The Fence – Part 6 of ??
Let There Be Gates
We still faced the dilemma of no truck and no delivery option for gates; and no place that rents trucks also sells gates. In the end we opted to get these heavy duty bull gates from Fleet Farm, which were on sale at the time, and rent a truck from the Menards just down the road. The first time we went to get the gates they were out of two of the sizes we wanted. We came back home, did another search and discovered they were sold out anywhere we could reasonably drive (being on sale), so we opted to change the sizes for the two smaller gates and try again the next day. They had the new sizes, so we bought the gates in the store, got the little slip that lets you into the “yard” area to pick them up, then drove two miles down the road to Menards, rented the Menards truck, then drove the Menards truck back to Fleet Farm to get the gates. The gate attendant at Fleet Farm gave us some lip about having a Menards truck – dude, if Fleet Farm rented trucks I would have rented a Fleet Farm truck but you don’t, so shut it! When we were in the yard loading our gates, I noticed that the sizes we had originally wanted but were supposedly sold out were sitting right there – of course. I also noticed that I had forgotten to bring any tiedowns this time; we drove VERY slowly home hoping we didn’t lose a gate on the way. They all made it safely and I managed to get the Menards truck back within the 75 minute window so I didn’t get charged the extra $15!
Now we had to figure out how to get the gates on our posts. The normal way to hang a gate is to drill a large hole through your wood fence post and put this giant J bolt through it, but since we have fiberglass fence posts that isn’t an option. The company we bought our fence posts from do sell gate hinge assemblies, but they are $80+ per gate and when you look, there isn’t much too them. I felt there had to be a cheaper option, and we found one! It looked to be about the same thing and it was only $20 per gate. The size wasn’t a perfect fit, but I measured and it looked like they were just a tiny bit bigger so I figured we could make them work.
Once the hinges arrived we went out to install the gates and ran in to our first issue. We had already put all the stuff (the braces and the ElectroBraid) on the end post on the hinge side of the small gate which meant we couldn’t slide the gate hinges onto the post. We considered taking everything off and starting over, but considering we had already tensioned the ElectroBraid five thousand times (okay, nine times) we said, f-it. This is temporary and this gate is mostly going to be used to go in and out to fill and clean water tanks so who cares what side the hinge is on.
As you can see in the picture the cheaper hinge assembly was also more than “just a tiny bit bigger” and was, in fact, too big to use. Of course. After some staring and swearing I realized I could probably combine some of the pieces of the hinge kit we got with some of the extra pieces from the corner posts we wound up not using because I went and bought a round pen the first time I tried to buy gates. Once the barn is built – it will be built! – we’ll use all the corner posts, but I’ll have figured out a better hinge solution by then (hopefully).
Now that we had a temporary working solution for the hinges, we just had to figure out where to put them on the end post itself. This also proved super challenging; if we had the end post fully installed the braces would be in place and we couldn’t get the hinge parts on, but without having the post up how were we supposed to know where to put the hinge parts? Also someone had to hold the gate while the other person figured out where the hinges should go but the end post wasn’t fully installed so someone had to hold that too. The whole thing took us way too long to figure out, but we did eventually get the end post installed with the hinges on. Then we went to get the J bolts off the gate (they come attached sideways for transport so they don’t stick out) and discovered that we couldn’t. They would not budge. At one point we were actually bending the gate itself, not good. That ended our very frustrating evening; we decided to pause and try again in a few days after a trip to LeVahn Brothers.
The gates are designed with one hinge welded to the gate itself and the other bolted in place so it can be adjusted. We were able to get the adjustable part off and bring that and its stuck J bolt to LeVahn Brothers. I walked in and when they asked what I was looking for I handed them my stuck bolt and said I need to get these two things apart. He said, “I can do that for you.” took it to the back and returned shortly with them separated. Which was great, but I still had seven more stuck things at home and four of them were welded to the gates so I couldn’t bring them into the store to have him very kindly un-stick them for us. It was determined we needed a breaker bar and a really large wrench. I brought my new acquisitions home and they worked like a charm, everything came apart with ease. The proper tools are so important!
In the intervening time I also got much smarter (trying to do these things at night after work is never a good idea, no one is at their smartest after a long day of work) and realized that I could lay out the end post on the ground and lay the gate next to it along with all the other parts and line up where we needed things without anyone trying to hold anything, also we didn’t need to get the gate hinges exactly correct while installing the end post, we just needed to have them in-between the other stuff in the vicinity of their final location. We also had a friend come over to help us out. Having a third set of hands, proper tools, and a better plan made a huge difference! With all that the second gate went up much faster and easier than the first.
Now we had gates; not 100% square and level, but good enough! On to the last step of the fence, electrification. At this point I have stopped saying to myself “How hard could this be?” or “What could go wrong?” Everything about this has been harder than it should have been, and at this step what can go wrong is electrocution, let’s not tempt fate.