Gates

       Depending upon the type of home in which you live, gates can be very important.  Gates help to control access to your home and to your property.

In an urban or suburban setting a gate can block someone parking in your only parking space.     

(Photo: Reliable Gate Systems Company, Louise, Texas)

Gates can also be constructed so that climbing them would be difficult. This gate is the access to the walking area beside an automatic gate for cars. (Photo: Reliable Gate Systems)

           

There are many different types of extravagant gate systems.  Some homes have a couple of gate areas such as these, and although they do limit access, when they are as expensive as some of these systems, then we must carefully consider our message.  Was our message meant to be, "Stay Out" or was it meant to be "I have valuable stuff to protect and money to burn".  Make sure your gate system, if you choose one, says what you wish it to, and nothing more. Consider your neighborhood, your finances and how your gate will be perceived.  (Photo: Reliable Gate Systems)

      

This less expensive gate might be more of what you had in mind. (Photo: Reliable Gate Systems)

       In rural areas, such as my own, gates are very important.  I need to prevent people who have perhaps driven out from a city from driving into the heart of our farm and perhaps trying to hunt.  We need to prevent people without an appointment from entering the farm who are casing it for a wide variety of purposes.  We need to keep out the obvious people, such as people casing the farm to rob it of anything from household goods, to farm implements, animal feeds, hays, and livestock. We also need to prevent people who might think they can sell us something from entering.  We also like to control visits from people such as timberers or tax assessors, as we would like to give them our full attention when they are here.  We need our gates to to say, "No entry here, without an appointment".   We do not need people to think we took a second mortgage in order to get them.   In choosing our gates, we went with something a bit more conservative.


     Our series of gates is based on a classic livestock gate which can be purchased in many colors or even painted your own color.  (Keep in mind, painting it yourself periodically is added maintenance)

This basic type of gate suits everything from farm entrances, either singly or placed with two side by side. These can be a good choice because they are less expensive in comparison, and then should you need more of them to control areas of access within your farm, it will be a less expensive task to add them.  We began with a couple of gates to control farm entry, and then later added other gates to limit access to the farm road which leads to the house, one which leads to the barn, etc.  This way, in an emergent situation in your nation, you could theoretically lock down your entire farm, making access with a vehicle for the purpose of looting much more difficult.   One can also create choke points on your farm in order to photograph invaders or limit passage.   (Photo: http://www.hutchison-inc.com/html/lvst_equ/gates/livestock.php   )

    

This is another less expensive alternative.  (Photo: http://www.harmonygatesystems.com/Misc.html )

 

This type of gate is especially helpful if you need to keep animals of some type IN.  (Photo: http://www.hutchison-inc.com/html/lvst_equ/gates/livestock.php  )

We recently added an electric gate opener which opens the gate and closes it without leaving the car. This is especially useful should you be driving in thunderstorm especially with lightning. These can be battery powered and also backup up by a solar powered system.  Keep in mind that if you install an automatic gate opener you must make arrangements for emergency services.  They need to access your home or farm periodically. (Photo: http://www.daward-automation.com/woodengates.php )

      

This is also an example of a gate which automatically opens and closes.  (Photo: http://www.daward-automation.com/woodengates.php)

              My objective here was to give you some ideas as to what you might do with your own property if you benefit from restricting access to a driveway or even a particular region of your property.