Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Electric fencing is a pain in the rump at best most of the time and low-impedance chargers can sometimes even be a larger pain in the rump because they are designed to charge a lot of fence over a long distance. The Parmak charger works great, especially for the price point; BUT it must be installed correctly according to your property conditions in order to not have problems or dis-satisfaction. Number one rule! -- Ground, Ground, GROUND! Fence chargers work directly in correlation to their ground. A good ground produces a strong and sustained charge each time it's called upon. A bad or weak ground produces next to nothing; genrally stronger closest to the charger and very weak or nothing at all the further away you get. In order to assure good grounding. This mainly depends upon your soil. Grounding rod(s) need to be in contact with moist soil (not dry but moist). Many people make a mistake and use a short grounding rod, a light piece of wire, and then blame the charger for not working. If your ground is dry, or gets dry during the course of the year; use a longer grounding rod so that it get's down into some moist soil. Also, as with all fence chargers they work best when you use not one, not two, but THREE grounding rods each tied to the next. I'm serious. If you want your charger to work, not be affected by weeds, etc that are touching the wire/rope, etc... then use three grounding rods. Place them approximately three feet apart, drive them deep into the ground, take one heavy wire that is long enough to reach from the terminal on your charger all the way to the last grounding rod that is nine feet away and clamp it down tight on each one. This is especially important for you folks that live in a very dry part of the country. I am telling you right now you will never be satisfied with this charger or any other if you do not ground it correctly. We have these chargers running at several different locations holding back cows, goats, dogs, and varmints and they work well all the time. We have situations where hay and other large grasses are bunched up and touching two or 3 wires and the fences still give a pop. The reason they work is because they are well grounded and the mechanical ground is far stronger than the weeds or hay that will cause grounding and shorts. Number 2 rule -- Face it South! This thing needs some sun. They pretty much come out of the box ready to go. But you do need to face it towards the sun. It needs full sunlight when it can get it. In order for the charge to last on those overcast days, weeks, etc... If you have trees, bushes, barn eaves, etc... that are partially blocking it from getting that sun when it can... Well then move it. Tip -- For those of you that live in challenged climates where the sun leaves for long periods of time. Go to Radio Shack or Amazon and pick you up a couple of more photocells and wire them in so that this will charge slightly faster. If this is beyond your abilities, there are other chargers on the market that use larger, deep cell, marine type batteries, that will carry a charge a lot longer without sunlight and you may need to consider those. The small charging cell and battery on this one will not let it go a long time without the sun if the animals are constantly abusing it. Seriously folks, solar charged fence electrifiers have their limitations. But as a whole they work very well when installed properly. This particular PArmak is one of the best I have used outside of Stafix. But as I said, the price point keeps me coming back.