Gate Installation in Menlo Park

Menlo Park allows more fence height in a back or side yard than Mountain View does, and a good deal of the housing stock uses it. A full-height solid gate in that run is a genuinely heavy leaf, and the weight goes somewhere: onto one post, hanging off one side of it, levered every time somebody walks through.

That pushes three decisions that a shorter fence would let you get away with:

• The hinge post gets specified for the gate, not for the fence. Bigger section, deeper footing, and a collar that sheds water rather than cupping it.
• The diagonal stops being optional. A tall solid leaf with nothing working across it will drop at the latch corner, and it will do it faster than a short one because there is more of it to drop.
• Two leaves start to beat one. On anything approaching a vehicle opening, splitting the width halves the reach on each hinge post and gives the closed gate a fixed point in the middle.

The city's own guidance warns residents about this and it is worth repeating: the public right-of-way in Menlo Park frequently runs past the curb and the sidewalk into what reads as front landscaping, and the neighbours' fences are not a reliable guide to where the boundary actually sits. A gate installed inside an existing fence line inherits whatever position that line already has. A new opening onto the street does not inherit anything — it is a new thing at the front of the property, and it is worth knowing which side of the line it lands on first.

Nothing about that is a reason not to do it. It is a reason to establish the line before the opening is cut rather than after the gate is hanging. The rules, by city and with sections, are on fence rules and permits.

The hillside lots west of the freeway put a lot of gates on ground that is not level, and that decides the swing before anything else does. A gate has to clear the ground through its whole arc, so a leaf hung to swing uphill has to be cut short enough to clear the high point — which leaves a gap under it at the low end for the rest of its life. Hung to swing downhill, it can follow the fall and sit close to the ground where it closes.

The other slope problem is drainage rather than geometry. Water runs across these lots rather than sitting on them, and it runs to the low point of the fence line, which is frequently where the gate is. A hinge post at the bottom of a fall is in wet ground far more of the year than the post ten feet up the run, and it should be set as if it knows that.

The smaller pre- and post-war houses in these blocks have side accesses that were laid out when a wheelbarrow was the widest thing that needed to get through. Widening one is a real option and it is a fence job rather than a gate job: the opening changes, both posts move, and the fence either side has to be closed back to them. Worth deciding before the gate is chosen, because a gate built for the old opening is not a gate you can widen later.

Photograph the opening straight on, both post bases, and the run of fence a few feet either way. Where the ground falls across the opening, add one shot from the side along the fence line — that one decides the swing. For a new opening at the front, include the frontage from the sidewalk. Or call the number at the top of the page.