How do I measure for a garden gate

Glad

I need a new garden gate, the gap is between 2 brick walls and is 96cm at its narrowest and 99cm at the widest. There are no posts so I need posts (or post) too. There is a hole in one wall for a bolt to go into. 

I have a price from a handyman to fit it but I need to buy the gate etc. Most gates seem to be 900mm which doesn’t seem to leave much room for a decent width of post. Or would a thin post be ok?

Glad

This is the gap

TELLIT01

As one, or both, of the walls is leaning it's not going to be straightforward to fit the gate.  A photo of where it's going might help.

Bradden

Hard to tell from the photo.. need to see the other side really. People usually use some 4x2 timber bolted to the wall as a wall plate to fix the gate to. Most timber gates are easy to reduce by a couple of cm so you may have room.

FreeBear

What type of gate (metal or wood) do you intend to fit ?

A quick look on ebay turns up several listings for made to measure wooden gates for around £100 and off the shelf steel gates from £60. Plenty will fit the gap.

For a wooden gate, I'd attach a length of 75mm square timber either side so that you have something to screw the hinges & latch to. A steel gate, I'd fix the hinges directly to the brick pier on the left, and perhaps attach a length of timber to the other side to fill the gap if needed.

rob7475

There's a couple of ways around this. You could mount a wooden post to the face of the bricks on the left hand side rather than inside the opening (fit the post to the right of your security camera). This will leave you space to fit a 50mm post at the other side and still leave enough of a gap for a 90cm gate.

You could also fit a 50mm post on the inside of the opening for the hinges to fit to and offset the 50 mm post at the other side so the gate closes against the other post rather than inside it.

You'll need at least a 50mm post for the hinges to fit to. The other side can be thinner as it will just be acting as a stop for the gate.

casper_gutman

The usual way is to mount a wooden post or 'wall plate' to the brickwork each side of the opening. I used a piece of "3x2" (nominal) timber, in reality about 75 x 47 mm.

To measure for the gate you want to take the minimum width of the opening, subtract your two wall plates, then also subtract a suitable clearance to give the size of the actual gate. Especially with a timber gate, you don't want it tight in the gap as it will expand and contract seasonally as the wood dries and absorbs moisture again. I used 15mm for a single gate like yours, but you would need more clearance for a big pair of driveway gates.

For an opening of width 960mm with two 47mm wall plates I'd order a gate 960 - 47 - 47 - 15 = 851mm wide, say 850mm so you don't sound silly! 

When you come to install it, you may want to put some shims or slivers of treated wood behind the wall plate where the gap is wider, to square things up and avoid having unsightly gaps. I ended up using a firring meant for making a fall on a flat roof, as one of the walls was out of vertical by a good 4-5cm over the height of the gate.

baser999

Personally I’d let your handyman do it 😄

casper_gutman

baser999 said:

Personally I’d let your handyman do it 😄

Oh! I'd missed that. Yes - much better if the installer is responsible for purchasing what's needed, then it's clear whose fault any problems are! 

Still, no harm in being aware of the considerations involved.