Gates That Keep Traffic Moving

Parking gates fail in ways that annoy homeowners and alarm property managers. An arm that will not lift leaves a line of cars on the street. A slide gate that stops halfway and reverses leaves the property open. Loop detectors fail and the gate stops seeing cars, or sees phantom vehicles and stays open all night. Keypads and card readers lose their programming, remotes stop being recognized, and safety edges that are supposed to reverse the gate stop responding. Then there is the mechanical side: bent arms, worn rollers on slide gates, tired operators on swing gates, and hinges that sag until the gate drags on its own track. Each of them is fixable, and none of them should be left for later when the gate is the only thing controlling who drives in.

Hallandale Beach, Aventura and Sunny Isles Beach have a dense concentration of condo and high-rise garages where a gate is shared by a lot of residents and where the operator runs constantly. Those sites also bring their own rules: work has to be scheduled around residents, fire access must stay clear, and the gate has to be tested with the building manager present. In smaller communities in Pembroke Pines, Weston and Plantation, the gate is usually one entrance serving a handful of streets, and an open gate there is a nightly nuisance as much as a security issue. We repair operators, arms, loops, safety edges, keypads, readers and remotes, install new gate systems with access control, and set up the entry equipment so residents are not calling the office every evening. We test every safety device before we hand the gate back, because a gate that does not reverse is a hazard, not just an inconvenience.