outdoor
Electric gates and automation
Automating a pair of existing gates costs £2,500 to £5,000, and a new gate and automation together £4,000 to £9,000. The motor is the cheap half. What the money buys is the safety equipment that stops a powered gate closing on somebody, and that is not optional.
What this covers
What it costs. Automating existing gates is £2,500 to £5,000. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Automating existing gates with underground or ram motors
- Running supply, safety edges and photocells
- Intercom and keypad entry to the gate
- Force testing and safety compliance on installation
- Repairing motors, boards and failed safety devices
What is involved
Two motor types cover almost everything domestic. Ram or articulated arms bolt to the pillar and the gate leaf, they are quick to fit and they suit a gate that opens inwards onto level ground. Underground motors sit in a drained box beneath the hinge and are what a gate opening onto a slope or a conservation frontage usually needs, at roughly a third more. Sliding gates run on a toothed rack and want a level run the width of the opening beside the driveway, which many houses do not have.
A powered gate is machinery, and it falls under the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations rather than under the wiring rules. That means a risk assessment, force testing at the closing edges with a gauge, and safety devices sized to what the assessment found: photocells across the opening, safety edges on the leading edge, and a controller that reverses on resistance. An installer who quotes a motor and a remote and nothing else is quoting half a job, and it is the half that matters.
The supply is usually a dedicated armoured run from the consumer unit to a post at the gate, with an isolator there, and ducting laid across the drive for the crossing cable and for the safety devices on the far leaf. That ducting is the thing to get in while the drive is open. Retrofitting it later means cutting the surface, and on a block drive that costs more than the motors did.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask for the force testing figures and the risk assessment in writing, and ask which safety devices the assessment calls for. Ask whether the price includes ducting under the drive and an isolator at the gate. Ask what happens in a power cut and where the manual release key lives. Ask who services it and what that costs a year.
Common questions
How do the gates open in a power cut?
Every motor has a manual release, usually a key that disengages the drive so the leaf can be pushed by hand. Find out where that key is kept on the day of handover rather than on a dark evening. Battery backup is an option and adds a few hundred pounds.
Do electric gates need safety edges?
It depends what the risk assessment finds, and on most domestic installations the answer is yes on the leading edge plus photocells across the opening. A gate that closes on a child without reversing is the failure this equipment exists to prevent.