A proper repair restores three things: the physical line, the electrical conductivity, and the correct tension. We do not simply twist the ends together — a poor join is a future short and a weak point. Depending on the break we splice in a fresh section of matching wire with proper crimps or joiners that maintain conductivity, or re-string the affected run entirely where the wire is too corroded or damaged to trust. We re-seat the strand in its insulators, re-tension it to the correct tension so it cannot sag onto earth, and tidy any loose ends that could short.

Then we re-test. We confirm the voltage has recovered along the full line and past the repair, check the earth-return, and verify the alarm output triggers correctly on a simulated fault — because a break, especially a cut one, is exactly when you need to know the alarm actually reaches your monitoring. We back the repair with our six-month guarantee.

If a wire is cut cleanly, or several strands are pulled down at a low or concealed point, treat it as a possible break-in attempt rather than wear and tear. The pattern matters: corrosion breaks happen at joins and stress points and look frayed or rusted; deliberate cuts are clean and often grouped at a climbable or hidden spot.

Two things follow. First, alert your armed-response company — the damage may be recent and the attempt ongoing or repeated. Second, when we repair it we pay special attention to the alarm output: on far too many fences the energiser shocks but its alarm was never wired into the alarm panel or monitoring, so a cut wire raises no signal at all. We confirm and, if needed, connect or repair that link, so next time the fence does more than just sit there with a gap in it.

Whether we splice in a section or re-string the whole run comes down to the condition of the surrounding wire. A clean break on otherwise sound, recent wire is best repaired by splicing in a matching length with proper joiners — quick, strong and economical. But if the wire around the break is corroded, brittle or has multiple weak points, splicing one spot simply moves the problem along: the next break is weeks away. In that case re-stringing the affected run with fresh wire is the honest, longer-lasting repair, even though it costs a little more upfront.

We will tell you which situation you are in and why. On an old fence with widespread corrosion, repeated single-strand patches become a false economy, and at some point re-stringing the worst runs — or planning a staged upgrade — saves money over a year of call-outs. We give you the trade-off plainly so you can decide.

Wire breaks are reduced by sensible maintenance:

No single factor damages electric fences in Johannesburg more than the power situation, and it is worth understanding because it shapes both why fences fail and how to protect them. During an outage, a mains energiser switches to its backup battery and the fence keeps pulsing — exactly as designed. The damage comes not during the outage but at the moment power is restored, when the grid often returns with a voltage spike. That surge travels into the energiser's power-supply stage and, on a board with no surge protection, punches straight through sensitive components.

This is why so many energiser failures appear in the hours after the lights come back on, and why a unit can survive many outages and then die on one. There is a slower, parallel cost too: every deep discharge during a long outage ages the backup battery faster than its rated two-to-three-year life, so heavy load shedding tends to wear out the battery and stress the board on overlapping timelines, producing dead fences, beeping and false alarms.

The defences are inexpensive relative to the damage they prevent: a surge protector on the supply, an intact and correctly-earthed lightning diverter, and, for properties that keep losing units, conversion to a solar energiser that runs off its own panel and battery and never sees the mains spike at all. We fit surge protection as a matter of course on board replacements, because protecting the repair is part of doing it properly.

None of these involve touching the fence wires — never test an electric fence by hand. They are quick checks that sometimes save a call-out and always help us help you faster over the phone.

Not every electric fence fault is an emergency, and knowing the difference helps you act sensibly. If you have found a cut or pulled-down wire, treat it as a possible intrusion attempt: alert your armed-response company first, keep people and pets away from any loose, possibly-live strand, and call us to repair and re-test — including confirming the alarm actually reached your monitoring. If the fence is simply dead, weak, beeping or nuisance-alarming with no sign of tampering, it is not a 999 situation, but it does mean your perimeter is compromised, so it is worth sorting quickly rather than living with it.

Either way, do not try to investigate the high-voltage side yourself — no touching the wires, no opening the energiser. The safe, useful things you can do are all observation: note the symptom precisely, when it started, and whether it follows a pattern (after a power cut, only in rain, only at night). If you can do so safely from the ground, a quick photo of the energiser's display and of anything obviously wrong on the line is genuinely helpful.

