Gate pillars strong enough?

[Andehh]

We built two block gate pillars as part of our project.

 

They are made up of high density blocks laid flat, 2 blocks wide. They sit on foundations around 0.5 x 1m sq. Render then applied. 1.8m high for a sort of 1.2m ish gate?

 

The gap is 14ft wide, a miss communication when I wanted them closer together (builder replaced the old wood posts that were there 'as is', I verbally asked for them to be 10ft during quote stage... I didn't spot until too late)

 

A year later we're now looking at installing electric gates.

 

Due to the driveway gradiant rising more steeply on one side, we're looking at doing a 10ft gate and a 4ft pedestrian gate.

 

Now the builder and his team (who were excellent to be fair) have said they're strong enough to hang a reasonable gate off... But my OCD and naturally cynical nature has me double guessing based off zero knowledge.

 

We'd look to have a simple modern aluminium gate with slats.

 

Short of hiring a structural engineer, anyone have any thoughts?

 

 

[Conor]

It'll be fine. Especially if it's just aluminium gates, probably only going to weigh about 80+120kg for the big one. I'm about to build a 4m, 200kg wooden gate to hang off the same size pier! My hinge hooks are 300mm deep threaded rods. I was worried about a standard plate pulling a brick out, so going OTT.

[Andehh]

Driveway sloping down and round the corner creating the miss matched slope!

[Andehh]

1 minute ago, Conor said:

It'll be fine. Especially if it's just aluminium gates, probably only going to weigh about 80+120kg for the big one. I'm about to build a 4m, 200kg wooden gate to hang off the same size pier! My hinge hooks are 300mm deep threaded rods. I was worried about a standard plate pulling a brick out, so going OTT.

 

Thanks Connor! The size of the foundations implied the pillars are bloody heavy, just not something I know anything about!

[Onoff]

My brick pillars have a 4" box up the middle. The (sliding) gate loads go onto that, not the pillars.

 

 

 

I put a buff coloured, silicone joint around the box section gate post so the loads don't transmit to the brick:

 

 

 

[nod]

If they are electric gates You will be surprised how little weight the post takes Most of the weight is taken by motor 

[joe90]

@Andehh have you room for sliding gates? On offs and mine are sliding so very little weight on the pillars. Mine also is on a slight slope and the motor copes easily for that rise. I made mine from standard fence panels welded together.

 

 

Edited October 30 by joe90

[LnP]

Same as Onoff, I cast 100 mm galvanised steel box section posts into the foundations (1/3 in the ground, 2/3 above) with a bracket on each one welded to it for the top hinge - possibly over engineered but these gates were pretty heavy! I then had the stone pillars built around the posts, with the top hinge bracket projecting out. The stone pillars didn't have to take any of the load. You'll need to lift some of your blocks to set the motor boxes in the ground. As Nod says, a lot of the weight of the gate is taken by the motors at the bottom, so you might be OK fixing the top hinge to the brick pillars with the right kind of fixings. I brought the wiring for the infra-red proximity sensors up the posts and out through the stone blocks, so the wiring would be hidden.

 

Before you laid the blocks, did you put in the conduit for the electrics and control circuits?

 

Btw, I think a pedestrian gate is essential if you don't want your Amazon parcels lobbed over the gate when you're not home.

Edited Wednesday at 13:21 by LnP