Gate repair in Vacaville, CA. Serving Vacaville and all of Solano County.
Vacaville Custom Metal & Electric Gates handles gate repair in Vacaville, CA for automatic operators, sagging leaves, jammed slide gates, dead safety sensors and access control that has stopped letting the right people in. Most of the repairs we are called to are not really repairs. They are the second failure of something that was specified wrong the first time, and swapping the same part back in just restarts the clock.
So we diagnose before we quote. A motor that burned out twice in a year is not a motor problem, it is an operator sized for a gate lighter than yours, or a hinge that has been binding since the post leaned. We tell you which one it is, including when the honest answer is that the gate is fine and only the hardware needs work. Everything we repair is built the way we describe on our Vacaville gate fabrication and installation homepage.
Gate Repair is one of our gate repair & service services, offered across Vacaville and Solano County.
A repair visit covers diagnosis first, then the fix:
Call us when the gate is doing any of this:
We find the cause before we price the fix. Roughly speaking, the gate stops for one of four reasons: something is obstructing a safety device, the power or control board has failed, something mechanical is binding, or the operator was never right for the gate.
We look at the frame, the hinges or rollers and the post footings. An operator working against a binding gate will fail again, and replacing it without fixing the bind is how people end up buying three operators.
Photo eyes and safety edges get tested by physical obstruction. If a powered gate is not reversing, that is the first thing we fix, before anything about convenience.
We tell you what the repair costs and what a replacement costs, and which one we would choose. On an orphaned operator with no parts supply, repair is often the worse value and we will say so.
Most repairs are completed on the visit. Where a part has to come in we tell you what it is, what it costs and how long it takes, and we leave the gate in a safe state in the meantime.
Full cycle test, obstruction test on every safety device, and a battery backup test with the mains cut, before we leave.
Published repair costs for this kind of work run roughly as follows. These are national and regional figures for context, not our quote, and the real number depends on the diagnosis:
| What failed | Typical published cost | What usually causes it | Repair or replace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labour, per hour | $50 to $150 | Varies by region and complexity | Not applicable |
| General repair visit | $130 to $450 | Most common call-outs fall in this band | Repair |
| Gate operator repair | $150 to $400 | Force settings, limits, worn gears, wiring | Usually repair |
| Motor repair or replacement | $200 to $600 repair, $500 to $1,200 replace | Undersized operator, or a gate binding against it | Depends on whether the cause was fixed |
| Control board | $250 to $600 | Moisture in the enclosure, surge, corroded terminals | Repair, unless the model is orphaned |
| Keypad or reader | $150 to $700 | Weather exposure, failed contacts | Replace, with a weather-rated unit |
| Full operator replacement | $1,200 to $3,800 | Repeated failure, or no parts supply | Replace, and size it correctly this time |
The figures above are published industry ranges, and we quote after diagnosis rather than from a price list. What they do show is the shape of the decision: a board or a keypad is nearly always worth repairing, and a motor that has already failed twice usually is not, because the second failure is telling you the operator was wrong for the gate rather than unlucky.
Published ranges and what sits behind them are broken down in our guide to what gate repair actually costs. In short, these are the factors that move your number:
The failures cluster by geography here. Out in Dixon and Winters it is field dust and orchard grit filling a ground track until the gate binds and the operator strains against it. In Vallejo, Benicia and along the Suisun Marsh edge it is corrosion, reaching terminals and connectors inside enclosures that were never properly sealed, which shows up as a gate with a mind of its own rather than a gate that is simply dead. And across Vacaville and Fairfield it is heat and wind: roughly 21 days a year over 100 degrees cooking control boards in unshaded enclosures, and the Delta breeze loading solid infill panels on every single cycle. Autumn adds one more, because the wind that triggers a PG&E public safety power shutoff is the same wind that has been working on your gate all season.
Most gate projects touch more than one of these. If you are not sure which applies, call us and we will tell you plainly, including when you need less than you thought.
You can also see every gate service we offer in Vacaville, read how we work, or get in touch.
The most common repeat call we take is an operator that has already been replaced once. A motor does not usually fail because it was a bad motor. It fails because it was sized for a lighter gate, or because it has been fighting a binding hinge or a fouled track on every cycle since the day it went in. We find the cause first, because fixing the symptom just moves the failure a few months down the road.
UL 325 requires at least two independent entrapment protection devices for each entrapment zone in each direction of travel, and the operator's own force sensing is only one of them. A surprising number of gates we are called to have never met that. If yours does not reverse on obstruction, that gets fixed first and we prove it in front of you, before anything to do with convenience.
An operator from a brand with no remaining parts supply is a replacement, not a repair, and we say so rather than selling you a diagnosis and then a second visit. The same goes the other way: if the gate is sound and only the hardware needs work, that is what we quote, even though it is the smaller job.
They measured the driveway and told me a swing gate would scrape before I ever asked. Ended up with a cantilever slide instead and it has not caught once. Whole thing was welded in their shop and hung in a day.Dana R.Vacaville · Driveway gate + automation
Our old yard gate had a residential opener on it and it burned out twice in a year. They replaced it with a proper continuous-duty unit and explained exactly why the first one kept failing. Two seasons, no issues.Marcus T.Fairfield · Commercial cantilever gate
We are in the downtown historic district so the design had to be approved. They drew it to the district's standard and it cleared first time. Galvanised it before the powder coat because of the salt air.Priya S.Benicia · Ornamental iron entry gate
Conditions change city to city across Solano County, from strait salt air to dry farmland. Each page covers what is different where you are, or you can explore our service areas in full.
Published ranges for this work put labour at roughly $50 to $150 an hour and a typical repair visit between $130 and $450, with operator repairs around $150 to $400 and a full operator replacement between $1,200 and $3,800. Those are industry figures for context rather than our quote. We diagnose on site and price the actual fault, because the same symptom can be a $20 limit adjustment or a failed board. Our gate repair cost guide breaks the published ranges down component by component.
Three things, in order. Look for something blocking the photo eyes, because a leaf, a bin or a spider web across the beam stops a gate more often than any component failure. Check whether the operator has power and the breaker has not tripped. Then try the manual release and move the gate by hand: if it is stiff or grinding, the problem is mechanical rather than electrical, and that is worth telling us when you call.
Yes, and most of our repair work is on gates somebody else built. We do check the frame, the hardware and the footings before working on the operator, because those are frequently where the real fault is.
It depends on parts availability and on why it failed. A control board or a keypad is nearly always worth repairing. A motor that has failed twice usually is not, because the second failure is telling you the operator was undersized for the gate rather than unlucky. If the model is orphaned and parts are hard to source, replacement is the cheaper answer over any sensible time horizon.
Almost always moisture reaching a control board or a terminal strip inside an enclosure that is not properly sealed or rated. It is the single most common intermittent fault near the Suisun Marsh and along the Carquinez Strait, and it presents as a gate that works fine on dry days and behaves erratically on wet ones. The fix is sealing and re-rating the enclosure, not replacing the board over and over.
Yes. Readers, keypads, intercoms, vehicle detection loops and exit sensors are all part of the same system, and a gate that will not open for a valid credential is an access control fault rather than a gate fault. See our security gate systems with access control page.
Free on-site estimate, honest specification, and straight answers on permits.
Get My Free Quoteor call (707) 471-6799