Vacaville Custom Metal & Electric Gates fabricates, installs and automates custom metal and electric gates in Vacaville, CA. Driveway, pedestrian, ornamental and commercial entrances, welded in our own shop and commissioned to the UL 325 standard.
Ten specialisms, one shop. Every gate below is measured, drawn, welded and installed by the same team, and every powered gate is commissioned to the same safety standard.
Gates built to your opening from raw steel, not ordered from a catalogue and trimmed to fit.
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Operators, safety devices, entry systems and battery backup, installed to the UL 325 standard.
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Hand-operated swing and slide gates built square, hung on rated hardware, and ready to automate later.
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The main entry gate, sized to your real opening and your real grade, manual or fully automated.
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Front entry and side yard walk gates: the smallest gate on the property and usually the weakest point.
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Warehouse, yard and facility entrances built for continuous duty, truck traffic and fire access.
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Credentials, audit trails and controlled entry: gates that record who came in and when.
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App control, video intercom and remote entry for deliveries, guests and family, from anywhere.
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Scrollwork, pickets and period-correct detail for driveways, courtyards and garden entries.
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Choosing the metal and the coating properly, so the gate outlives the finish warranty.
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Three things separate us from the other gate companies in this county, and all three are checkable.
This is the difference people feel first. Most gate companies in Solano County publish weekday business hours, commonly 8:00 to 4:30, which does not cover the evenings, nights and weekends when a gate actually strands somebody. We answer around the clock. A gate that fails at 9pm leaves your vehicles trapped or your commercial yard standing open all night, and that is precisely when it is hardest to reach anybody.
Most local competitors install prefabricated gates and adjust them to fit. We cut, fit and fully weld frames in our own shop, then grind the welds before finishing. That means the gate is built square to your measured opening rather than trimmed toward it, ornamental detail is drawn to your actual opening width, and when something needs adjusting years later there is no supplier in the middle of the conversation.
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. We install photo eyes or safety edges on top of that on every powered gate, and we prove the reversal by physically obstructing the gate in front of you before handing over the remotes. It is the single most skipped step in this trade.
We do not quote gates over the phone from a photograph, because the three numbers that decide your gate can only be taken on site: the true clear opening, the grade across the travel path, and the distance to usable power.
Six failures account for most of the gate calls we take across Solano County. Every one of them is a specification problem before it is a maintenance problem.
The most common gate failure in Solano County has nothing to do with the motor. It is a leaf that has dropped on the latch side because the hinge hardware was specified right at the finished gate weight instead of above it, or because the hinge post footing was undersized and has leaned. Once the post moves, adjusting the latch only treats the symptom. We correct the footing and the hardware rating together, because rehanging a gate on the same undersized footing simply restarts the clock.
ASTM F2200 requires that a gate be prevented from falling over if it is disconnected from its operator, which is a structural requirement most sagging gates already fail.Solved by Custom Metal Gate Fabrication.
This is the failure that actually hurts people, and it is far more common than it should be. A powered gate that keeps closing against a car bumper, a bicycle or a child is missing working entrapment protection. Many gates in this county were installed relying on the operator's own force sensing alone, which was never sufficient on its own. We add photo eyes or safety edges, wire them to the operator's safety inputs, and prove the reversal by physically obstructing the gate in front of you.
UL 325 requires at least two independent entrapment protection devices for each entrapment zone in each direction of travel. Inherent force sensing counts as one and cannot be the only one.Solved by Automatic Electric Gate Installation.
Rolling slide gates run on a track set into the ground, and anything that fills that track will eventually stop the gate. Around Dixon and Winters it is field dust and orchard grit. Elsewhere it is gravel, leaf litter or standing winter water. The gate binds, the operator strains against it, and the motor fails long before it should. Where the site is dusty or debris-prone, the correct answer is usually a cantilever gate, which carries its weight on post-mounted rollers and has nothing in the ground to foul.
Cantilever gates need roughly 1.5 times the opening width in side room, which is why we measure the fence line before recommending one.Solved by Manual Swing & Sliding Gate Installation.
When an operator fails repeatedly, the operator is rarely the problem. Nearly every repeat failure we are called to is a residential-class unit installed on a gate that cycles like a commercial one, or an operator sized to the gate's weight without accounting for the wind load on a solid infill panel. Replacing it with the same unit buys a few more months. We count the real daily cycles and size against that number, including the wind pressure the leaf actually catches.
The Delta breeze accelerates through the Cordelia gap most summer afternoons, and a solid infill leaf carries that load into the operator on every single cycle.Solved by Commercial & Industrial Gate Installation.
A powder coat is a barrier, not armour. Once it is chipped through to bare steel, moisture reaches the metal and rust spreads underneath the coating from that point outward. Near the Carquinez Strait in Vallejo and Benicia, and along the marsh edge in Suisun City, chloride-laden air makes that process dramatically faster. Ornamental gates fail first because scrollwork has many more crevices for moisture to sit in than a plain picket gate does.
Hot-dip galvanizing to ASTM A123 under the powder coat, the duplex system, is what we specify anywhere marine or marsh air reaches, and it substantially outlasts either layer used alone.Solved by Aluminum & Steel Gate Options.
PG&E outages are a fact of life across Solano County, and a gate with no backup power either traps your vehicles behind it or fails open and leaves the property unsecured all night. Neither is acceptable, and both are avoidable. Every automation package we install includes battery backup, and every operator retains a manual release that works with no power at all. We choose fail-open or fail-secure behaviour with you deliberately, rather than leaving it on whatever the factory default was.
We verify battery backup by cutting mains power in front of you at handover, rather than assuring you it works.Solved by Automatic Electric Gate Installation.
