Ensuring Easy Access

May 29, 2012
Residential community walk-in and drive-in gates are being disabled for easy access

Maybe it's me, but there seems to be more tampering or damaging of door and gate hardware in the "gated" residential communities. It seems like many of the non-manned "gated" community's walk-in and drive-in gates are being tampered with. One guess would probably be to provide non-restricted access for guest. Who would want to have to answer the telephone a bunch of times just to buzz people in?

The damage comes in many forms including, the door closer is adjusted by unknown persons to not secure the walk-in gates. The covers of these door closers seem to have disappeared if they have one to begin with. One more dramatic example is a walk-in gate where the welded Kant-Slam Hydraulic Gate Closer was literally ripped away from its mounting bracket.

Drive-in gates are no less susceptible to the damage. One quick and relatively easy way is cutting the chain drive or popping the chain off a sprocket. This is not that hard to do as with many communities, the chain is easily accessible through an iron fence.

I have seen in a couple of communities where the owners who walk out of the complex would prefer to go through a drive-in gate, just to be able to use their remotes so they would not have to physically operate the lock and push open the walk-in gate.

The question is, "What access control equipment can a locksmith offer to a 'gated' community that will satisfy to the community at large, while maintaining a reasonable level of security?" The installed security is the attempt by someone, usually the Board of Directors to try to protect the interests of the homeowners.

What do you offer your customers in the way of traffic control security?