Short answer
A gate lives outdoors all year. The posts move with the ground, the operator sits in full Texas sun, the wiring runs underground through soil that swells and shrinks, and the safety devices are exposed to weather, dust and insects. When a gate stops working, the fault is far more often in the ground, the power supply or a safety device than in the motor. Replacing an operator that was never broken is the most expensive mistake on a gate.
The three kinds of gate and how each one fails
A swing gate pivots on hinges at a post and is driven by either an arm operator or an underground operator. It fails when the post moves, because a post that has shifted even slightly changes the arc the gate has to travel and the operator starts forcing it. A slide gate runs on a track or on a cantilever carriage and is driven by a rack and pinion. It fails when the track fills with debris, when a roller seizes, or when the ground under the track settles unevenly. A cantilever gate carries its own weight on rollers and needs no ground track, so it avoids the debris problem but puts far more load into the posts and the counterbalance section. Each of those is a different repair with a different diagnosis.
What this ground does to gates
The expansive clay across the metroplex is harder on gates than on almost anything else on a property, because a gate post is a tall lever set in soil that changes volume with the seasons. A few degrees of lean at the base becomes several inches of misalignment at the latch. On swing gates that shows up as a gate that drags on the driveway in one season and clears it in another, or an operator that has to work visibly harder through part of its travel. On slide gates it shows up as a track that is no longer level, so the gate runs uphill for part of its run. Neither of those is an operator fault, and adjusting the operator force to compensate hides the problem while wearing the motor out.
Safety devices stop more gates than motors do
Every properly installed gate has devices that stop it: photo eyes across the opening, edge sensors on the leading edge, and loop detectors buried in the driveway that sense a vehicle. All of them are designed to stop the gate, and all of them are outdoors. Photo eyes fall out of alignment when a post moves or when someone knocks one. Edge sensors crack and let water in. Loop detectors fail where the saw cut in the driveway has opened up. A gate that opens but refuses to close, or that reverses partway, is very often a healthy operator correctly obeying a failed sensor. Checking those before touching the motor is the difference between a small repair and a large one.
Power, control and access
Gate operators run on mains power with a battery backup, and a great many call outs turn out to be supply problems: a tripped breaker, a failed transformer, a battery that has reached the end of its life so the gate works until the first outage, or solar panels that have not been cleaned in years. On the control side there are keypads, intercoms, card and fob readers, telephone entry systems and remotes, all of which sit outdoors and all of which fail in ways that look like the gate is broken. The wiring between them runs underground, and in this soil a conduit that has been pulled by ground movement or chewed by rodents is a genuine and common fault.
What a proper gate visit covers
Power is isolated before anything is opened. The gate is moved through its full travel by hand with the operator released, which immediately separates a gate problem from an operator problem, exactly the same principle as disconnecting a garage door opener. Posts are checked for plumb, hinges for wear, track and rollers for debris and settlement, and the leaf itself for sag. Then the operator is tested on its own: motor, gearbox, limits, manual release, battery condition and charging. Then every safety device is tested individually rather than assumed, and the access controls are checked back to their wiring. The manual release is demonstrated, because that is what you need on the day the power goes out.
Not sure what you have?
Send a photo of the label and describe what it is doing. That is usually enough to say whether the part is still made and what the repair involves.
Call (214) 271-8110Questions we get asked
My gate opens but will not close. Is the motor going?
Very unlikely. A motor that can open a gate has the strength to close it, and closing is the direction where all the safety devices are active. A gate that opens fine and refuses to close is nearly always a photo eye out of alignment, a failed edge sensor, or a loop detector in the driveway reading a vehicle that is not there. The operator is doing precisely what it is supposed to do. Replacing it would not fix anything.
The gate has started dragging on the driveway. Can it be adjusted?
Adjustment is the second step, not the first. Dragging usually means the post has moved, which in this soil is common and seasonal. Adjusting the hinge to clear the ground while the post is out of plumb buys a few months and puts the load somewhere else. The right sequence is to establish whether the post is still true, correct it if it is not, then set the hinges and the operator to the corrected geometry. A gate that is dragging is also telling you the operator has been pushing against friction, so its force settings are worth checking at the same time.
How do I open my gate when the power is out?
Every operator has a manual release, and the single most useful thing you can do before you need it is find yours and try it once. It is usually a lever or a key release on the operator housing that disengages the drive so the gate can be pushed by hand. Most gates also have a battery backup that will run a limited number of cycles during an outage. If your gate has stopped working entirely during an outage and the battery did nothing, the battery has almost certainly reached the end of its life rather than the gate failing.
Is gate work the same as garage door work?
The diagnostic principle is the same and almost nothing else is. Both are driven by an operator that is usually reporting a problem rather than causing one, and on both the first real test is to release the drive and move it by hand. After that they diverge completely. A gate has no counterbalance spring, it lives outdoors in full sun and weather, its foundations move with the seasons, its wiring is buried, and its safety and access systems are far more elaborate. They are related trades rather than the same one.
How often should a gate be serviced?
Once a year for a residential gate, and more often for a gate serving a community or a commercial site where the cycle count is many times higher. The visit that matters checks post plumb, hinge and roller wear, track condition, gate sag, operator limits and force, battery condition, and every safety device individually. In this region the most valuable part is the ground check, because post movement is gradual and is much cheaper to correct early than after it has been forcing the operator for two summers.