Fencing plans (still no price though)

Well, I knew we would be gaining a fair amount of space with the new fencing arrangement, but in fact, it's more than I thought.   We have a very small place, but given that the only space not available to the horses will be the areas immediately around the house and porches (with diagonal grey stripes in the drawing below), we will have well over an acre per horse -- should be more than enough.  Al's place is huge in comparison, but the main paddock is only a few acres and there are now FIVE to SEVEN horses in there most of the time.  The side paddock where Lizzie hangs out with Pops these days is so shady that there is very little grass.  We're spending a fortune on hay for them in high summer! 

Because they will have paddocks attached to each of their stalls here at the house, we will be able to bring them into those paddocks every time we have a downpour and just let them eat hay as long as it's soggy out in the pastures so those main pastures won't turn into mud holes like Al's place does during monsoon season. 

The fencing along the front and down the left side in the drawing above will be 4-rail Centaur "Hot Rail" fencing that looks very much like regular 4-rail horse fence, but the edge on each strip is electric

AND it gives if anyone runs into it or a tree falls on it or something. Perfect.

The only thing I DON'T like about it the Hot Rail is that the electric edges are black.  But I couldn't convince Mark that a black fence would be better, even though that strip would have been invisible on a black fence.

The non-electric stuff actually looks better since it's all white, but I think we need the electric if only to keep out stray dogs.

I'm not sure if we will do the rest of the fencing using five strands of extra-large electric wire ("White Lightning") . . .

or if we will make that top rail the 1-inch wide electric strip ("Hot-Site"):

It actually makes very little difference in the price which way we do it .  The electric wires and the 1" electric strip aren't much different.  But I think the wires can be pulled tighter than the strips, so we'll probably go with all wire.  Just wish the stuff didn't have those black stripes, but oh well . . .

Now if the fence guy would just get us a PRICE.