Innotek Ultrasmart IUC 4100 In Ground Pet Fencing - Excellent Fencing Solution

The collar is the strong point of the Innotek Ultrasmart IUC 4100. It is a modern slim line collar with a great rechargeable lithium ion battery. The collar is very well designed. It is contoured to fit the dog quite comfortably. It is nicely waterproofed and really solid, with no controls or other fiddly bits on the collar, so it can really take a beating. The collar is small enough to be quite comfortable on any dog over 15 lbs.

ReadyTest A unique feature on the Innotek Ultrasmart collars is the ReadyTest feature that helps you get the collar on correctly. When you take the collar off the charger, it goes into the ReadyTest mode, as you fit it around the dog’s neck it makes a clicking sound when you have the collar fitted properly with the prongs contacting the dog’s skin. This is really useful, because if the dog doesn’t have the collar fitted properly the dog does not get the correction, and fitting the collar properly is a bit of an art, particularly on long-hair dogs like golden retrievers.

Rechargeable The collar is rechargeable, and sits in a little cradle that you plug into your wall socket. A full charge takes about two hours and lasts about a month. The lithium ion battery seems to last a long time, we have customers reporting collars working fine after five years. We have collars on our own dogs that have done four years of hard service and the charge seems to be nearly as long as when it was new. That said, the collar battery is not replaceable so if the battery does fail you will need to send the whole collar back to Innotek for repair. It would be much better if the battery was removable. Still this is the best collar battery we have used.

Battery Indicator The collar has an indicator light that blinks green to tell you everything is fine. The collar blinks red when the battery is low. You have two to three days to recharge the collar before the battery is completely drained.

Long/Short/Training Prongs The collar prongs can be unscrewed with the included tool and replaced with either the “no shock prongs” which are used for training, the “long prongs” for long hair dogs, or the “regular prongs” for short hair dogs. All three are included with the system.

Collar Band The collar has an integrated plastic collar. It is a high quality plastic, and some of our team thinks it looks modern and sleek, but most of us would prefer a cloth band. The collar is waterproof and wears really well. Our oldest collars look near new except for a few scrapes. The collar closes using a belt buckle style closure which is not as easy to use as quick-snap closures used on other systems.

Transmitter

The transmitter box is the brains of the system and connects to the boundary wire loop to create the virtual boundary. Inside the box are a series of controls that you use to set up the system.

1. Correction Level Switch - sets the correction levels, there are three levels, plus the correction is progressive so it gets stronger the longer the dog wanders past their boundary. The low correction level is good for small dogs, the medium correction level is good for most dogs in the 30-80 pound range, and the highest correction level is good for all but the most stubborn dogs. One thing to note is that you adjust the correction level for all the collars at the same time.
2. Field Size Switch – the field size switch lets you boost the signal for large yards. Select small for anything under an acre (1,000 feet of boundary wire); select large for any installation over an acre. The system can power up to 25 acres (5000 feet of boundary wire)
3. Field Width Dial - sets the width of the boundary. This control sets how far out from the wire the boundary starts. You can set it anywhere from around a few inches to about 10 feet. In practice a majority of people are going to want to set it about 3-5 feet. Smaller than that and the dogs can be hard to train because they can too easily run through. Larger than that and you start taking away too much of the dog’s space which can be a big problem in smaller yards.
4. Collar Recharge Reminder Switch - reminds you to charge the collar by squawking about once a month. This is a completely useless feature and you should switch it off. The collar will flash red when it need recharging. This thing is just going to wake you up in the middle of the night with it’s infernal beeping.
5. Alarm Volume Dial - this sets the volume of the alarm at the control box. So if you get a break in the line this determines how loud it will beep. Set it at the maximum when you first do the installation then forget it.
6. Power Switch – turns the whole unit it on and off. This is the only kind of expert advice, that you can only get at the Dog Fence DIY website!
7. Battery Backup Switch - this activates the battery backup. The control box can survive on battery backup for 2-3 days on the backup batteries (8 AA batteries) if the power fails, you will still get about three days of your fence still working. A pretty useful feature for people that often lose power during lightning storm, since these can spook some dogs and cause them to bolt. Not that useful in other power loss situations, since the dogs are usually so conditioned to obey the fence boundaries that they are unlikely to even notice that the fence is off.
8. Power Adaptor Plug – where you plug in the included power adaptor, that connects up to a regular wall socket.
9. Boundary Wire Terminal – this little terminal block is where the boundary wire connects to the system. It works like the speaker hookup in the back a stereo, you just pull back the latch, insert the wire and let go of the latch to secure the boundary wire in place.
10. Status Light - tells you if everything is working according. Green indicates that everything is fine, the light flashes red when you have a break in the line.

The Innotek IUC 4100 transmitter box is a wall mountable unit. The rear panel is removable and can be fastened using the supplied mounting screws. To get the longest life from the unit, mount it indoors in a place that stays above freezing. It must absolutely be kept out of the rain.

Boundary Kit

The system comes standard with:

• 500 feet of boundary wire (20 gauge), enough for about 1/3 of an acre
• 50 boundary flags – used to mark the boundary line during the initial training phase
• 2 Waterproof wire splice – used to join sections of the boundary wire