Every winter a certain kind of call picks up at our office. A driveway gate that worked fine all fall starts stopping halfway, reversing for no reason, or just sitting there when you press the remote. Most of the time the cold is behind it, and most of the time it can be fixed without replacing the gate.
Cold weather affects automatic gates in a few predictable ways. Batteries hold less charge and solar panels collect less sun. Ice and snow get into tracks, hinges and the path the gate travels. Safety sensors read snow or frost as an obstruction. And grease and oil stiffen, so the opener works harder than it did in July. Here’s how each one shows up and what you can safely check yourself.
Solar gates and short days
In December the sun sits low and the days are short, so a solar panel collects far less than it does in summer. Snow on the panel cuts that to almost nothing. At the same time, cold temperatures reduce how much a battery can deliver. Put those together and a battery that was getting by in September can run flat before the holidays.
The signs are usually easy to spot. The gate works in the afternoon but not first thing in the morning, it moves slower than it used to, or it runs a few times and then quits. Start by brushing snow off the panel and looking at what’s around it. A spot that got full sun in June can sit in the shadow of a tree or the house once the sun drops lower in the sky. Think about traffic, too. A gate that opens four times a day most of the year might open twenty times a day when family is in town, and the panel can’t keep up.
Batteries also wear out with age. If the gate keeps dying even after a run of sunny days, the battery probably needs replacing. On a gate that sees heavy use, a larger panel or more battery capacity can be the better long-term fix. I wrote about the upside of solar in an older post on solar-powered gates, and it’s still a great fit on a lot of properties. It just needs to be sized for winter, not summer.
Ice and snow in the gate’s path
Slide gates that roll on a ground track are the most exposed. Packed snow and ice in the track can lift a wheel off the rail or stop it cold, and the opener will strain or shut down. Cantilever gates hang from rollers mounted on posts and have no track on the ground, which is one reason they make sense on a lot of Colorado driveways. Swing gates need a clear arc. A ridge of snow left by the plow, a drift that builds against the gate overnight, or a pile someone shoveled into the swing path can stop a swing gate a few feet in.
Keep the track and the swing path clear, and watch where the shovel and the snowblower are throwing snow. Go easy on rock salt right at the gate. It helps with ice, but it’s hard on steel and on the opener’s moving parts.
Safety sensors doing their job
Automatic gates are built to stop or reverse when something is in the way. Most have photo eyes, a pair of sensors that send a beam across the opening, and many openers also sense resistance and back off when the gate meets it. In winter, snow on a lens, frost, an icicle, or a drift across the beam can convince the gate that a car is sitting in the opening. A hinge stiff with ice can feel like an obstruction to the opener, too.
When a gate refuses to close or keeps reversing, wipe the photo eye lenses with a soft cloth and look for anything breaking the beam. What you should never do is disconnect, tape over, or bypass a safety device to get the gate to close. Those devices are what keep a heavy gate from closing on a person, a pet or a car, and a gate that’s acting up is exactly when you want them working.
Stiff grease and a motor that’s working harder
The grease in hinges, rollers and gearboxes thickens in the cold, and hydraulic openers run on fluid that does the same. The opener has to push harder to move the same gate. You’ll notice it as a slower gate, a motor that sounds strained, or a gate that hits its force limit and stops partway.
The fix is usually the right lubricant for cold weather and an adjustment by someone who knows the opener. I’d steer you away from turning up the force setting yourself. That setting is tied directly to how hard the gate pushes against whatever is in its way, so it’s a safety setting as much as a performance one.
Frost heave and a gate that no longer lines up
Denver gets a lot of freeze and thaw cycles in a winter. Sunny days soften the top of the ground and cold nights freeze it again, and that movement can shift a post a little at a time. A gate that latched perfectly in October may drag across the driveway, miss its latch, or stop short of its closed position by January. Usually that points to a post that wasn’t set deep enough or a footing that wasn’t shaped to resist frost.
Sometimes the gate itself is the problem. A wood gate on a wood frame will sag over time, which is why we build our wood gates on steel frames. If the gate is steel and it’s sagging, look at the hinges and the hinge post first. Our post on steel, wrought iron and aluminum fences gets into why steel frames hold up better on wide driveway gates.
What you can check before calling
A few things are safe for any homeowner to look at. Clear snow and ice from the track and the swing path, brush off the solar panel, and wipe the photo eye lenses. Replace the battery in your remote, since cold weather is hard on those too, and check that the keypad lights up. Look for anything leaning against the gate or caught in the hinges.
If you need to open the gate by hand, use the manual release described in your opener’s manual, and keep your hands clear of the hinges, rollers and chain. Don’t try to force a gate open while the opener is still engaged. That’s a good way to strip gears and turn a small repair into a bigger one.
Our post on making an automatic gate last covers the year-round maintenance that keeps most of these problems from starting.
When it’s time to call
Call if the gate keeps reversing after the sensors and the path are clear, if you hear grinding, clicking or humming, if the gate drags, sags or misses the latch, if the battery won’t hold a charge after a few sunny days, or if the gate took a hit from a car or a windstorm. For a shared drive, an HOA entrance or a business, where a keypad or phone access controls who gets in, our gate access control work covers the controls side as well as the gate.
We service gate openers we didn’t install, and we’ll tell you straight whether it’s an adjustment, a part, or something bigger. More often than not it’s one of the first two. You can read more about the gates we build and service on our automatic gate systems page, or about our gate and fence repair work.
Send us the details on what your gate is doing, a short video helps if you can grab one, and we’ll get you on the schedule or set up a free estimate.