Gate Repair

Close the gate and read the gap at the latch edge from top to bottom. A wedge that is wide at the top and tight at the bottom means the leaf has dropped on its hinges. A gap that has stayed parallel and simply opened up means the hinge post has moved away. A leaf that catches the ground at one point in its swing and clears everywhere else is reporting a high spot in the drive, not a gate fault. Those three point at different repairs, and correcting the wrong one leaves the real fault carrying the weight.

Cracks turn up in the same few places. Frame corners first, then the hinge tabs, then wherever a brace lands. A crack starts at the toe of the weld, where load piles up against a hard edge, and it runs on under the coating at both ends. A fresh bead over the line hides it for a season while the crack grows underneath. We grind back to clean metal and weld through the joint.

Racking is the slower way a leaf goes out. Four tubes in a rectangle fold at their corners under the leaf's own weight, and a diagonal welded from the bottom of the hinge stile up to the top of the latch stile turns that rectangle into two triangles. Plenty of gates were built without one. Where the brace is there and the leaf still droops, the corner welds have cracked and let the frame go out of square. Taking a twist out means clamping the leaf flat on a bench, so a racked frame comes to the shop and the diagonal goes in once the frame is true. Weld it into a racked frame and the sag is locked in for good.

Hinges that tear out are usually telling you about the post. A gate post takes a swinging load that levers against it every time the leaf moves, so it wants a heavier section and a thicker wall than the hardware bolted to it suggests. Land a new hinge on a post too light for the leaf and it tears out the same way. The post gets upsized, or a reinforcing plate goes in at the hinge line, before the worn hinge is cut away and a new one welded to sound steel. A post that has to be reset goes at least 36 inches into concrete, deeper under a wide leaf, which is what this shop does rather than what any code says.

Double gates fail in the middle. The passive leaf is held by a drop rod dropping into a sleeve in the drive, and when that leaf sags or its post settles, the rod stops finding the sleeve. People then force the latch by driving the active leaf against the passive one, and that cracks the welds along the latch edge. The repair is to put the two leaves back level and re-set the receiver, not to fit a longer rod.

A slide gate reports its fault through where it binds. Resistance at one point in travel and free running elsewhere points at the track, a bent section or grit packed into the V groove. Resistance the whole way along points at the rollers, or at a frame that has sagged down onto them. A roller with a flat spot thumps once per revolution and you can hear it from the house. We straighten track and change rollers, and on an automated gate the roller guarding goes back on with them.

The line between repair and replacement runs along the bottom rail. A gate frame is a closed loop of tube and water finds its way inside, so the wall goes there first. Push a screwdriver into the underside of that rail near each corner. Where it goes through, no weld will hold, and that rail gets cut out and a new one spliced in. A new leaf is the call when the bottom rail, the hinge stile and both lower corners have gone together. A gate hanging on its hinges cannot go back in the galvanizing kettle, so the weld zone gets ground clean and coated on its own.

Put an operator on the gate and standards come into the repair. ASTM F2200 says a gate must not fall more than 45 degrees from vertical if it leaves its supporting hardware, which is what stops, keepers and catch brackets get welded on for, and it puts positive stops at both ends of travel on a horizontal slide gate. Under UL 325, summarized in DASMA Technical Data Sheet 350, a gap under 16 inches between a moving gate and a fixed opposing edge counts as an entrapment zone up to 6 feet above grade, so steel added in a repair must not create a new one. The operator, its electronics and its wiring belong to other trades, and what we hand them is a frame that moves freely.

Pool gates get the strict treatment. Health and Safety Code 115923 puts the access gate inside the barrier: it opens away from the pool, closes by itself, and latches with the latch no lower than 60 inches above the ground. A leaf that has dropped an inch can throw the self latching out of line, open a gap at the latch edge that passes a 4 inch sphere, and leave more than 2 inches under the bottom rail, all at the same time. Send a photo of the gate closed, taken square on from outside the opening, and one of the hinge side with the leaf swung open. Then two measurements: across the opening post to post, and the latch gap at the top and again at the bottom. The difference between those two says how far out of square the leaf is before anyone drives out. Say whether there is an operator on it. Welding repair is C-60 work.