Project Contain Phillip started five months before we broke ground. We worked with our friend and fence contractor Mike Smith, owner of Fence Smith to plan and install front yard fencing and a gate for our driveway. Linear footage and measurements were taken December 2019. This is one marker to visualize our new gate.
We needed to install our fence 8 feet from the public right of way, and started painting markers to help visualize the removal of brush and foliage around the exterior of our lot. We ended up making it 9 feet just to be safe.
This side of the yard was the larger challenge with our blue agave, we didn’t want to remove them; nor did we have the means to. Time for the machete!
Our prep for fencing is coming along nicely now, despite the 98F weather.
Fast forward: fence posts installed exactly where they need to be.
Materials to begin installation, lots of concrete as we have a large number of fence posts to install.
Driveway and pedestrian gates.
Fence posts for gate and pedestrian gate are in!
Things are taking shape nicely, and we are happy we didn’t try to tackle this part on our own.
Our gate is 25 feet from the street to allow full size vehicles to access the keypad while not blocking the street.
In order to save nearly 100 linear feet of fencing, we used our existing juniper brush as an extension for now. It is 15-25 feet deep, and likely more secure than the chain link fence.
The other corner of our front yard. A very large bush needed to be hacked away to make room on our property line. It grew back fairly quickly.
Mike is welding the gate hinges in, this came together quickly!
Gate and fence are completed. Time to work on our opener…
Eric needed to make a custom gate flag post since our driveway has a lot of flare for water direction.
Our Liftmaster gate actuators arrived! This was quite the system, and we are happy we invested the additional funds over some of the cheaper brands. The quality and function of this system have been phenomenal.
Our biggest challenge was trenching under our driveway for conduit. We used the water pipe method, and while it worked it made a massive mess.
While things are drying out, plans for the control and battery boxes are coming together.
Conduit placed under driveway, and our E-Z Up placed to beat the heat while Eric worked on the wiring.
Our setup is 100% solar. While Liftmaster makes a purpose built expansion bow for these 33ah batteries, it was over $500 at the time without batteries. A big old no go. Eric sourced these junction boxes locally for $40 each, and although it was a bit of extra work, the cost savings were well worth the effort.
Our control box also has two 7ah batteries, which are effectively a battery backup in a hardwire installation. This configuration should yield over 100 open/close cycles without any sun.
We ordered Expansion Board B which offers a few neat security features like Anti-tail and Quick Close. Quick Close initiates a close cycle after you drive through the gate, and Anti-tail stops the gate if the sensor is tripped, but does not reverse the cycle and open it again. Both great features for us with the little one running around, even fully supervised.
Solar panels installed and given a quick and dirty spray of black paint to blend in with the fence materials. While only 10 watts each, they have enough output to float charge the batteries with no issues.
All wiring and programming is completed. Eric had an extension cord leftover from our whole house fan project, and installed it as a last resort backup if needed.
We also installed a voltage gauge to easily monitor the state of battery charge. This has come in very handy during the few rare times an issue has come up. All of the times the system failed to operate were related to the trip sensor for the driveway.
The current configuration of our setup 🙂 The gate and fence give us amazing peace of mind if our little runs outside faster than greased lightening.