Sliding Gate Motors in Oman, supplied and installed

Sliding gate motors in Oman

A sliding gate motor sits beside the gate, drives a toothed rack along its length and pulls the leaf open. Simple, and the most reliable arrangement there is for a wide opening, which is why most villa and compound gates in Oman are sliding rather than swing.

Everything below is about choosing the right one. Get the weight class right and a gate motor runs for ten to fifteen years. Get it wrong and you will replace it in three.

Which motor for your gate

Sized by the weight of the leaf, not by its width. Prices are for the operator itself, supplied from our shop in Al Khuwair.

Up to 600 kg, from OMR 126

Villa gates in open bar or light steel, typically four to six metres wide. BFT Deimos, Beninca Bull 624, CAME BX and Life Acer sit here. This covers the majority of domestic gates in Muscat.

600 to 1,000 kg, from OMR 200

Solid sheet steel villa gates, small compound entrances, and anything with substantial decorative ironwork. Beninca Bull 8M, BFT Deimos AC 800, BFT Ares. Also the right choice for a lighter gate that opens very frequently.

1,000 to 1,800 kg, from OMR 330

Compound and light industrial gates. BFT Ares BT A1500, Beninca Bull 15M and 20M, CAME BK 1200 and BK 1800. Three phase options available where the site has it.

Above 1,800 kg, from OMR 420

Industrial yards, warehouses and shared entrances. BFT Icaro, CAME BY 3500T and equivalent. These are continuous duty machines built for hundreds of cycles a day rather than a dozen.

Supplied and fitted, a complete sliding gate installation runs from OMR 180 to OMR 500 depending on the class of motor, the rack and how far the power has to travel. Full detail on our gate automation installation page.

How to estimate what your gate weighs

Almost nobody knows, and you do not need a scale. Multiply the width by the height to get the area in square metres, then use these:

• Open bar or picket gate, roughly 20 to 25 kg per square metre
• Solid steel sheet gate, roughly 40 to 50 kg per square metre
• Heavy decorative ironwork, 60 kg per square metre and upward

So a six metre by two metre gate is twelve square metres. Open bar puts it around 250 to 300 kg. Solid sheet puts it near 500 to 600 kg. Ornate ironwork can take the same gate past 700 kg.

Send us the width, the height and a photograph and we will confirm it properly. This estimate is for choosing a class, not for placing an order.

Always buy the class above

If your gate lands near 600 kg, buy the 800 kg motor. This is the single most important piece of advice on this page.

A motor working at ninety percent of its rating draws more current, runs hotter and reaches its thermal cutout on an Omani afternoon. Owners read that stopping as a fault when it is the machine protecting itself. Do it every summer and the control board eventually fails for good.

The same motor working at sixty percent of its rating runs cool and lasts. The difference in price between two classes is usually forty or fifty rial. The difference in life is years.

The rack, which people forget

The rack is the toothed strip bolted along the gate, and the motor is only as good as the rack it drives.

• Galvanised steel rack is what we fit. It costs more than nylon and it survives the sun
• Nylon rack goes brittle under Omani UV and strips its teeth, usually in the third or fourth summer, and takes the pinion with it
• Alignment matters more than the rack itself. A rack that rises or falls along the run makes the motor fight the gate at one end. It is the most common installation fault we are called to correct on other people’s work

What a complete installation includes

• The operator, its control board and a galvanised base plate set into concrete rather than bolted flat
• Rack, aligned and checked along the full run
• A pair of safety photocells across the opening
• A warning beacon where the layout needs one
• Two remote handsets, paired and tested
• Travel limits and obstruction force set on site, and the manual release demonstrated to you

Before you automate an old gate

Release any existing motor and push the gate by hand. It should move with one hand along its whole run.

If it binds, drops at the far end, or the wheels have worn flat, correct that first. Automating a gate that does not run freely means the motor does the work the gate should be doing, and it will fail early whatever you paid for it. We check this at the survey and tell you plainly, including when it means a smaller sale for us.

Brands and delivery

BFT, CAME, Beninca, Nice, FAAC, Life and Sommer, genuine and through proper channels with the manufacturer warranty intact. Held in Al Khuwair, Muscat, delivered cash on delivery to all eleven governorates, and installed anywhere in Oman by our own engineers.

Not sure which class you need? Send the opening width, roughly what the gate is made of and a photograph. We will specify it and price it at no cost, before you commit to anything.