Why Garden Gates Sag, and How Ours Don't
Walk down any street on the South Shore and you'll find a gate that drags. The latch doesn't line up anymore, someone's shimmed it with a rock, and the whole thing lifts and swings with a shoulder instead of a hand.
A gate is the hardest-working piece of wood in a yard. It's the one thing out there that moves. Here's why they fail, and what we do about it.
Reason one: the post
A gate is a lever. All of its weight hangs off the hinge side, and every time it swings, it tries to pull the hinge post over toward the latch. If that post is a 4x4 set two feet into loose dirt, it will eventually lean. Nothing you do to the gate itself will fix that.
What we do: The hinge post is bigger than the other posts, 4×4 or 6×6, and it goes below the frost line, which around here means about four feet. Set in concrete or compacted gravel depending on the drainage. That post isn't going anywhere.
Reason two: the frame
Most gates are a rectangle of boards screwed together at the corners. A rectangle has no strength against racking. Push down on the far corner and it turns into a parallelogram, which is exactly what gravity does to it every day for years.
The fix everyone knows is a diagonal brace. The fix fewer people know is that the brace only works if it runs the right way: from the bottom of the hinge side up to the top of the latch side. Run that way, the brace is in compression and the wood carries the load. Run backwards, it's in tension, and it's held only by whatever screws are in the ends. It looks braced and does almost nothing.
What we do: Every gate gets a compression brace running from the bottom hinge corner to the top latch corner. On wide gates we add a steel cable and turnbuckle running the other diagonal, so you can take up any settling with a wrench in ten years instead of calling us.
Reason three: the joints
Screws hold wood together until the wood moves. Outdoors, wood always moves. It swells in August, shrinks in February, and after enough cycles the screw holes open up and the corners loosen.
What we do: Mortise-and-tenon joints at the frame corners. The pieces lock into each other mechanically, and the glue and pins just keep them there. That joint has been holding barn doors together for a few hundred years. It works.
The hardware
The last way a gate fails is at the hinges. Small strap hinges held with short screws pull out of the post, or bend under a heavy gate.
What we do: Heavy hinges sized to the gate, through-bolted to the post rather than screwed. A latch that's forgiving of a little seasonal movement. Stainless or hot-dip galvanized everything, so it doesn't streak rust down cedar.
The result
A gate that swings with one finger and latches with a click, and that still does both after a decade of winters. That's what you're paying for when you have one built instead of buying one flat-packed.
If yours is dragging and you'd rather replace it than keep shimming it, send us a photo. Start a project!
