entrances and gates for homesteads or woodlands

I ran across this simple video with several very good points about where, how and what to use for your woodland entrance and gate. I think this also goes for homesteading entrances.



He points out some interesting thoughts about:

hinges and security

road access

planning gate width for potential woodland harvest (could be other similar homestead trucking activities)

While we have gate threads on
gate ideas - auto gates
and
Cheap DIY gate hinges

and of course gates are discussed throughout many fencing forum threads, I didn't see one discussing gates in this general way.

What other issues, solutions, and considerations are you aware of with gates?

A few that come to mind for me are:

1. Fire — If you have land in US National Forest areas, you'll probably need to have two locks (locked together so either can open the gate). One for yourself, one for the forest service. If the forest service can't get in, they'll smash it in with their trucks. If you have an electronic gate, you'll probably need to add a code for the fire department. Give them a call. They're friendly, I promise! Fire departments don't care about notifying the Department of Sadness about anything in my experience. They just want to keep fires down.

2. Snow — How much snow do you get? How low to the ground does your gate sit? If you get a decent amount of snow, it's probably a good idea to raise it up a few feet off the ground.

3. Keeping it open — This may seem simple, but it's a huge hassle for me on my land right now. How do you keep the gate open so you can drive through? One of my gates has two metal pipes drilled into the ground with some bailing wire twisted into a big hook. When you open up the gate, the end lines up with the pipe and you can and latch the bailing wire around. Works great. Another one of my gates requires putting a stone or log down to keep it open. I would not say that one works well.

Oh, very good points not covered in the British video. I imagine they might be damp enough that forest fires aren't as much of an issue in the U.K. And neither is the much snow!

Holding the gate open is a good one to plan for as well.

Which reminds me of one more:

lock access design considerations - we have to kneel for our padlock some times, and we've added sawdust or sand to cover the pointy rocks there so kneeling is more comfortable

Urgh. I remember when the Brits started to use one-up-one-down hinges on the gates they'd illegally put across the public bridleways.  I'd always lifted them off their hinges if they'd put locks on them until then, but after that I'd have to carry adjustable spanners with me so I could dismantle the top hinge fitting.  The horse was great and would carry me thirty miles a day with ease, but he never mastered jumping over the gates so if the landowners insisted on illegal gates I had no sympathy as I didn't want to get stranded 15 miles from home.

On a much nicer note here's the entrance (foot only, not suitable even for a donkey) from the track to my bit of woodland in Portugal, giving access to the old charcoal pits.

I visited this thread hoping to find some ideas we can use for the entrance gate of our community garden. We, Permacultuur Meppel, got permission last year to use a corner in the park. This is a public park, it has to stay accessible to anyone who wants to walk through it, But we do not like it when dogs run around through our garden beds. So we want to have a gate people can open but dogs can't. It has to be a double gate, wide enough for a car to enter (just a small car with a small trailer we sometimes use).
We already made a fence of branches all around the garden, as you can see at this photo:

Inge, I think some of Kai's gate styles might work for your community garden fence. Even though most are more narrow than what you might be looking for, I imagine some of these could be made wider or as a double gate. These are all from the junkpole fence thread (though many are copied from Evan's ant village log, and made by this guy Kai's Belated Posts):

Thank you Jocelyn. I saw those fences and gates before in the forum (Evan's photos?) and I love them. I don't know if this type is strong enough for use in this public place. Anyway, I'll show the pictures to the others.