I got a cheap cattle gate for my driveway. Im looking at getting a opener and maybe an electronic lock.
Either GTO or the cheaper mighty mule.
Anyone have experience with them?

Looks like this



Also thinking about putting some of these blocks that i have behind it and maybe running a cable across to the other for when I really need to block the driveway.



Any other ideas or suggestions for securing a driveway?

I built a gate like that for my driveway and was planning on putting an opener on it, but never did because of the divorce curse.

The advice everyone gave me back then was to make sure it was free swinging, because if it used a wheel, it would hangup and not open/close. Even if I had a concrete pad, the smallest pebble could stall it.

Gate is to keep out nuisance solicitors.
Retractable bollards are for security.

Run video cable at the same time you run power for the automatic opener.        
 

I installed a GTO Mighty Mule FM500 gate opener on my gate.

Much to the consternation of the local Apollo Dealer who offered to come install a good opener when this one failed.
I bought mine at Tractor Supply and installed it in 2005.

IIRC he offered to install a system for about $1,000.00. I paid around $350.00 for the GTO.

The reason I went with it was because I could install it myself. I did not want to have to deal with a dealer.

-I wanted something that I could install and work on myself.

I ended up buying two,
about a year or so after I bought the first one, I found one on sale and picked it up as a spare.
About a year ago, I had to replace the motorized arm, the old one started grinding and not closing.
It was nice having the spare and just swapping them out.

As an aside, my next door neighbor has an Apollo Gate opener and over they years I have seen repairmen working on it,
but I have no idea what problems it had or what those service calls cost him.

For the money, it's a decent opener.
I have mine working on solar, no electricity at the front of the property.

In my system, the batteries are the weak link.
My system is older and uses the small 12v 7.0AH sealed batteries and I have to replace them at least every two years.
I think the newer systems may use an automobile battery.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with it.

ETA: We replaced our cattle gate with a heavier gate before we installed the opener.


and we still use the chain if we are going to be gone any length of time.

I built a gate like the one pictured for my brother.  It has a Liftmaster opener, and the gate at my house does too.  Buy once, cry once, but Liftmaster is one of the best on the market.  If you want to run a mag-lock, you will need power to the gate.  If not, you can install a small solar panel with no digging required.

The "Mule" is junk.  The only way it will last is if it isn't used very much.

Yea, sounds like what I heard from the guy selling Apollo openers.

I've heard it from quite a few people and have a friend who's opener died.  I still bought a mighty mule opener for my gate, they are significantly cheaper than most other options.  Hopefully it will work out.



 

Going to be solar powered. House is about 200 yards away through swamp and woods.
Just ordered a GTO SW2000XL for 560$
My parents have one that has done ok and its a little better than the mighty mule according to reviews.
I thought about putting a real gate behind the electric one in case its needed and could keep people from getting in with a car. But i think the cable might be good enough for now with the blocks.

I like that gate.

Im trying to be low profile from the road. My friend wanted to build me a nice one.

If you open it much solar power is going to be expensive



 

Funny thing,
That IS a low profile gate out where we live.

ETA:
When we bought the land (it was just raw land), it had a really old, broken, crappy cattle gate.

First year we owned the property, I replaced it with a gate similar to yours,
problem is, all the un-occupied land out here use those gates.

We decided it might be a better idea to get a little nicer gate to let people know that the land was occupied.

Can't see our house or any buildings from the gate, and we have had no trespassers or thefts.
I think it is a bit of a deterrent, since no one can know if there is anyone home or not.

Good work! You have everything under control and the knowledge to repair it from time to time, while your turkey neighbor will be throwing good $$$ after bad, having someone else do the work.

Exactly the critical thinking skills of an Common Sense Prepper for a Good Life!

If you are not paranoid a nice video system will make you paranoid.  You don't know who all stops to look at stuff or what vehicles travel your road x times a day or week.



Video was added as an upgrade to the overall security system and it caused a lot more upgrades.



I have some cheap gates like that for a little area behind my dog kennel for my wheeled toys and they are light and cheap.



I know you said you got an opener but start learning what it will take for a better and heavier gate if you decide to go that way.



I am big on chain or cable for securing things and even these cheap gates have their uses.



Something to always keep in mind is that as you make it more attractive some folks want to know what you are hiding.



I despise having to get out and open and close a gate to go up a driveway, and at the same time it is a heck of a filter as well.



Right now I rent but I am looking at some property and desolate is the goal.  Cheap remote controlled gate with serious cameras is the first point and then a much more serious choke point and gate further in.



One thing about a gate with a camera, it is awfully easy to prove someone had to do something to get past it.  Climb a gate with no trespassing signs or just cut the gate open, they made a nice statement when they stand before a judge.

