and you may have realized
or you may have heard that I irritated some people
with my first Ghost Controls. Can we even say that, or do we have to call 'em Spooky Controls now? I'm not really sure. They haven't said I can't say their name, but they did say I needed
to be very accurate and very methodical about the
way I discuss their products, so what we're gonna do is
we're gonna take a look at their video, and we're
gonna correct some errors and clarify where maybe
there was a little bit Welcome back to our playground. Yes, this area right
here is our playground, where we're gonna
demonstrate things to you that we want you to see. This is one of the things
that we want you to see. We're gonna demonstrate this gate. We're gonna put an actuator arm on it. We're gonna make this gate automated. We are gonna show you
everything not to do. We're gonna show you
everything that we don't do. Why can we do this? 'Cause we're doing this for ourselves for a demonstrational
video so that that way, if you run into this stuff,
you know the difference between right and wrong. - One of the things I
haven't been very good about on this channel is asking you
guys to like and subscribe. You know what, 99% of our
views comes from people that are not subscribed to our channel, and if you like this comment,
one of the best things you can do to help support
this channel is subscribe, give us a thumbs up, write
a comment down below, tell us what we're doing right
and what we're doing wrong. So take a minute right now,
and do those couple things, and then let's get into this video review because I think you're gonna
like what I have to say, or maybe you're not. Before we get too far into this, I need to say all the views and opinions that are stated here
are mine and mine alone. They are my opinion, and
this is an opinion piece, so if you don't like that, maybe
click on to the next video, but you're gonna get my opinion, and that's what this channel's about. It's me, and I feel like I get to say my opinion on my channel,
but don't get mad at me because I have an opinion, and to be very clear,
Dan is playing the role of a homeowner who is installing a product that he got from a box store, not saying that this is how Spooky Controls recommends installing their operators. - And that special code is
UL 325, and we follow it, but today, we're not
gonna follow that code. To get started, we're gonna drive these two wood posts in with our EVO. (post driver screeching) So if you're gonna put
an operator on a gate, everything tells you
everything must be level. Your gate needs to be level. Your operator needs to be level. In this case, this gate's not level. Let it down a little bit. (gate thudding)
There it goes. (metal clanging) In all fairness, we do need to make sure that our gate does swing freely before we start messing
with our operator and put our operator on it 'cause that's
not any credit to anything. You do need to have a
proper functioning gate for an operator to work properly. So now, we got our gate up. We got more pieces up here on the ground. That's a nightmare. - We'll talk more about the
level on the hinges here in just a little bit
because I did touch on that, but your gate does need to be level. It does need to swing
freely, and we'll talk about the hinges here in a minute because there was some discussion on that in a letter that I got
from Spooky Controls, but for now, we'll just
go ahead and keep playing. - Still gonna do it, and
we're gonna do it together. This is our main motherboard right here, and I'm used to ones that
are twice the size of that. So first things first,
let's figure out how we get this thing on there.
(hand smacking) So how does this thingy attach? Those thingies to those thingies? (metal bar tinkling) And just yeah, but your bolt in there, and then we'll move this thing around. (accessory clattering)
What does that do? (box rattling)
This is really driving me crazy. What I would really like
is if they woulda given me another post, and I coulda put
(tools rattling) my control board on a
whole different post. - Spooky Controls does not
provide the post at all. That is the responsibility
of the homeowner. What Dan is illustrating right here is exactly what we'll see when we go out into the field, and that
is that the homeowners will install the controls on the post that the gates hang off of and latch to, so all the controls will be
hung right off of that stuff because it's close, and it's convenient. There is nothing in the manual
that says Ghost Controls does not recommend putting
the controller on the post, and on the other post
later on in the video, you'll see that the keypad is
attached to the latch post, and we'll talk about that
in a little bit more detail. This is exactly what we see. The homeowners are gonna
install these gates, the gate operators and
the controls on the post that exists right there. That is not the responsibility
of Ghost Controls to provide. That is your responsibility. If you want it on a second,
separate post, we suggest that you get another post and
you put it on a separate post. That is not Spooky
Controls' responsibility. - Really wish they had a
given us a whole nother post. That woulda been, that
woulda been really nice. All right, let's wire this bad boy up. No fuse. Yes, there is a fuse. It's stuck in the receiving side. Well, the thingy doesn't fit, and- (bolt rattling)
I don't have other thingies. - I'll say, think this
is gonna keep it charged for a good week or two? - Okay, are you ready to mount that thing? - Yeah, where do you wanna face it? - It needs to face the sky. I know that. Never eat shredded wheat, so west. Everything is good in the west. You don't think, you don't
think a car's gonna come through that gate and get
snagged on that, do you? - Probably not.
- Probably not, okay. There should be, like, a
rule that I'm not allowed to go get any special
tools outta my truck. They did provide me with a screwdriver. I will just say that's awesome. (control panel beeping) (control arm whirring) It gives you a nice little tune to, like, make you feel so good about yourself, like you just got a
brand new gate operator. (upbeat electronic music) - That feeling's usually
short-lived, by the way. ♪ Dit di-dit dit, dee dee ♪ - Okay, I don't know which one is open and which one is closed. It does not specify. I have a 1G and a 2G. Let's see. (control panel beeping) - That's for two separate gates, I think. You can operate two individual operators, one with each button. - Device.
