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Glossary

Cantilever gate

A sliding gate with no ground track, supported entirely by top rollers riding on a counterweight section. Standard for clean driveways.

A cantilever gate is a sliding gate that doesn't touch the ground. Instead of a ground track and bottom rollers, it hangs off two pairs of top rollers fixed to the receive post. The gate's weight is balanced by a counterweight section that extends past the runout post when the gate is closed.

Cantilever gates win wherever the driveway needs to stay clear: low-clearance vehicles, drainage runs across the path, leaf litter or sand that would jam a ground rail, or just the cleaner aesthetic of no track in the concrete.

The trade-off is steel cost. A cantilever gate uses roughly 30% more material than a tracked sliding gate the same width because of the counterweight tail. The cantilever rail also needs to be a heavier section than a typical bottom rail.

Residential cantilevers usually run 3 to 6 m of clear opening. Commercial cantilevers go to 12 m and beyond, but that's specialised hardware territory.

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