Good post and valid points...

We used to install gate openers (I own a small security company); both GTO and DoorKing brands, but I took us out of that market for two reasons. First, the mighty mule is gto, same stuff; and as mentioned above, it can be had to DIY'ers for a third of what we charged. Second reason I got us out of the business was that gate operators make for unhappy customers. Doesn't matter if it's a door king, a gto, or whatever, gates are higher-maintenance items than I want to be associated with. They've got electrical, electronic, and mechanical parts, all three; and they're out in the weather 24/7. A person may have one that operates for years with no problems, but as a whole, they're simply high-maintenance items. Power surges on hardwire-powered models, ground faults, lightning hits (that gate is the biggest chunk of near-ground metal in the pasture...), all kinds of bad things happen to gates electrically.

Main advantage to gto/mighty-mule is that they run on DC, so they lend themselves to use in remote locations. They run on battery power - even if you have a 120-vac power supply, the operator still runs on battery power; the power supply only serves to keep the battery charged. That leads to another maintenance item (a battery in a non-climate-controlled environment 24/7), but it also makes it easy to convert to solar power. The mfr offers solar kits, but (don't tell my customers this), I bought 15-watt panels from harbor freight for less than the 5-watt kits cost from GTO. Depending on your location, your tree cover, and the frequency of use, a 5- or 10-watt panel may or may not be adequate. I've never had a 15-watt be insufficient.

Be prepared for angry looks from mama when she wants to go somewhere and your gate won't open on a cold, rainy morning; or when she's coming home and has to get out of the vehicle in a winter ice storm because the gate's acting up. It will almost certainly happen eventually. We're in the design process of a new home ourselves, and while we will have a gate operator, it will definitely be an oversized unit with an oversize power source and very good surge suppression.

You might consider a driveway annunciator as well; a sensor that doesn't physically block access, but will chime in your house when a vehicle does enter the gate. We use optex brand for our customers; the RCTD-U iirc. They're extremely stable and while I've never pushed their claim of 2,000 foot range, I know they'll run well over a thousand if the conditions aren't horrible.

Truth.
I have a driveway camera that e-mails me a snapshot when there is motion on the driveway.
The pics I got when I wasn't home prompted me to put in a gate and another camera with license plate capability.

Good info
I know they are trouble. My parents has been struck atleast 5 times and shorted out.


I have a Chamberlain sensor system right now but i have trucks that leave every morning from my current driveway so i cant use it for anything but people at door sensors.
Sensors at each door ( pointing towards doors so it chimes when they walk up)
and a extra sensor in my shed if someone walks in or breaks in.
Added the optex to my wish list.



Is it a wired camera or deer camera type?

Ill post a pic in a little bit when I go work on the driveway.

Mighty Mule openers are not going to last very long.  I got 14 months out of mine opening a lightweight 16' ranch gate.  My neighbor only got 11 months out of his opening a 10' pipe gate.  He replaced the board, and got another 6 months out of it before it broke again.  Spend the extra money on something more stout instead of throwing away your money on a mighty mule.

Looks very sandy.
Nice trees though.

Thanks. Right behind the truck is swamp. Only one open spot other than the driveway. house is surrounded by swamp and lake.

When I first came here, this was all swamp.
Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them.
It sank into the swamp.
So I built a second one.
That sank into the swamp.
So I built a third.
That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.
But the fourth one stayed up.
And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of the land.

Here's the dirty little secret I dishcovered 20 years ago at a commercial installation [airport] that was having their operators and sensors taken out frequently during TS.

Bond BOTH SIDES of the fence terminations where the gate interposes.

Use several heavy gauge wires if you can, and run them underground in separate 1/2 inch PVC conduit between the terminating fence lines at each side of the gate.

You want to achieve a low inductance of the 'bridging' wires to minimize the voltage potential at/across the gate and electronics during a strike.


If you look carefully at some TSA fences, you will see they have finally figgered this out.  

Nice digs!!!

Mighty Mule and GTO are the same company.  I have gone through 5 openers in 10 years.   Even though I have a light weight cattle gate I kept burning them out.  I upgraded to the light industrial (5000 series?) and the mechanical components have lasted but but I have sent the control board back for replacement twice.  

I swear each time the damn thing fails I am going to move to an expensive commercial gate opener.  But the GTO junk is just cheap enough to keep me hooked.  

But I want to sing!!!



I'm in the process now of shopping for an opener for my gate... and based on reviews it looks like a crap shoot for all brands almost regardless of price.



I do wonder though how many of the early failures on the "decent" DIY models are tied to poor installation and/or poorly hung gate.



The gate on our drive was put up long before we bought the place and isn't even remotely close to balanced.... it's easy enough to open by hand, but I know the openers don't have much in the way of torque.



