We get this call most often after a wet spring. A gate that closed fine in October catches on the concrete in April, or the latch tongue sits a half inch below the catch. The temptation is to move the catch down, and that works for about a season. Then the gate drops again, and eventually it hangs so far out of square that no hardware relocation gets it closed.

Diagnosis comes first. Here is how we sort it out on a Sherwood driveway.

The four causes, and how to tell them apart

Stand at the hinge side of the gate with it closed and latched, or as close to latched as it gets. You are looking for which part of the assembly moved.

• A leaning hinge post. Put a level on the post itself, on the face and on the side. If it is out of plumb and leans toward the latch side, that is your problem. Everything above it is fine and is simply following the post over.
• A racked gate frame. The post is plumb, but the gate is no longer a rectangle. Measure the two diagonals of the frame, corner to corner. If they differ, the frame has parallelogrammed and the bottom latch corner has swung down and out.
• Worn or undersized hinges. Post is plumb, frame is square, and yet the gate droops. Grab the gate at the latch edge and lift. If it rises and drops with a clunk, the hinge pins or barrels are worn, or the hinges were never rated for the weight and leverage of this gate.
• Ground that has moved under the swing path. The gate hangs true, holds its square, and the latch lines up perfectly. It just hits dirt or concrete partway through the arc. That is a grade problem, not a gate problem.

Four checks, five minutes, no tools beyond a level and a tape.

Why the hinge post is usually the one that moved

A gate is a cantilever. All of its weight hangs off one post, out at the end of a lever arm as long as the gate is wide. A walk gate puts a steady sideways pull on the top of that post every hour it exists, and a wide drive gate multiplies it. No other post in the fence line is asked to do that, and it was set in the same hole with the same bag of concrete as its neighbors.

Now add central Arkansas clay. Sherwood sits on soil that takes on water and swells through a wet spring, then shrinks through a dry August. Every cycle loosens the grip the ground has on a post, and a post under constant sideways load uses that slack. It does not fall over. It walks, a fraction of a degree at a time, always in the direction it is being pulled. Two or three seasons of that and the top of the post has moved an inch, which at the far corner of a wide gate reads as several inches of drop at the latch.

That is why the hinge post is the first thing we level and the last thing people suspect.

Wet-spell drag versus all-year drag

This one question separates a soil problem from a hardware problem, and it costs nothing to answer.

If the gate drags only after a stretch of rain and frees up in the dry weeks, the ground is moving. The clay swells, the post tilts further, the gate touches down. Things dry out and the gate clears again. That points at the footing, not the frame.

If the gate drags every month of the year and has been getting steadily worse, nothing is cycling. Something took a permanent set. That is a racked frame, worn hinges, or a post that has already leaned past the point of coming back.

What anti-sag cable kits can and cannot do

A cable and turnbuckle run from the top hinge corner down to the bottom latch corner, tightened until the frame pulls back into square. Used correctly, it is a good piece of hardware and we install them.

Here is the boundary. That cable acts on the gate frame only. If your diagonal measurement was off and the post was plumb, a cable is the correct fix and it will hold. If the post is what leaned, the cable is pulling on a frame that was square to begin with. All you get is a gate racked the other way to compensate for a tilted post, which binds the hinges and puts the latch edge out of parallel with its catch. It will latch for a while. Then the post moves again in the next wet cycle and you are back at the turnbuckle.

The other failure we see is a cable run backwards. It has to pull the low corner up, which means the top end belongs on the hinge side. Reversed, it accelerates the sag it was installed to fix.

Resetting a hinge post so it stays put

When the post is the cause, the fix is to reset it, and the details are what make the difference between a repair that lasts and one that comes back.

• Depth. A hinge post goes deeper than a line post. It is carrying a lever, so it needs more of itself below grade to resist tipping, and it needs to reach below the clay that does most of the seasonal moving.
• Footing width. A wider footing resists tilting far better than a narrow deep one for the same volume of concrete, because the tipping force fights a bigger footprint of soil. On a heavy drive gate post we widen the hole rather than only deepen it.
• The crown. The concrete gets finished above grade and sloped away from the post on all sides. Water running down the post has to shed off instead of collecting at the collar. A flat or dished top holds a puddle right where the wood or the coating is most vulnerable, and it keeps the surrounding clay saturated all season.
• Cure before load. Rehanging a heavy gate on green concrete undoes the whole job. The post gets its cure time before it carries weight.

The same post logic applies whether the run is wood or chain link. If you are weighing a full replacement, the pages for wood fences in Sherwood and chain link fences in Sherwood cover how each is framed.

Sizing hardware for a drive gate versus a walk gate

Hinges are rated for load, and the load is not the weight of the gate. It is the weight multiplied by how far out it sits from the hinge line. Double the width and you have far more than doubled what the top hinge holds back.

A walk gate at typical yard width, framed in wood, is light and forgiving, and standard residential hinges handle it. A twelve or sixteen foot drive gate is a different piece of equipment. It wants heavier barrel hinges with a larger pin, a hinge post sized up from the line posts, and often a third hinge mid run so the load is shared. Latch hardware scales too, because a wide gate flexes and a small tongue and catch will not find each other once there is play in the assembly.

Undersized hardware on a wide gate is one of the most common things we replace, and it usually came with the gate.

The honest call on repair versus replacement

Most dragging gates are worth repairing. A reset post, correct hinges, and a squared frame will give you a gate that closes with one hand for years. We would rather do that than sell a new one.

Where the call changes is when the frame itself has given up. If the wood at the joints is soft, if the fasteners have nothing left to bite into, or if a steel frame has rusted through at the welds, a cable will not hold what it is pulling on. At that point a new frame on a properly reset post is the sound answer. We will tell you which of the two you have when we see it, not before.

Sherwood Gate Questions

My gate only drags in the spring. Is that still a real problem?

Yes, and it is the most useful symptom you can give us. Seasonal drag means the clay under your hinge post is swelling and shrinking and the post is moving with it. Addressing the footing while the lean is small is far less work than resetting a post that has walked several inches.

Can I just move the latch catch down to match the gate?

It will get the gate closed today. It also hides the movement that is causing the drop, so the post or frame keeps going and you repeat the adjustment every few months until you run out of post to move it on. Use it as a temporary measure, then find out what actually moved.

How do I know if my gate frame is out of square?

Measure the frame diagonally, corner to corner, both directions. On a square frame those two numbers match. If one diagonal is longer, the frame has racked and the short corner is the one hanging low. Do this with the gate hanging, not on the ground.

Will a bigger hinge fix a leaning post?

No. Heavier hinges fix worn hinges and undersized hinges. If the post is out of plumb, better hardware just transfers a larger load into a post that is already losing its grip on the soil. Level the post first and let that answer decide the hardware.

Do you repair gates you did not install?

Regularly. Gate hardware and hinge posts are the parts of a fence that wear first, and plenty of the gates we service came with the house. We work on wood and chain link gates across Sherwood and Pulaski County.

Get a Look at It

A gate diagnosis takes a few minutes on site with a level and a tape, and it decides everything that follows. We come out, tell you which of the four causes you have, and give you a straight quote for the fix. More on our coverage across town is on our Sherwood fence page. Call Delta Fence LLC at (501) 626-7024 or get a quote.