We build wood-and-steel gates to match the panels and quote them by hand: a 4 ft single or an 8 ft double, black corrugated steel in a braced wood frame, hung on 6×6 posts. Why the steel needs the frame, which side the hinges go, and the latch.
We build the gate to match the panel: the same 26-gauge black corrugated steel inside the same pre-stained wood frame, with a diagonal brace, as a 4 ft single or an 8 ft double, and we quote it by hand because every gate is built to its opening. It hangs on a pair of 6×6 posts, with hot-dip galvanised or stainless hardware bolted through the frame and never through the steel. The Wood & Steel panel beside it is $169.99 on the page; the gate is a message or a call with the width of the opening and which way it swings.
A sheet of 26-gauge steel is stiff across its ribs and limp along them. Hang it from two hinges and it has nothing to hold its corners square: it folds, and every screw through it becomes a hole that wears oval. The frame is the gate. Two uprights carry the hinges on one side and the latch on the other, two rails tie them, and a diagonal brace runs from the bottom of the hinge side up to the top of the latch side, so the far corner is held up in compression rather than hanging off the fasteners. The steel is infill, fastened inside the frame in the shop, and on a gate that matters more than on a panel, because a panel is held by posts on both sides and a gate by hinges on one. Anything that carries load, a hinge, a latch, a drop rod, a handle, bolts through the wood. Nothing goes through the sheet.
A gate bay takes a 6×6 on each side where the rest of the run takes 4×4s. The hinge post carries the whole weight of the gate on a 4 ft lever and the latch post takes the slam; a 4×4 holds a gate for a season and then leans, and a leaning hinge post is a gate that drags and will not latch. Set both gate posts first, plumb to each other at the opening you were quoted, then run the string line and set the rest of the run to them. Same depth as every other post: 48 in. in the ground across most of southern Ontario, a 10 ft post so 6 ft stands above grade, 6 in. of clear-crush gravel under it, 30 MPa concrete to grade with a crown, and a full day of cure before the gate hangs, because a post asked to hold weight on green concrete moves and stays moved. The 10 ft 6×6 is $48.99 ($43.99 each at 25 or more, applied in the cart); posts are pickup only at the yard.
Decide the swing before the posts go in, because the hinges fix it. A gate swings into the yard, not out over a walkway or a sidewalk, and toward the side with room to stand and hold it open; on a slope it swings uphill unless the bottom rail clears the grade through the whole arc. Two heavy strap or T-hinges carry a 4 ft single, hot-dip galvanised or black powder-coated, bolted through the hinge-side upright with carriage bolts rather than screwed, and the hinge leaf lands on the frame, not on the sheet. Hang it with about 3/4 in. of gap at the hinge side, a little more at the latch side for the first winter, and 2 in. clear of grade, or more where the snow drifts.
A gravity latch on a walk-through gate closes itself when the gate swings shut, which is what you want where the last one through is usually a child or a dog. It bolts through the latch-side upright, with the strike on the latch post, and a padlockable hasp goes on the same upright if the gate needs to lock. A pool gate wants self-closing hinges and a latch on the pool side, at the height your town's pool enclosure rules set; read the by-law pages before the water goes in.
The single is the side-yard gate: a 48 in. opening between the post faces, one leaf, one latch, wide enough for a wheelbarrow and a mower. The double is the driveway gate: two 4 ft leaves in a full 96 in. bay, so it takes one panel out of the count. The passive leaf drops a cane bolt into a sleeve in the driveway, the active leaf latches to it, and both open for a car or a trailer. Each leaf gets its own brace and three hinges. Every gate matches the panel beside it, the solid face or the lattice top, so the top line of the fence runs through the opening instead of dropping at it.
The worked 100 ft run in the metal cost post is thirteen panels on fourteen posts. Put a 4 ft single in it and it becomes twelve panels on fourteen posts, two of them 6×6s: $2,039.88 in panels and $323.46 in posts, $2,670.57 with HST at the yard, plus the gate. A 48 in. remainder at the end of a run is a gate opening waiting for a gate, and putting it there saves the custom panel a metal run otherwise needs at the odd bay; the sizes post works that through.
Two people, the gate on blocks in the opening at its finished height, shims holding the gaps, hinges bolted to the gate on the bench first and then to the post. Swing it before the latch goes on: it should close under its own weight from halfway and touch nothing through the arc. Check it again in April; posts settle a little in the first winter, and a quarter turn on the hinge bolts or a strike moved 1/8 in. is usually the whole adjustment. If the latch corner drops within a month, look at the brace: it should run from the bottom of the hinge side to the top of the latch side.
Measure the opening post face to post face, tell us which way it swings and which panel it matches, and we quote it. The panels are on the Wood & Steel page, and both stand at 240 Ellwood Drive West in Bolton beside the cedar ones.
