A well matched gate motor on a well hung gate, serviced occasionally, lasts years. The ones that fail early almost never fail because the motor was bad. They fail because of something else that the motor was made to fight every single day.
1. The gate itself
This is the big one, and it is worth being blunt about.
A motor is sized for a gate of a certain weight, moving on rollers or hinges that turn freely. If the gate is heavy, dragging, out of level, or its rollers are worn, the motor draws more current on every cycle. Twenty times a day, every day, that is what wears it out.
If your gate is hard to push by hand, it is hard for the motor too. Fixing the gate is nearly always cheaper than replacing the motor twice.
2. Power
Two problems, and this market has both.
Surges from the supply, and from lightning. A surge takes out the control board rather than the motor, and the board is the expensive part.
Sagging voltage, which makes a motor draw more current to do the same work, and run hotter while doing it.
Surge protection on a gate installation is not an upsell. It is the cheapest insurance available on the whole system.
3. Water and dust
Enclosures are rated to keep water out, and they do, until a cable gland is left loose, a cover is refitted crooked after a service, or the enclosure is mounted where it sits in a puddle in the rainy season.
Dust is slower and just as effective, particularly on an unsurfaced approach.
4. Never being serviced
The service items are small: rollers and hinges, the rack or chain, the limit settings, the battery, and the safety devices.
The battery is the one that gets ignored. A gate motor battery is a consumable, not a component. When it degrades, the motor works harder and the system is not there during a power cut, which is precisely when a gate matters.
5. The wrong motor for the duty
A motor sized for a house doing thirty cycles a day is not a motor for a business doing three hundred. Both may be perfectly good products, and it is the duty cycle, not the quality, that decides which lasts.
If usage has grown since the gate was installed, that alone can explain a motor that used to be reliable.
What actually extends the life
- Get the gate moving freely before blaming the motor
- Fit surge protection
- Replace the battery on a schedule rather than on failure
- Service annually: rollers, rack, limits, battery, safety devices
- Size for the real duty cycle, not the optimistic one
If yours is failing
A motor that has started struggling is usually telling you about the gate. It is worth having someone look at both together rather than replacing the motor onto the same problem.
We carry Centurion gate automation and support what we supply. Tell us what it is doing and we will work out whether it is the motor or the gate.