I plan on fixing it to be perfectly balanced before hooking up an opener.



 

I just gave up and went for it. Bought the GTO

It seems like most the reviews on amazon are from people that can't figure out the directions and they never get anything to work right.

My internet searching revealed the same. - crapshoot and all gate openers have problems.

I think quake summed t up nicely:


By their very nature, they are high maintenance items.

Yes they are. Choosing the right one for the application goes a long way to reliability.

We've used one similar to the one below for 20+ years in CA. Had to replace a microswitch abt 10 years ago. Added an aluminum disk about as big as a plate, to act as a rain guard over the opening where the shaft exits the top. This style are heavy duty and maybe an better investment. Shop on ebay for the best price.

They need to be mounted on a concrete base, best to consider your rain and water conx to make the base so that the operator has minimal exposure to water and moisture getting under it.


Same control all these years installed in a separate remote NEMA box [they were constructed with less integration then]

The gate is hinged at one point and not overly heavy. Operation is fast and we like it.







Be sure to bond the 2 fence terminations [if there are long fences on both sides, otherwise it doesn't matter much] to avoid lightning and EMP damage to electronics.

Right now all I have for cameras are a couple of the cheap kits you can buy online and add in a hard drive of your choice to it.  They were on sale last winter and I wanted something to mess with.



I had read in the security camera thread that I was probably wasting my money, but having something that was up and running pretty easily is worth what it is worth.



I want a game cam for better pictures of vehicles in the driveway but have been reluctant to spend the money.



I will eventually buy some rather expensive cameras and what not but having something in place quickly has helped where I am at, it is rural area but I am on a busy 2 lane highway so lots of traffic going by.



I see what the dogs are barking at when I am home.  I halfway want a gopro for the dogs to see what they bark at when I am not home.  And sometimes would need it to see what they were barking at when I was home.  But I don't really want to see everything my dog sees after watching the 2 of them off and on for a few months.



Security is like an onion is what everyone says.  You want to be able to see what is going on before you get there.



Just knowing if the gate had a wear and tear problem or was sabatoged by a couple bored kids would also be nice to know.

I'm using a Moultrie M990i game camera to catch license plates at my gate.  Trigger time is sub 1 second and I get most cars that drive by.  I put in a solar panel to keep it up and running otherwise the batteries would run down every week or so. (Overgrown grass was triggering the camera causing >2000 pictures a week - now it's not as big of a problem.)



I like that it's blacked out and silent, so no visible glow from the flash going off.  It can't get license plates at night, the flash combines with the license plate light makes it too bright and unreadable.



Reconyx has a game cam that is specifically for getting license plates at night, but the price is $500+.

       
 

I have a strong single post and beam gate.  Its not automatic so it stays open almost 100% of the time.  I will post a picture when photobucket isn't blocked

It bears restating that the key to having a gate operator live a long, healthy life is to have the gate very well hinged.  If you go cheap on the operator, this point becomes even more important.  My brother's gate is heavy, so we used roller bearing hinges that were almost triple the required size.  You can open it with a fingertip, so the operator has very little strain.


My Liftmaster LA400 is three years old now.  One of the twelve volt batteries just went bad yesterday.  These operate off the batteries, with either a charger keeping them topped off, or with solar doing the same.  The gate still opens, but is a bit slow.  Amazon will have new batts for me in three days, or I have two used ones on my desk if it stops running.

I just put gates in the two entrances to my property. It's wooded so I was able to mount them onto very large trees. I also wrapped both sides with heavy chains and high end padlocks. Posted signs, and barbwire on both sides. Luckily with the woods on both sides no one is getting a car or motorcycle around the fences.

My entrances also turn 90 degrees after passing thought the gates so no one can see more then a few feet into the property.

My choice was heavy tube gates.

In my area an automatic heavy duty fence might actually draw a lot of attention. I pretty much matched what all the other farms were using to not make it stand out.

I just put up a gate on our place. We lock it at all times now due to some issues locally.


We went with this locking mech that is padlocked when we are in for the evening or throughout the day. It also keeps the weight of the gate off the hinges as I set it about 2 inches higher than the resting point of the gate.

I have one of the Mighty Mule/GTO openers here, it came with the house.

No issues so far, it is only swinging a light pair of chainlink gates. I do plan on replacing them with a pair of steel gates in the near future.
Hopefully it holds up, it is now about 5 years old and other then a dog chewing up the wires to one motor, it has worked.
One issue I have had is the range of the openers SUCKS. I have tried new batteries, different openers, relocated the antenna. Nothing seems to make it occasionally not work very well, to where you have to be right in front of it for the gate to open.

In my professional life (home automation), Door king is the "go to" for gate openers but they are OMG expensive.