Composite Gates Kilmarnock

Areas we cover around Kilmarnock

The surrounding villages are covered too. If your area is not named, send your postcode and we will confirm.

Kilmarnock and East Ayrshire

• Irvine
• Ayr

Also covered: Stewarton, Kilmaurs, Crosshouse, Hurlford, Galston, Newmilns, Darvel, Mauchline, Dunlop and the surrounding villages.

Cumnock, Auchinleck, New Cumnock, Dalmellington and the rest of the county are covered from our Ayrshire page.

What we make and fit

• Composite driveway gates Double and single leaf, hung or sliding, manual or automated.
• Composite garden gates Side gates, back gates and matching pedestrian gates.
• Metal gates Steel and metal-framed gates, made to measure.
• Electric gates Automation on new gates, or retro-fitted to existing ones.
• Composite fencing Matching fence panels and screens to tie the boundary together.

What Kilmarnock asks of a gate

Short drives, and where the gate swings

A great deal of Kilmarnock is interwar and post-war semi-detached, and the drives that came with those houses were sized for a smaller car than most people now own. That makes the swing arc the first question rather than an afterthought. A pair opening inward eats the very space you park on, and on a drive a car and a half long that can mean not being able to shut the gate with the car in. Opening outward crosses the footway, which is not yours. There are three honest answers: hang the gate further back so it swings into the drive behind where the car sits, fit a single leaf instead of a pair so the arc is wider but there is only one of it, or slide it. Which one works is decided by measuring the drive with a car on it, not by looking at it empty.

Inland, so it is rain rather than wind

Kilmarnock sits ten miles from the coast and the wind material that matters in Ayr and Troon largely does not apply here. What replaces it is water sitting still. A gate at the bottom of a drive that falls towards the road will stand in a puddle after every downpour, and a gate that falls towards the house will send the puddle to the door. Neither is a gate problem exactly, but the gate is where it gets noticed. The details that matter are ground clearance under the closed gate, whether there is a drainage channel across the threshold the gate has to clear, and the bottom rail, which on a composite gate is unaffected by standing water where a timber one would not be. Tell us at survey which way the drive falls.

Three kinds of boundary in one town

There is no standard Kilmarnock frontage. The red sandstone tenements and terraces near the town centre have solid stone or rendered boundary walls, often original. The interwar and post-war estates have low brick or concrete walls, many of them rebuilt at some point. The newer developments at the edges have timber fence panels and open-plan frontages with nothing to fix to at all. Those are three different jobs. The first needs the stone checked before anything is drilled; the second usually needs the existing wall assessed for whether it will take the load; the third needs new posts set properly, because there is nothing else holding the gate up. It is the reason we survey rather than quote from a photograph.

What affects the cost

Gate prices move on a handful of variables rather than a fixed rate. The main ones are:

FAQs about Composite Gates in Kilmarnock

My drive is short. Can I still have gates?

Usually, but the design changes. An inward-swinging pair needs somewhere to swing into, and on a drive that is a car and a half long that space is where the car goes. Hanging the gate further back, using a single leaf, or sliding it all solve it. We measure with the car on the drive rather than looking at it empty, because that is the condition the gate has to work in.

Can a gate open out onto the pavement?

No, and it is worth knowing before the posts go in. The adopted footway is not yours and a gate swinging over it obstructs the path. Inward, set back, or sliding are the alternatives, and all three are straightforward if they are decided at survey rather than discovered afterwards.

There is a drainage channel across my driveway. Does that matter?

It affects ground clearance. The gate has to clear the channel through its whole arc, not just where it sits closed, and lifting the whole gate to manage it leaves a gap underneath that defeats the point. Built to the levels as they are, it is not a problem. Told about afterwards, it usually means a return visit.

What if there is nothing to fix the gate to?

That is common on the newer estates, where frontages are open-plan or fenced with timber panels. It simply means the posts do the work rather than an existing wall, and they get set properly rather than bolted to something that was never meant to carry a gate. It is a normal job, not a complication.

Which areas around Kilmarnock do you cover?

Stewarton, Kilmaurs, Crosshouse, Hurlford, Galston, Newmilns, Darvel, Mauchline and the surrounding villages, along with Irvine and Ayr. If your town is not named, send your postcode and you will get a straight answer either way.

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