Choosing a Gate Motor: Remotes, Keypads and Intercoms

Choosing an automatic gate is really two decisions: the motor that moves the gate, and how you control it. People fixate on the second and under-think the first, which is backwards — the motor is what determines whether the gate still works in five years.

Match the motor to the gate, not the price

Every motor has a weight and size rating and a duty cycle — how many times a day it's built to run. The single most common mistake is fitting the cheapest motor that will just move the gate, then working it at its limit on a busy family driveway. It runs hot, wears fast and fails early.

A motor sized for the gate's real weight and how often you actually use it costs a little more and lasts far longer. On a heavy gate or a high-traffic entrance, the right-sized motor is the cheaper choice over its life. Ask whether the motor is rated for your gate's weight and your daily cycles — not just whether it'll move it.

Serviceable beats disposable

Just as important as the size is whether the motor is a reputable, serviceable unit with spare parts available locally. A cheap import with no parts supply is fine until the control board fails, at which point the whole motor is landfill and you're paying for a full replacement. A serviceable motor can be repaired for years. This is the difference that doesn't show on the quote but shows up badly later.

Then choose how you control it

Remotes are the basic option — cheap and simple, but easy to lose and awkward to hand around a household.

Keypads let you enter a code, so you can give the cleaner or a tradesperson temporary access without a remote, and nobody's locked out because they left the remote in the other car.

Video intercoms let you see and speak to whoever's at the gate and let them in from inside the house — the usual choice where the gate is a fair way from the front door, which is most Stonnington homes.

Phone-app control opens the gate from your phone, shows you who's called at the gate, and suits a busy household that wants to let people in remotely. It's increasingly the default on a considered install.

Battery backup and the manual release

Whatever you choose, a battery backup keeps the gate working through a power cut, and a manual release lets you open it by hand in a longer outage. A gate with no backup and an owner who's never found the release key is how people end up locked in or out of their own driveway. Both should be part of the install, and the manual release should be shown to you at handover.

Plan the cabling early

Intercoms, keypads and app control need cable runs from the gate back toward the house. Those are far easier and cheaper to lay before the driveway and landscaping are finished than to retrofit into a finished frontage — so if you're building or renovating, plan the controls before the concrete goes down.