In this se­ries' first two parts, we ex­am­ined fence ma­te­r­i­al and in­stal­la­tion tech­niques. In this con­clud­ing part, we dis­cuss the use of top guards and an al­ter­na­tive fenc­ing ma­te­r­i­al.

As home­own­ers strug­gle to find ways to en­joy the peace and seren­i­ty of their homes free from the fear of in­trud­ers, we in­creas­ing­ly see the use of top guards on fences.

Barbed wire and ra­zor wire

A top guard is an over­hang of barbed wire or ra­zor wire along the top of the fence usu­al­ly at a 45 de­gree an­gle. Where barbed wire is used as a top guard, there should be three strands of barbed wire spaced six inch­es apart. The sup­port­ing barb arms should be at­tached to the top of the fence posts and should be of suf­fi­cient strength to with­stand a weight of 250 pounds ap­plied at the out­er strand of barbed wire.

The top guard should ex­tend out­ward to ham­per any at­tempts to cir­cum­vent the fence from the out­side of the pro­tect­ed area. In cer­tain neigh­bour­hoods, top guards that face out­ward could ex­tend over the prop­er­ty line of an ad­join­ing neigh­bour and there­fore this could pre­vent the home­own­er from us­ing barbed wire on the sides where there are oc­cu­pied prop­er­ties. In such cir­cum­stances, it would be bet­ter to use coiled ra­zor wire as this has less of a pro­jec­tion in­to the ad­join­ing prop­er­ty. In some in­stances, how­ev­er, no pro­jec­tion in­to the ad­join­ing prop­er­ty can be done and in those cas­es then the top guard should be placed ver­ti­cal­ly.

When ra­zor wire is used, it should not be stretched taut but al­lowed to re­main with some de­gree of springi­ness in the wire.

A top guard is not a com­plete de­ter­rent against fence climb­ing; it works best against the ca­su­al or op­por­tunis­tic thief.

Ef­fec­tive­ness of ra­zor wire and barbed wire top guards

A com­mon be­lief is that the top­ping of ei­ther barbed wire or ra­zor wire will pre­vent peo­ple from climb­ing over the fence. For a de­ter­mined in­trud­er who has pre­planned his at­tack, how­ev­er, these de­vices do not pre­vent the in­tru­sion.

This in­for­ma­tion is not to stop the use of ei­ther barbed wire or ra­zor wire top­ping but to cre­ate aware­ness of its short­com­ings and the re­al­i­sa­tion that a top guard is not all that can be done.

A very re­cent en­try on the perime­ter pro­tec­tion mar­ket in T&T and an al­ter­na­tive to both barbed wire and ra­zor wire is the use of ra­zor spikes. These con­sist of a con­tin­u­ous dou­ble row of ra­zor sharp spikes. The out­er spikes are barbed and the nar­row in­ner spikes have high pen­e­trat­ing pow­er. Ra­zor spikes are a top­ping to de­ter any­one at­tempt­ing to climb over a wall. They are a for­mi­da­ble bar­ri­er but un­like ra­zor wire they do not have that prison-like ap­pear­ance and in­deed have an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing ap­pear­ance. As a re­sult of their gal­va­nized coat­ing, they have a long life and are very easy to in­stall. In ad­di­tion, they can al­so be paint­ed to match the colour of the house.

As with many prod­ucts, there are cheap im­i­ta­tions made with a lighter grade of met­al that can eas­i­ly be bent there­by de­feat­ing the pur­pose and great­ly re­duc­ing the se­cu­ri­ty ef­fect. In ad­di­tion, the im­i­ta­tions tend to be paint­ed but not gal­va­nized and so rust eas­i­ly.

An al­ter­na­tive fenc­ing ma­te­r­i­al that is now avail­able is wire wall. This comes in two ver­sions: high se­cu­ri­ty and medi­um se­cu­ri­ty. The high se­cu­ri­ty ver­sion is very dif­fi­cult to cut with­out spe­cialised tools and the close­ness of the rails makes it dif­fi­cult to climb with­out the use of climb­ing aids. The medi­um se­cu­ri­ty ver­sion has wider spac­ing be­tween the rails and so will al­low grip­ping with fin­gers and toes. Notwith­stand­ing the spac­ing, the thin­ness of the wire makes it ex­treme­ly painful for some­one to at­tempt to climb this fence.

From the view­point of pre­vent­ing in­trud­ers from gain­ing ac­cess, wire wall is clear­ly su­pe­ri­or to chain link fenc­ing. The most sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in con­sid­er­ing the use of wire wall is the ex­treme­ly high cost.

Bri­an Ram­sey, MBA,

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John Miller and a guest from the US Embassy, left, George Diefenthallern on the "Eggie", Molly Gaskin, Trust president and Mr Subert Gilbert.

John Miller and a guest from the US Embassy, left, George Diefenthallern on the "Eggie", Molly Gaskin, Trust president and Mr Subert Gilbert.

Dr Kim Johnson behind the camera.

Dr Kim Johnson behind the camera.

Nicola Young Photo: Stephen Doobal Creative Direction: Richard Young

Nicola Young Photo: Stephen Doobal Creative Direction: Richard Young

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