Driveway Gates

Driveway gates close the one opening in your boundary that everything else has to come through. They go on lifestyle-block entrances off a rural road, on suburban front boundaries where the fence line steps in around a car pad, at the head of a shared right of way, and across the entry to a yard where the fence is already doing its job everywhere except the gap. Some are bought for security, some to keep dogs and children off the road, and plenty go in simply because a house has been re-fenced and the gap now looks unfinished. Group One New Zealand designs, manufactures and installs them to the driveway they are going on, which is a different purchase from carrying a stock gate home from a building merchant and hoping the opening matches.

Swing or sliding: your driveway decides, not your preference

This is the first question and it is usually settled by the ground rather than by taste.

Swing gates hang on posts and open like a pair of doors. They suit a level or near level entrance with room for the leaves to travel. What catches people out is the arc: a leaf needs clear ground through its whole swing, so a rising driveway, a bank, a letterbox or a parked car in the wrong spot all rule out an opening direction. Single leaf works on a narrow entry, a pair on anything wide, because two shorter leaves need far less depth than one long one.

Sliding gates run sideways across the opening, either on a bottom track or cantilevered off rollers set back on the fence line. They need clear run-off space beside the driveway equal to roughly the width of the opening. They are the answer where the ground slopes, where there is no room to swing, or where the driveway is short enough that a swinging leaf would sit over the parking space. Cantilever design suits ground that collects gravel, mud or snow, because there is no track on the ground to block.

Wide openings, heavy leaves and awkward ground are all workable. If your property or commercial site is irregular, tricky, lacking in space or hard to reach, or you have a very specific idea in mind, that is exactly the sort of job worth talking through on site.

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Measured on your driveway, then built to those numbers

Design comes first, and it starts at your place. We’ll come out and take a look at the site and discuss ideas with you about the best solution for your situation. That visit records the opening width, the fall across it, the ground surface, the fence line either side, where the leaf can stand open and what is available for power if the gate is going to be automated.

Manufacture happens in the workshop: frame, infill, posts, hinges or track, and the finish. Nothing is cut to a standard size and adjusted on site.

Installation is the day the posts go in. Post footings do most of the work on a swing gate and are dug to suit the leaf weight and the ground, and a sliding gate gets its track or its cantilever rollers set dead level. The gate is hung, the latch or lock is fitted and adjusted, and you get shown how to close it properly before we leave.

Manual now, automatic later

Plenty of driveway gates go in manual and get an opener added afterwards, and that is a much easier job when the gate was built with it in mind. Post size, leaf weight, hinge type and a conduit run under the driveway are all cheap decisions at the design stage and expensive ones later.

Our gates are solar powered as well, which saves you energy costs, and our range of safety devices and alternative opening methods allows us to have automatic gates on sloped ground as well as flat level. For heavier custom leaves we can also provide larger commercial motors. The full picture sits on the automatic gates page.

What moves the price

Gates are quoted per driveway, not per metre off a list. What the number follows:

• The opening width, and whether it is one leaf or two
• Swing or slide, and the track, rollers or cantilever hardware that goes with it
• Material and infill, and how much of the leaf is solid
• Post footings, and what the ground is (soil, gravel, existing concrete)
• Finish: galvanising, powder coating, staining or paint
• Automation, safety devices, locks and access hardware if they are part of the build

Call 027 424 0600 to Request a Free Quote