A truly 'Green' Gate

Cheryl's Living gate.

Designed and built by Brad Hankins, the green guy.

dbBrad is Mr. Greenguy.

Almost 5' wide and 5' tall, this gate weighs about 400 lbs. And it's filled entirely with natural materials (forest duff) and moss harvested from my dad's property in Snoqualmie, WA. This moss comes with a layer of bark for nutrition and is wonderfully embedded with licorice fern. Because it's old, its dense with decaying layers under healthy moss and its able to absorb an incredible amount of water. My guess is the gate can hold about 50-100 lbs of water. This is about 5-10 gallons.

Jimmy had some massive hinges left over from a project that worked perfectly for stealth mounting and are plenty strong. Pleasantly, the gate swings freely and has a nifty Inertial Latch I designed.

Using Newton's First Law (also known as the Law of Inertia)  that awhichstates that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and applying the knowledge of momentum, which is equal to mass times velocity, I was able to design a prototype inertial latch that seems to work like a charm.  It's actually no latch because the resistance of the hinges and the mass of the gate ensure that where you leave it is where it is. Thus, the Inertial latch is a fancy name for no latch.  Simple is always better!

And it comes apart, just by removing four bolts, two of which are pictured above. The tricky thing here was that in order to access the center, the ring had to come apart too.

From Below to Bottom-
The removable washer allowing the mesh to be installed and supported by the flange of the ring.
The components
Brad artfully fits the gate with forest duff, moss and salvaged plants
Side view showing innards of the living gate.
The top mesh is placed and the removable ring installed
The gate, mostly assembled and stood on edge, ready for the top (edge) piece. Cheryl through the center.
Josh demonstrates skill trimming a portion of the panels for assembly with a grinder and shielding the cedar from sparks at the same time.
The gate on edge showing the massive scale relative to josh.
Tightening the bolts on the removable edge.
The hinges

Because I wanted a 2x2 grid (the ideal spacing to hold material but allow plants to grow through) but didn't have a budget for fancy woven steel materials, I took 4x4 mesh and welded two sheets together. As a result, there is a depth to the material lacking in the standard 2x2 grid. Next time I'll take 3 sheets of 6x6 to accomplish the same but with even more complexity and depth.

The components are simple. A rectangular frame and hinges strong enough to hold the weight. Two panels, one for each side. And the ring.

The finished product a bit more complicated since it is all designed to come apart to be redone, though I anticipate with watering, the plants have enough organic material to survive for at least a decade.

Once all the pieces were designed, priced, iterated and completed, they still needed to be assembled. In my 25 years of building, ideas that seem great in theory sometimes don't work out so well in reality. Needless to say, I was very pleased when everything fit together as planned and the gate was planted, assembled and hung in less than 4 hours.

Because I used forest duff, I had log pieces that I placed around the edges to help hold the other material during assembly. We filled any voids left over with wood chips and covered it all with a thick layer of moss.

The first glimpse of the finished project with Cheryl in the background. This was one of those projects that was so satisfying to see come together that there was quite a bit of 'stand back and looks so cool' going on!

Once the panel was slid into the 3 sided channel frame, we had to trim a few pieces of the mesh to get the top (side) on. And then we had to stand back and look some more!

Finally fitted, the side bolts are tightened and the gate is ready to be installed.

The hinges were drilled and tapped so that 7" x 5/8" bolts come from the backside of the post. This was done to grab more wood, to hide the fasteners and dock washers and because on a butt hinge the screws have to be flush which isn't so easy to do with big bolts. We trimmed the bolts flush after torquing with a grinder.

All steel fabrication, much design credit and special thanks to Jimmy and his two sons, Jack and Aiden Cussen, the Irish Welders.

All steel from Skagit River Steel and recycling except for the custom hog wire, by dbBrad and Skagit Farm Supply.

Steel plates and Cedar from Pete @ Two Dog Timber works

Steel chain and special thanks to Dave at Island Recycling, not located in cyberspace but still just north of Freeland on Hwy 525.