How to make a pair of lumber driveway gates

Introduction – Plans – Lumber

Introduction

A fair amount of thought had to go into the design of these gates.
The driveway had an uphill slope, therefore the bottom of the gates had to be about 250mm (10″) above the ground in closed position to allow the gates to open over the sloping drive.

There are ways that gates can be hinged off vertical to enable the gates to lift over raised ground such as can be seen here, but with the ‘hinge offset’ method, the gates look a bit askew when opened and gravity can cause the gates to swing shut a bit faster than intended.

So with that knowledge in hand, we decided to go with gates which would open on a level plane, meaning that the gates would have to be fixed to the posts high enough so they could open without hitting the up-sloping driveway.

This meant that the gates had to be about 250mm (10″) off the ground in closed position.

To achieve this, we’d have to devise some type of contraption to stop kids and dogs from scrambling underneath, while still allowing the gates to easily open.

And that is exactly what we did.

The device, which we called ‘the under-gate movable extension’ for lack of a better term, can be seen on page eight.

Scroll down for the plans and lumber description.

The Plans 

The lumber used in this project was dressed (surfaced, smooth) treated stock.

Stiles: (vertical frame members). The stiles were 90mm x 45mm (1 1/2″x 3 1/2″) stock.

Rails: (horizontal frame members). The middle rails were 90mm x 45mm (1 1/2″x 3 1/2″ stock. Both the top and bottom rails were cut out of 240mm x 45mm (1 1/2″x 9 1/2″) stock.

Bottom panels: 140mm x 20mm (3/4″x 5 1/2″) tongue and groove stock.

Top panels: Lattice to suit.