Thanks. Great video. I just bought 4 sets of the wire antisag kits....and 4 x 8" pneumatic tire gate wheels for four cedar fence gates I'll be working on. Two for us and two for my Moms place.
Gravity pulls down on your gate while the hinges hold up one side. Those opposing forces and natural joint loosening will tend to move your gate from a rectangle shape to a parallelogram shape. Any solid brace (wood or metal) should go from the lower hinged corner up diagonally so that the solid brace is in compression. A cable brace cannot be in compression, and has to be mounted from the top hinged corner down diagonally to oppose the gravity force with tension. Because the cable is on the back side only, it tends to twist the gate. If you took your second cable and installed it on the outside of the gate, from the top hinged corner down diagonally, both cables would act to prevent sagging, and counteract each other from twisting. You would have the ugly cable outside your unsagged, flat gate though. Also, turnbuckles ALWAYS have a right-hand thread side and a left-hand thread side so they can be turned to adjust the tension without unhooking an end. It's a desigh feature.
So do you mean making an X w tension cables but one inside gare and one outside the gate? Or would they both (outside and inside tension cables) be diagonally top hinge to bottom opposite corner? I am having difficulty visualizing this. Did I misunderstand?
You can’t use a cable as you did in your second placement. That’s where a diagonal brace made of lumber should be where the people in the comments were mentioning. As the gate sags, that brace that you install from the bottom hinge side to the top corner of the latch side diagonally will be in compression. A cable won’t be able to help here, in fact it will just make it worse. You need a board in there to resist the compression forces, and a cable going from the top hinge corner to the bottom latch corner, as this dimension tries to elongate rather than compress. The cable keeps that from happening, and aids the diagonal lumber support so it’s not doing all of the work.
in your video you said its better to go with the red diagonal (Bottom hinge side) but when you show installing it you installed it where the blue diagonal is (upper hinge side).
If you have 2 people hold the door in place it works a lot better. One pushing on top and another pushing at the bottom and keeping it inline, Then put the brace on. It will work a lot better....These should be used before it gets twisted anyway. Worked for me.
If a tension cable could be installed inside the body of the gate along the center of the material, the tension would have been along the center of the gate's plane theoretically and it would not have warped. But since we can only install it on the surface, there also a force perpendicular away from the gate surface on the side where the tension cable was installed, pulling the corners with the mount away from the plane of the gate and warped it. I can see that your gate is still warp after the new rod was installed because you just mounted the rod on the already warp gate. I think in theory, if a second tension cable had originally been installed parallel to the first cable and the tensions of the two cables were equal, the door would not have warp. Assumptions are you manager to equalize the tension of each cables and you don't mind people outside seeing a cable on your gate.
I am with you. I built 2 6ft gates. The gate attached to house works great obviously. But, the other gate pulls on the corner post. I should have used a 6x6 post. Instead, I reinforced the concrete but that didn’t work. I do have corner bracing. I watched the Paul Ricdale video as well. He had 6x6 posts. I pressed my frame with lap joints. I may try the cable method or order a gate tire to help.
@@ScottDriscoll it’s my post, as I push on on the corner post my gate lifts up. I have one side anchored to a batter board while the concrete is drying I think the H brace you have to put another post out to the side of that right parallel with it I don’t know if my wife will be down with that
Absolutely! Compression and Tension are opposite/opposing forces, so its perfectly fine. Most people usually do have both. I used to alot, but nowadays, i only use tension braces if either, its absolutely necessary, or if i build an extra rigid frame, meaning a basic frame, where the face of the frame boards are flat against the back side of the pickets, and then another 2x, on the outside of each original perimeter framing board, except make the outside ones perpendicular to the original frame, so theres a 90 degree angle formed between both boards on all sides, making it much more rigid, because (in my experience) without doing so, adding a tension brace ends up /twisting/warping the bottom latch side of the gate once the brace is tightened. But if you want to use both, you just build your compression brace into the gate frame, ALWAYS from the bottom hinge side to top latch side with a 2x4 (as long as your gate isnt so wide, that the angle between the brace and the vertical framing boards is greater than 45 degrees). Then you your tension brace goes the exact opposite way (so the two braces make an “X”), from top Hinge side, to bottom latch side. If you dont buy one of the anti sag kits, and decide to make your own, its best to use stainless wire rope and hardware or at leasted coated wire rope and stainless hw or it’s gonna rust very prematurely.
I am having the same issue. And the guy that installed by gate put tension cables going both ways. The gate has only been up for about 2 weeks and it looks like yours already. I have a lot of issues with how this whole thing was installed. I rent, so the landlord paid for this mess. But I am the one that had to live with it. In damp weather the wood swells, and screws scrap and the door catches. When the weather is dry, the wood shrinks and the won't even latch.
Yeah I don't think it took line for the tension wire to warp my gate. Mine still sticks occasionally after a rain... I have a lot of respect for whoever makes gates that work!
This video was awesome. Love the honesty. Having the same issue with my gate. Feeling really dumb and wondering if I should have just hired someone to build my fence and gate instead of trying to do it myself. But I'll take the latter each time. #buildityourself
I think that would totally work, although the True Latch thing has the ability to tighten after it's bolted in. But it would prevent additional sag without that.
Well if you raised the locking latch on the top and install one at the bottom (I know it would be annoying opening and closing) it will straighten back. Give it one summer season and don't use the gate unless you have too.
I know it would cost another $60, but attaching a second brace on the other side of the gate running parallel to the first brace would probably remove the warp. Having just one brace produces the potato chip effect but a second brace would counter the first and keep the gate in a flat plane.
the steel brace doesn't impart any additional warping forces on the gate, but I wonder if a cable kit on the other side would have balanced things out initially.
@@ScottDriscoll Nope! Gates built out of low-grade lumber will always warp. I see a lot of low-grade lumber in your poorly designed gate. When building a gate you must pick out the best possible material from the pile. Let it set out & acclimate to the environment for a couple weeks. Any defects will start to show themselves. Return those boards for replacement. Check out this link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5oMX_XYbPvk.html Then still, you may have to use counteracting forces in individual boards to cancel out the defects in the poor quality lumber provided these days. Hope this helps you.
Well, a LOT of pressure treated lumber will bow and twist as it drys out. The twist in the gate could simply be caused by "big box store" pressure treated lumber being sold too soon.
The blue one is the way it is to be done. All gates need diagonal bracing. I would build a new gate! I always do lap joints as well. You could remove your center board, and add a diagonal board.
No it's not. A compression brace must go from the bottom+hinge corner to the top-latch corner. In his example the Red one is correct if you're building a new gate.