From raw steel through to access credentials, these are the six categories our ten service lines fall into. Each links to the full detail.
Your driveway opening is whatever the original grading and the last concrete pour left behind. Stock gates are built to standard sizes, which is why so many end up with a wedge of daylight at one post. We measure the true clear opening and the grade across the travel path, draw the gate to those numbers, and weld the frame square on a fabrication table before it ever reaches your property. That is also what lets us match existing ironwork or satisfy a design review that has already rejected a catalogue design.
Frames are welded and ground in the shop rather than on site, because a driveway is not a flat reference surface.Bolting an operator to a post is the easy part. Making a powered gate stop safely when something crosses its path is a code requirement with a specific standard behind it, and it is the part that separates a proper installation from a cheap one. We size the operator against the real cycle count and the wind load, install entrapment protection to the standard, add vehicle detection so the gate opens for you leaving, and include battery backup on every job.
UL 325 requires two independent entrapment protection devices per zone per direction of travel, and we test each one by obstruction before handover.Three numbers decide a driveway gate: the clear opening width, the grade change across the travel path, and the distance to usable power. Those three decide swing against slide, single against bi-parting, and mains against solar. Everything else is design layered on top. We take all three on site, because a quote given over the phone from a photograph is a guess that gets corrected at your expense on installation day.
Published driveway gate installation costs in this area run roughly $2,000 to $12,000, and configuration plus power access accounts for nearly all of that spread.An automatic gate opens for anyone holding a remote and keeps no record of it. An access control system opens for a specific credential, within permitted hours, and logs the entry. The functional test is simple: when one person should no longer get in, can you revoke them without disrupting everybody else? If the answer involves changing a shared code or collecting remotes nobody can account for, you have automation rather than access control.
We set the system up with you as the owning administrator, so routine staff and tenant changes never require a paid service call.A residential gate might cycle six to ten times a day. A distribution yard in the Cordelia corridor can cycle hundreds of times before lunch. That difference dictates everything: continuous-duty operators, cantilever construction that no forklift can knock out of a ground track, vehicle detection sized for trucks rather than cars, and fire department access provisions that get inspected. We survey the actual traffic before specifying anything.
ASTM F2200 limits openings in the gate frame to no more than 2.25 inches and requires covers on exposed rollers, and it is the standard commercial sites fail most often.Solano County's microclimates swing from coastal to interior across about thirty miles, and gate material has to follow. Vallejo and Benicia take chloride off the Carquinez Strait every day of the year. Suisun City sits on the edge of the largest brackish marsh on the West Coast. Dixon and Winters are dry inland agriculture. We quote the same drawing differently for those addresses, because a specification that lasts decades in one fails visibly in another.
Aluminium weighs roughly one third of steel for the same span, which is what makes wide gates and solar operators practical.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
Most gate companies in this county install prefabricated gates. We fabricate. That distinction sounds like marketing until the first time a stock gate arrives two inches narrower than the opening it was ordered for, and somebody suggests packing the gap with a filler strip.
Working from our own shop also means we can tell you honestly when the expensive option is unnecessary. A Dixon ranch gate does not need the marine-grade finish a Vallejo Heritage District gate does, and we would rather quote the specification your address actually requires than sell the same package to everybody. More about how we work.
Vacaville is home. We also work across Solano County and into Yolo County, and the conditions genuinely change from one city to the next, from Carquinez Strait salt air to dry Central Valley farmland.
Published installation ranges for this area run roughly $2,000 to $12,000. A manual swing gate on level ground with simple picket infill sits near the bottom of that. A wide automated cantilever slide gate with a long power trench, ornamental infill and a full access control system sits at the top. We quote after measuring your opening, your grade and your distance to power, because those three things account for most of the spread.
Yes, Monday through Sunday, around the clock. It is a genuine differentiator in this county, where most gate companies publish weekday business hours only. A failed gate either traps your vehicles on the property or leaves a commercial site standing open overnight, and neither of those problems waits politely until Monday.
Often yes. Fences and gates over six feet generally require a building permit, front yard height limits are tighter than side and rear limits, and a gate that swings toward a public right-of-way may need encroachment review. Requirements differ between Vacaville, Fairfield, Suisun City, Dixon, Vallejo and Benicia, and Winters is in Yolo County entirely. We confirm the jurisdiction and pull the permit as part of the job.
Two to five weeks from approved drawings to installation is typical, and the finishing queue drives most of that. Powder coating and hot-dip galvanizing are outside processes with their own schedules. Installation itself is usually a single day, or two if we are trenching a long power run or coring through a finished concrete driveway.
Usually yes. We check the frame for square and for cracked welds, confirm the hinge or roller hardware is rated for powered cycling rather than occasional hand use, and inspect the post footings. Any structural problems get corrected first, because a gate that binds by hand will bind faster and fail sooner under power.
Every automation package we install includes battery backup, so the gate keeps cycling for a period on its own. Beyond that, every operator has a manual release that works with no power at all, and we show you how to use it before we leave. You also choose deliberately whether the gate fails open or fails secure.
Vacaville is our home city, and we work across Solano County including Fairfield, Suisun City, Dixon, Vallejo and Benicia. We also serve Winters, which is in Yolo County. Each of those areas has its own page covering the local conditions and permit requirements.
It is when it is installed to the standard. UL 325 requires at least two independent entrapment protection devices for each entrapment zone in each direction of travel, so the gate reverses on obstruction even if one device fails. ASTM F2200 separately limits the gaps in the gate frame itself so fingers cannot be caught while it moves. We install to both and test every device by obstruction.
Free on-site estimate, honest specification, and a straight answer on permits. We answer 24 hours a day.
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