Then call or WhatsApp us for a free telephonic diagnosis. With the brand of your energiser, its status light or screen message, and the symptom pattern, we can usually tell you the likely cause and an honest price range before we travel, and bring the right parts on the vehicle. Close to our Broadacres base that often means a same-day, single-visit fix; further out we will give you an honest planned time. The two minutes you spend describing it accurately is what turns a repair into a one-visit job.

An electric fence is a high-voltage system. A healthy energiser delivers a pulse of several thousand volts, and while the design is intended to deter rather than injure a healthy person, the high-voltage side is not something to probe, open or repair without the right knowledge and equipment. The safe checks we suggest are deliberately limited to things you can do without touching the wires or opening the unit — looking, listening and noting — precisely because everything beyond that belongs with a technician.

There is a second reason beyond personal safety: a fence worked on incorrectly can be left non-compliant, under-performing, or falsely reassuring. A botched earth, a wrong-rated energiser, a join that becomes a short, or an alarm output left disconnected can all leave a fence that looks fine and protects nothing. We carry the test equipment to diagnose properly, the stock to repair in one visit, and the knowledge to leave the system both safe and genuinely working — backed by a six-month guarantee, which a DIY attempt cannot give you.

Every job starts with a free telephonic diagnosis. Tell us the symptom — the pattern of the alarm, the status light, whether the fence is dead or weak — and we will give you the likely cause and an honest price range before anyone drives out, so there are no surprises. The call-out is from R450 and is waived when you proceed with the repair.

On site, we diagnose with proper test equipment rather than swapping parts and hoping: open-circuit output at the energiser, earth-return voltage, and directional fault-finding along the line. We repair before we replace, and where a replacement is genuinely the better value we say so and explain why on the numbers, never on pressure. Because we carry the common stock on the vehicle, most faults are fixed in a single visit.

Then we re-test the whole system — output, earth and the alarm — so you leave with a fence that shocks properly and warns you if it is breached, not just one that has had its immediate symptom silenced. Every repair carries a six-month guarantee, and you deal directly with our team throughout: no call centres, no commission-driven upselling.

Electric fence faults do not respect property type, and neither do we. On freestanding family homes the typical work is vegetation shorts, cracked insulators, surge-damaged energisers and tired batteries, fixed quickly and guaranteed — the bulk of everyday residential call-outs sit here.

On townhouse complexes and estates the systems are usually multi-zone, so a fault can be isolated to one section without dropping the whole perimeter, and the Certificate of Compliance for common-property fencing is generally the body corporate's or homeowners' association's responsibility — so we coordinate with the managing agent and report properly. A maintenance contract often makes sense at this scale.

On commercial and industrial premises, detection matters as much as deterrence: the priority is that the fence genuinely alarms to monitoring or armed response when it is breached, and that the work is documented for insurers. We verify the alarm output, integrate with alarm panels where needed, and service to scheduled windows so cover is never down during operating hours. Whatever the property, the same honesty, testing and guarantee apply.

It is worth remembering what the electric fence is actually for, because it changes what 'working' means. The shock deters, but the part that protects you when you are asleep or away is the alarm output — the signal the energiser sends when a wire is cut or shorted, wired into your alarm panel and on to your armed-response company or monitoring. A fence that shocks beautifully but whose alarm was never connected, or has quietly failed, will let an intruder cut through in silence. On a surprising number of the fences we attend, that alarm link was never wired in at all.

This matters for your cover too. Insurers increasingly expect perimeter security to be present and functional, and where an electric fence is part of how a property is insured, a fence that is non-compliant, not shocking, or not alarming can complicate a claim. For commercial and industrial sites in particular, documented, working perimeter detection is often a condition rather than a nice-to-have.

So whenever we repair a fault — a short, a broken wire, a dead energiser, a tired battery — we also verify the alarm output genuinely triggers, integrate it with your panel or monitoring where needed, and can document the work for your insurer or managing agent. Fixing the shock is only half the job; making sure the fence can raise the alarm is the half that actually protects you.