Gate motors have not been around for all that long but they have already carved a special place on the hate list which all south African home makers quietly have under the sink, and the reason for the hate of gate motors is not complex or based in a some conspiracy theory, it is based on the cold hard facts about owning a gate that needs a motor.
When a person first installs their electric gate, the motor works like an absolute winner, faultlessly opening and closing as you command and people are forgiven for indulging those Ali Baba fantasies and actually proclaiming “open sesame” when they stand in front of the new gate for the first time.
However, unlike all fairy tales, the tale of the gate motor does not always have a happy ending, in fact most stories about gate motors normally end with the home owner writing a huge cheque and it is often accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth. This is because when the very first gate motor starts to go bad, it set in motion a series of events that could so easily lead to blood being shed and homes being torn apart.
It all begins when the gate suddenly stops working perfectly all the time, and you now have to coax the gate motors into doing their job, either by a few gentle taps with a rubber hammer, or a few stern kicks. This will go on for a bit before the gate motors decide to pack it in completely (this normally happens in very rainy and miserable weather). The home owner will try and cope with new development by just using the gate as a manual gate for a while; however, the laziness that has become so endemic in modern society soon forces the home owner to go in search of new gate motors.
This search for new motors is never as easy as you might think. There is always some or other weird snag that slows the whole process down and leads to the happy home maker going off a less than brand new gate motor which will only last a few months.
