Electric Gates

[FredBloggs]

We moved into our house two years ago. It had an old style front garden and a very narrow driveway which meant it was almost impossible to park a car in it. As we live on a main road it is important to do so. When we had builders in after we purchased we widened the entrance (was included in our pp) and put down cobblelock in the front to park cars. This meant we had to remove all the hedges etc from the front. Most other houses on the road have hedges inside their front wall but we have now only a pretty low front wall.
Some of our neighbours have electric gates and we never considered same as ours is an ordinary road and we figured those with electric gates were pretty pretentious. However a number of incidents in our front garden have changed our opinion - these include a few visits from a very beligerant tramp who nearly knocked the front door down and screamed obsenities at my wife and children, a tramp who exposed himself in our front garden and urinated over my wifes car (she called the police - they never turned up - a neighbour "noticed" the tramp had a head injury and called an ambulance - they were there in five mins) and local schoolchildren (teenagers) who deposit their lunch left overs in our garden (we are the last house on the way to the school and they leave the school at lunchtime to purchase food in out local supermarket).

Anyway the upshot of it all is we've decided we must get the gates and build up the front wall - and the boundary walls with our neighbour - with fencing. How much aprox would it cost for electric gates?

 

[FredBloggs]

Thanks for that. I'll go ahead and get a few quotes now that I know aprox the money involved for the gates. Definitely need it as a security measure.
Would anyone know the procedure about putting fencing on a boundary wall. I wouldn't do it of course without neighbours argeement which hopefully shouldn'tbe a problem. But if he wanted to could he stop me from doing so?

 

[Scaper]

It all depends on the type of electric system you want and the extras that you specify with the system. I paid approx €3,750 for gates and the electric automated system. This included Intercom , keypad & 4 keyfobs. The electric opener is the ram type fixed above ground to the pillars & gates. The other type is the below ground system which generally is dearer, but can be problamatic in terms of water accumulating in the motor box. The €3,750 did not include bringing the necessary power cabling to the pillars or the intercom cables into the house. I did this myself.

Would be interested to know what gates and motor you got for < € 4k. In my experience gates etc are more likely to cost > € 5k. We've never encountered any problems with flooding, proper specification and more importantly properly installed. Why would motors flood? Poor installation I guess.

 

[angela59]

Hi there,

I would concur with petermack that when I was researching the underground system is more problematic. We have gates with ram attached for that last 3 years and not many problems. We had gates already as we lived here for a while but when kids came along decided on the gates. It cost about E2500 for our electrician to install them this was including rams, and wiring from house down to gate which is apprx 80meters that price is 3 years old. The only thing against the ram type living in a built up area that I was told of is the wire connecting the electricity to the ram can get snipped for one reason or another - not sure how true this is but I can see how it happens - I'm a country dweller so I have had no problems in this matter. But I can say that having the gates is nothing to do with being pretentious rather of feeling safe. The only other suggestion I could give is if you are getting them in have a switch so that you can leave them open if you are expecting an oil delivery lorry or expecting family etc, I find the switch very handy and just switch if off when they are gone. Best of luck

 

[Scaper]

Thanks for that. I'll go ahead and get a few quotes now that I know aprox the money involved for the gates. Definitely need it as a security measure.
Would anyone know the procedure about putting fencing on a boundary wall. I wouldn't do it of course without neighbours argeement which hopefully shouldn'tbe a problem. But if he wanted to could he stop me from doing so?

They could if fence height exceeds 1.8m. Above this planning is required. But it is usually best practice to at least discuss with neighbours. Also you need to consider which fencing because some have good side and bad side (latter exposed framework etc) which is usually what infuriates neighbours. Better to select a style that has similar finish both sides. Fixings is best by anchors (eg rawl bolt anchors) assuming wall is robust otherwise posts should be set in concrete footings. All timbers should be pressure treated and if necessary can be painted to suit particular style.

There are some cheap and cheerful standard panels but also some better quality panels available, but a very good solution is to use a weatherboard finish (vertical/horizontal) and provides a robust but neat finish on bothsides.

 

[FredBloggs]

Thanks for all your help.
Angela thanks for the idea re the switch - I hadn't thought of that. Certainly there are times when you'd need to leave the gates open and definitely it is a security issue re getting the gates. (One of my freinds sold his house recently in another area as he was trading up due to growing family and he had no problem selling to an older couple who were down sizing and he reckoned the main selling point was the security of the electric gates he'd just installed!)
Scaper - thanks for your detailed reply. I will definitely go for fencing which is equally appealing on the neighbours side as I wouldn't (a) want to get their backs up and (b) I wouldn't want ugly fencing imposed on me.

I hate to spend the money on the fencing and gates as there are about 100 othewr things I could use the money for but as I said in my first post unfortunately its definitely needed