getting onto the earth of all your electrical equipment is not good for you or it.


Over time both the child and the foxes will learn ways to get through it or round it without being shocked.

The only sort of electric fence that would be legal is the sort that delivers short energy limited shocks, and would not kill a person. These normally look rather like a car ignition circuit, in that there is a transformer of sorts with the secondary connected to the fence and the ground, and the primary is pulsed, usually with a capacitor discharge circuit that is then refilled slowly between pulses.

You need several KV to reliably get a decent shock through glancing contact and fur, and you also need a pulse that is very short duration compared to human heart beat so that you do not cause fibrillation and death. Pulse energy of a few joules per zap maximum.

Even if you did not care about killing humans, and you should, there are legal implications to what is equivalent to mining or booby trapping a house, bare mains will not generally kill a fox, you need a lot more volts to be sure.

It is not a simple or very safe DIY task and unless your time is free, it will cost you a lot less to go to your local farmers merchant and pick up a commercial model on which all the safety testing has been done. examples

You also need to keep the fence earth contact well away from mains and telecommunication wiring and earthing. Pulses of even a just  few kV getting onto the earth of all your electrical equipment is not good for you or it.


Over time both the child and the foxes will learn ways to get through it or round it without being shocked.