Boom gates and turnstiles

The cost of a boom gate or turnstile depends on how busy the entrance is and how people will get through. The number of lanes, the length of the boom arm and the speed it needs all affect the price. So does the way people open it: remotes, tags, codes, fingerprints or faces. Intercoms, entry records, cameras and battery backup add to the system, and often save money later. A single boom for a small complex costs far less than several lanes with turnstiles at a factory gate. We don't quote from a price list. We visit the site, watch how the entrance is used at its busiest, and then give you a written quotation before anything is ordered. If the budget is tight, we can plan the work in stages.

Boom gates are used at estates, complexes, offices, business parks, warehouses, factories, shopping centres and parking areas. Anywhere vehicles need checking at the entrance, a boom gate controls them one at a time. It suits any entrance where cars arrive faster than a person can check them. At 7:30am, that's most entrances with more than a handful of cars. A boom lifts and closes much faster than a sliding gate, so the queue moves while each car is still checked. Booms often work beside a sliding gate, with the gate closed at night and the boom handling traffic during the day. They link to the same tags, codes and intercoms as the rest of your access control. We look at your traffic and your entrance layout before recommending where a boom will help.

Yes, in most cases. A new boom gate can usually connect to the readers, tags, intercoms and gate motors already on site. On the site visit, we check what's in place, how old it is and what it can connect to. Then we tell you plainly what can be joined to the boom and what needs replacing. Where the existing system works well, people keep the tag or code they already have, and it now opens the boom too. They carry one credential for every entrance instead of a new one for each, and you manage one list of who's allowed in. Where the old system can't connect, we explain the options, including replacing it in stages. Every recommendation comes with a written quotation before anything is ordered, so there are no surprises.

Yes, once a device is fitted to link the boom to a phone. Depending on the system, people open the boom with a call, an app or a short code sent from their phone. This suits estates and business parks where people already carry their phone everywhere, and it saves issuing remotes or tags. It also makes adding and removing people easier, since nobody needs to collect a tag when someone leaves. Whether phone access suits your entrance depends on the system, the signal at the gate and how many people use it. At a busy entrance, tags can be quicker than phones. We recommend the right option on the site visit and list it, with the price, on the written quotation. Phone access can usually sit alongside tags and codes.

Yes. Our service department repairs and maintains boom gates and turnstiles, along with the gate motors, readers and intercoms around them. We work on booms at estates, complexes, offices, factories and business parks. Most faults give a warning first. The arm hesitates, the motor sounds different at 7:30am, or the boom stops lifting all the way. Call us then, before the morning it stays down with a queue of cars behind it. Common causes are worn parts, flat batteries, misaligned safety loops or beams, and damage from a vehicle driving into the arm. We carry common parts and can often fix the fault on the first visit. For busy entrances, a service plan or service level agreement adds regular visits and 24-hour support, so a fault outside office hours still gets answered.

A boom gate keeps working in a power cut if its backup batteries are healthy. The batteries charge while the power is on and take over when it goes off, so the boom keeps lifting and closing through load-shedding. Most booms also have a manual release, so the arm can be lifted by hand if everything fails. The weak point is the battery nobody has tested. Batteries lose capacity with age and heat, often without warning, and an old one gives out halfway through a long outage, usually at the busiest hour. We size the batteries for the traffic and the outages you're likely to see, and we test them at every service visit. For busy sites, solar power or a battery backup can keep the whole entrance running through long outages.