Gate opener advice please

[stb]

We currently have a Mighty Mule gate opener at our farm. It is solar powered and we have a double gate. Our Mighty Mule is mighty slow and balky and we have repaired it several times. Now the motherboard has apparently gone, so we are looking at having to replace it. Apparently our system is rated for light duty, and my husband is suspicious that we may need a beefier system, since our gates are steel (and heavy) and we go in and out frequently.

Mighty Mule is mighty hard to get ahold of, and mighty frustrating to deal with. The models they recommend do not match up with models available anywhere that we can see. Phone calls are painful and take multiple calls to get questions answered. At this point we are mighty frustrated. My husband has come across Ghost Controls gate openers and we are considering bailing on Mighty Mule and going to a whole different system. We would like to keep costs down as much as possible, but we are starting to wonder if putting more money into the Mighty Mule system is the right thing to do.

Does anyone know anything about Ghost Control systems? Any other gate opener that is good that we should look at? All advice welcome.

[ElementFarm]

I think it’s Clanter that is an expert on all things automatic gates…

that being said, we purchased a Ghost system after reading lots of poor reviews on Mighty Mule. Ours has been in use for about a year. We have double gates, a key pad on the outside, and a sensor strip on the inside. It’s powered via solar. We’ve had no issues with ours. It does open a little slowly, but don’t they all?

If we ever move, I’d choose to go with Ghost again, since we’ve had no problems with ours.

[clanter]

Ghost Controls was started by the former CEO of GTO/Might Mule (Joe Kelley) when the parent company (Linear Access Controls a division of Nortek) was bought out by a British company (Melrose Industries PLC)

That said, Ghost most likely is using the original Might Mule suppliers.

All of the small actuator style swing gate operators are designed to run slower than a pad mounted operator…actuator will be in the 20 to 25 second range to either open or close. Most pad mounted operators are at about 15 to 17 seconds.

Wind loads on swing gates is a major factor. Even panels that are mostly open but might have some sort of ornamental work when presented correctly could be a 100% wind block…even gates with vertical pickets can be seen as a solid panel gate

So, the variables are great. Solar is not a problem as many systems are designed to solar friendly. You might look at a larger unit that is designed to handle a single panel rather than a bi-parting set.

OP, Mighty Mule or Ghost… these can work but the numbers of system failures is very high.

The cost to repair any of these systems is pretty equal, a cheap system the parts cost is about the same or more than of a more expensive system.

As a note the Federal Solar Tax Credit is still in place, it was 30% but this year is 26% which does drop to 22% in 2021 of the cost of the system.

[Bluey]

Maybe check with local gate/fence companies, see what they suggest?

Those are the ones builders of gated compounds use, may find the label on some of their gates with a phone #.

Clanter generally recommends sliding, not swinging gates as the more reliable.

For a little more, you could have those installed and not have to keep buying parts and new systems of the swinging kind.

[stb]

Thanks, everyone. It looks to me like the cheaper gate openers are generally universally not so great. We have checked into the better gate controls but the money difference is many times over what the cheaper ones cost. Not sure it is worth that difference, frankly. I appreciate the help.

[Bluey]

@stb

Thanks, everyone. It looks to me like the cheaper gate openers are generally universally not so great. We have checked into the better gate controls but the money difference is many times over what the cheaper ones cost. Not sure it is worth that difference, frankly. I appreciate the help.

Several years ago we considered an automatic gate.
At that time, for the 16’ heavy entrance gate, Mighty Mule swinging system was around $1500, a sliding gate was $2100.

Then installing the swinging Mighty Mule we could do ourselves, the other we could also, but it was more work, more complicated, so we asked a local company.
Their price to install was way more than we thought.

We ended up not doing anything, still get out to open and close gate.

If you do install one yourself, the difference in cost is really not that much more for the better basic system.

[clanter]

@stb

Thanks, everyone. It looks to me like the cheaper gate openers are generally universally not so great. We have checked into the better gate controls but the money difference is many times over what the cheaper ones cost. Not sure it is worth that difference, frankly. I appreciate the help.

It really depends upon the site. I hate to admit it but for a short period I did work for GTO/Mighty Mule as Joe Kelley was positioning the company to be bought by Nortex. I was an outside sales and technical advisor and saw some installations that if one were to been a betting person you would have very long odds on that installation work even for a few days but still working after a decade? … Yes, those were the rare and really unexplainable installations.

Most often the killer to a site is Wind Load and Poor Power. Mighty Mules handle either of those poorly. The design of the actuator allows the electric motor to spin in the housing causing the motor wires to ripped out. The small battery that the operator comes with just was not designed to mounted in the wilderness, it is an inexpensive alarm panel battery that is happier indoors. The usual solutions (other than getting a heavier duty system) is to take as mush stuff off the gate panel to reduce weight and wind load and use a deep cycle marine grade battery designed to be used to power a fishing trolling motor (or get a GlassMat battery) . … this requires a separate battery box that can he mounted on the ground, Also the Mighty Mule or GTO only come with a 5 watt solar panel…the charge rate on those panels is only about 150 milliamps …that is with full sunlight. I believe you can add up to 40 watts of 12 VDC panels to these without have to go to a regulator (give me some slack as it was fifteen years ago that I worked for GTO…the manual will state the maximum panel wattage allowed to contented directly to the control board.)

Ghost was designed a good fifteen to twenty years After the GTO/Mighty Mule… my expectations would be that Ghost would have incorporated features that GTO would not have, such as “sleep” mod… that shuts off most all accessories when not needed thus prolonging battery life… any of the these days systems that needs to be consdiered has Sleep Mod as a feature.

[stb]

Excellent info! Thanks, Clanter!

[clanter]

@Hardy

Ghost Controls

I knew the owner of Ghost Controls, he was the CEO/President of GTO for about ten or so years … to me there are many in the industry that would rank ahead of him in respectability

I would not be surprised that the Ghost Controls units would open a swing gate faster than a GTO whose speed would allow a turtle to escape unharmed (about 23 seconds to open 90 degrees) . GTO’s motor is or at least was mounted in a rubber encasement that would or could allow the motor itself to spin in the mounting if the gate had encountered resistance greater than what the motor mounting could handle.

Ghost Controls had or should have had all the engineering of GTO and should have corrected GTO’s short comings.