Adding gate bumpers

After installing the gates this morning, one of the things that we saw as a potential issue is how the gates are, when fully open. Here’s what I mean.

When the gates are opened outwards, there is nothing to stop them until they hit the gate posts, as you can see in this picture.

Before, if a gate got away from us, it would swing out and hit so hard, it would bounce.

This would stress the hinges and damage the paint. Now that we’ve done all this work, we want to protect both as much as possible!

When the gates were swung inwards, however, there was a different problem.

Here, the gate isn’t stopped by the gate post, but by hitting the hinge pins.

I figured some sort of bumper would help protect the hinges and the paint from stress and damage.

What to use as bumpers, though?

The thing that popped into mind for me was…

Pool noodles.

Well, why not? I figured. They’re cheap, come in blue, and are worth a try.

So while in town today, I picked up a pair of thicker pool noodles; one for each post.

Because of the length of the noodles, compared to the height of the gate, I cut them up into 8 short pieces, then sliced them lengthwise.

From the outside was easy. I just needed to place them on the gate post at the height of each bar in the gate. The gate still hits the post, of course, but now it has the padding to keep it from hitting too hard.

The other side took a bit more figuring out. In the end, I decided to cut the pieces even shorter, and put them over the hinge pins themselves.

It does slow the gate down and seems to reduce the flexing I could see when we first noticed the issue. I’m not sure it’s enough, though.

So this is what they look like now.

Absolutely silly, really. 😀

But we shall see how they work. If they don’t, they’ll come off easily enough!

I did find something else while I was in town. One of the stores restocked their Canadian flags, and I found more almost exactly like I had out on my fence posts, already.

I picked up 6.