Commercial Gates in Austin, Built for Heavy Traffic and Fire Access

Commercial Gate Scope We Bid in Austin

This is the page for general contractors carrying a gate line item, developers setting up a new business park, and facility managers replacing a worn entry at a yard that cannot close. The scope below is what we price, fabricate and install as one package, so the steel, the operator and the controls arrive from one shop under one set of drawings.

• Cantilever slide gates: leaves carried on roller trucks mounted to posts beside the opening, with nothing running across the pavement.
• Bottom-track slide gates: for flat, paved openings where a track can be kept clean.
• Swing gates for service drives: single or paired leaves where traffic is light and there is room for the arc.
• Pedestrian gates: a separate walk-through beside every vehicle opening, because people may not use the vehicle gate.
• Operators and controls: UL 325 listed operators matched to the usage class of the site, with loops, photo eyes and edges.
• Access control and fire hardware: card readers, keypads, intercoms and the fire department opening device your fire code official approves.

Gated residential entries for HOAs and apartment communities have their own page, as do perimeter fencing and scheduled maintenance agreements. This page covers the heavy commercial opening.

Operators, Usage Classes and UL 325 Safety

A commercial operator is chosen for the site it serves, not for the width alone. UL 325, the safety standard gate operators are listed to, sorts vehicular operators into four usage classes.

• Class I: a home serving one to four single families.
• Class II: commercial or general access, such as multifamily housing of five or more units, hotels, garages and retail sites open to the public.
• Class III: industrial or limited access, such as a factory or loading dock not open to the public.
• Class IV: restricted access supervised by security staff, such as an airport security area.

Each moving leaf has entrapment zones, and each zone gets monitored protection: inherent sensing in the operator (Type A), non-contact photo eyes (Type B1) or contact edges (Type B2). Monitored devices became mandatory in 2016, so the operator checks that each device is present and working before it moves the gate.

Vehicle loops and gate hardware

Inductive loops cut into the pavement sense the metal of a vehicle above them and hold the gate open or trigger exit. They can miss light vehicles such as motorcycles, so where riders or bicycles use an entry we plan another way to request exit. On the steel side, the gate is built to ASTM F2200, which calls for guarded rollers on slide gates, covered pinch points and openings kept small enough (2.25 inches where the standard applies) that a hand or head cannot be caught.