Open & Shut Gate Automation · Hobart Ferry & Postgate · Est. 2011
A gate should open before you reach for it, and close like it means it.
Services & rates
Fit rates — operators installed & tuned
Installed, tuned and taught — the hardware grade is matched to the traffic it will actually see, with battery backup standard and the cycle rating printed on the quote. Grade-2 residential hardware dies in three seasons of four opens a day; nothing we fit is asked to outlive its rating.
Swing operator pair, residentialfrom $3,900
heavy-duty arms, rated 100 cycles a day
Slide operator, residentialfrom $4,600
continuous duty on a 16-ft leaf
Commercial barrier armfrom $6,800
parking-lane duty, two-second cycle
Access packagefrom $1,240
keypad, intercom & phone app, installed
Safety retrofitfrom $680
photo eyes + edge sensor to UL 325
Service visitfrom $190
tune, lubricate, re-learn the limits
UL 325, both eyes open
Photo eyes across the drive and an edge sensor on the leaf, so the gate feels a bicycle tyre and reverses before the argument starts. The standard is not an upgrade here — it is the minimum our insurance and our conscience agree on.
Battery, not hope
Every operator carries a battery that holds the gate through a two-day outage and a manual override a neighbour could work with the instructions on the folder. When the power dies, the gate becomes a gate again — not a wall with a driveway logo.
The folder is yours
Wiring diagram, codes, override key location, limit settings, the installer’s mobile number. No black boxes and no proprietary lock-in — any qualified technician could service what we fit, which is exactly why ours usually does.
Services
What we open and shut
01
Swing gates, automated — from $3,900
Articulated or sliding-arm operators on leaves we weigh before we quote, hung on hinges graded for the cycle count the driveway will actually ask. The post footings go below the county frost line — an automated gate on a heaved post is a motor fighting itself.
02
Slide & cantilever, automated — from $4,600
Continuous-duty operators on tracks and cantilever lines to twenty feet, with the rollers and guide assemblies sized to the leaf, not the budget. Lane-keeper systems for the long driveways where a swing has no room to be graceful.
03
Barrier arms & visitor lanes — from $6,800
Two-second-cycle arms for the parking lane, loop detectors under the asphalt so the arm knows a car is under it, and the ticket-or-telephone intercom that fronts your building. Commercial duty cycles, commercial hardware, no residential parts in the box.
04
Keys, codes & intercoms — from $1,240
Keypads for the family, an intercom that rings the house and the phone, transmitters for every driver, and a log your phone can read at midnight. Codes rotate, fobs get lost, and the system should outlast both without a visit.
Power cut? Every operator we fit carries a battery and a manual override — walk through, drive out, no drama · (555) 902-4871 · access@openshutgates.example
Hobart Ferry · Postgate · 2024–2026
Openings from the log book
Six installs from the last two seasons, photographed a year or more after commissioning — long enough for a badly graded operator to have started complaining. Ours have not.
How it goes
Measure to first opening
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Visit 1
The measure & the weigh
Leaf width, windage, grade and the traffic it will see — we weigh the gate before we quote the operator, because an undersized arm is a warranty claim with a calendar date on it. The visit is free and the numbers are yours whoever fits the gear.
Week 1
The engineering sheet
Operator duty cycle, hardware grade, conduit runs and gate-post footings below the county frost line at 42 inches — conduit goes in before concrete, always, because wire pulled through open air is a compromise you can see from the road.
Install days
Hung, wired, learned
Operators hung and squared, limits learned leaf-by-leaf, photo eyes aligned and edge sensors proved with the regulation two-by-four. The battery takes its charge and the manual override is worked by hand, once, in front of you.
Commissioning
The hundred-cycle burn-in
The gate runs its first hundred cycles while we watch — force measured at the leaf, reversal tested at the edge, the phone app paired and the codes rotated. Then the folder: diagram, keys, settings, our number.
Every year
The service visit
Tune, lubricate, re-learn, re-test — the same hundred eyes and edges, on a calendar date we book before we leave. Ninety dollars of maintenance a year against a two-thousand-dollar motor is arithmetic we put in writing.
The morning the ice storm took the power out for two days, the gate opened on the battery for the school run and my husband worked the manual override with gloves on, from the driver’s seat, exactly the way the folder said. The previous company had told us that week would come eventually. Open & Shut had priced for it on day one.
Ahead of the install
The questions before the keypad
What every Hobart Ferry driveway asks once the quote arrives — answered with cycle counts and conduit runs rather than adjectives.
Will the gate work in a power cut?
Yes — battery backup holds the opening through a two-day outage, and the manual override is worked from the driver’s seat with one hand, instructions printed in the folder. The first thing we demonstrate at commissioning is the failure mode, not the opening.
Can you automate the gate another crew built?
Usually. First we do the structural read — hinges, plumb, post footings, leaf weight — because no operator survives a gate that racking has opinions about. If the fabric is sound we automate it as it stands; if it is not, we say so and quote the posts, not the motor.
How loud is a slide operator near a bedroom?
The modern continuous-duty units run quieter than the garage door most houses already own, and the guide rollers are the loudest part — which is why ours are nylon and why the annual visit re-torques them. We will demo one at the shop, behind the office, where the bedroom would be.
What maintenance does it actually ask?
One service visit a year: lubricate, re-learn the limits, prove the eyes and edges, check the battery. It is a hundred and ninety dollars, it is booked before we leave the install, and it is the difference between a ten-year operator and a three-year anecdote.
Put the opening on the calendar.
The measure visit is free — we weigh the leaf, read the traffic and quote the operator the arithmetic asks for. Fixed price, printed cycle rating, and a commissioning date before you sign. Hobart Ferry, Postgate and the valley drives between.