[TheForge] planting gates

Wed Oct 16 09:32:01 2002

Brian,

No rule of thumb.  What you have to consider is weight, frost, soil
conditions, type of post and probably more important - cantilever.

You didn't say if the gate is a narrow person gate or a wide entrance gate.

If it's just a narrow gate and you have normal soil conditions, you
shouldn't have a problem with a normal fence post type of setting.
Something like a hole 10-14" dia to frost depth or 24-30" min.

If it's a wide gate (and no support wheel on the end), the cantilever will
want to pull the post over resulting in pressure on the side of the hole.
This pressure is the greatest at the top & reduces to 0 at the bottom.
(Actually at the bottem there is some pressure on the otherside of the
hole.)   This force can be resisted in a couple of different ways.  One is
have a large enough footing that its weight & footprint resists the
overturning moment.  The other way, if you have good soil, is to design the
side of the footing to resist the load.  It becomes a footing working
horizontal with the width of the footing perpindicular to the line of the
gate in both the closed and open positions.

On wide gates, secondary support posts placed near the gate posts help
stablize and reduce the gate post forces.  This also works well for narrow
gates and in both cases works better visually.

Walt

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
To: theForge <[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 8:20 AM
Subject: [TheForge] planting gates

>Is there a rule of thumb about guestimating the depth and volume of
>concrete needed to plant a gate post? I would assume that the height
>of the post and the weight of the gate are important factors, and I'm
>sure there's some science involved - I'm just looking for some ideas.
>
>edge
>
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