(device buzzing) I don't know how it'd make it
through the cold temperatures. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. I couldn't tell you. So we need two C batteries. They're killing my budget. They didn't even give me batteries! This gate's costing me a ton of money! So my customer that I'm doing this for, they want this keypad as
close to the gate as possible, so that's what they're
gonna get, right here. (drill whirring) Man, our thing is really coming together. (keypad beeping)
My keypad works! - We'll talk more about the
keypads here in a little bit. (device beeping)
Wired vehicle sensor. Never seen one like it because
we're used to a safety loop. What a safety loop is is
it's a loop in the ground with a magnetic field detecting vehicles. There needs to be one on one side, but normally, they get
installed two loops. It senses your vehicle and tells your gate when the car is there, and it
reads if anything is there. If there's a vehicle over the loop, that gate's not gonna close
until that vehicle moves. What they say, this thing does as well, but I've never seen one. Normally, it's a loop in the ground. I have a vehicle detection
probe down there, okay? - Is this thing UL 325 compliant? - What's that? - Yeah, exactly. What's that? I wanna be very clear
here: these gate operators do meet UL 325, barely,
and when I say barely, that means that they've got
the inherent entrapment sensor, which I talk about here in a little bit, and then they have another sensor inside the operator itself,
a force limiting sensor. So those two devices
make it UL 325 compliant. Now, they're, I think
it's them and maybe one other manufacturer that are
using this particular feature. UL says that they have to
have an external sensor, and because the operator is external, they are considering that one
of their external sensors, so yes, they are meeting the
bare requirement for UL 325. However, we do not feel
that that's adequate, nor does the industry as a
whole because nobody else, with the exception of maybe
one or two other manufacturers are using this method to
stop and control a gate to keep it from crushing
or damaging property. Just to make that clarification, Spooky Controls here is
100% UL 325 compliant because they fought very hard to make sure that their sensor was approved, but nobody else is using that same method. We wonder why. - Can't just come and throw numbers at me, expecting to make that a code. That's not a code. The customer's gonna
rotate it as they need. Yeah, you can rotate it,
so you can follow the sun all day long. That's why they give you a pipe. This is just awesome.
(control panel clicking) - We're just being silly there, by the way, just being silly.
(control panel beeping) (lid clattering)
(gate whirring) (control panel beeping)
- Stop! (control panel beeping)
Close! (control panel beeping)
Stop! - But we're gonna talk
about why this operator is not at all what the
professional-grade operators will be, what sets this
consumer-grade operator apart from a commercial pro-grade setup. Because it's consumer-grade,
and they anticipate that people are gonna be installing these that don't know a lot about operators, don't know a lot about the
systems and how things work, they really do try and dumb this down as much as they possibly
can, and in order to do that, one of the biggest things
that they do is they make this operator so that it will operate without having all the
proper safety devices. I am saying proper in my opinion,
the proper safety devices. This, as we mentioned
before, this gate operator is 100% UL 325 compliant. That does not mean that I feel
this is a safe installation, and there are devices that are necessary for a safe installation,
which this operator does not require to be installed, and as we will talk in a little bit, some of these items are not even mentioned or available through this manufacturer. What does that mean to you as
a consumer or the end user? That means that it's
opening you up to liability should this thing hurt
someone or something. That's 100% accurate. If we touched that operator,
and we're the last ones to touch it, and it damages
someone or something, then we accept any
responsibility as well as you as the homeowner accept
responsibility for the damage that that does to
somebody else's property. So that's gonna be a claim
on your homeowner's policy. If somebody is coming to visit
you, and that gate closes on 'em and does damage to their vehicle, that is 100% on you. Not their vehicle. It's not their fault. That's on you, so just realize
there's some big blind spots to this thing, and if it
damages somebody's property, that's gonna cost you. Decided to follow UL 325
strictly and make sure that the operators that
we're touching are compliant. So if you bring us out to your property, one of the first things we're gonna do is look at that thing to see if it meets all the safety standards,
and if it doesn't, we're not gonna touch
it unless you're willing to bring that operator up to
the UL 325 safety standards. So you can see that
the box is very simple. We have a video up on our YouTube Channel, where we show our solar
setup compared to this. So we can kinda compare these,
and this is very typical of what we see when we show up
on a site and somebody says, "Well, I have a gate
operator that's not working." We see that we have just the
minimalist solar panel setup, so this is a 10-watt solar panel, may or may not be adequate,
depending on how many cycles you are using your gate for a day, but these consumer-grade operators are not gonna talk anything about that. Okay, to be very clear,
they do talk about this, but it's buried in the details, and they're assuming that
when a consumer's walking through the store, they're
gonna see the operator, they're gonna see the solar panel, and they're gonna assume,
make the huge assumption that if that solar panel's
being sold by that manufacturer and it's right next to the
operator that if they get those two items that
they'll be good to go, and that is not at all the case. Now, if you get into the details, and once you buy the operator
and you start digging through your manual, the
manual talks a little bit more about what kinda zone you're
in and how many days of sun that you can expect and
how many cycles a day and what kinda hardware you put on it, which becomes very important
because some of the hardware, if you start really digging
in to Spooky Controls, some of the hardware's
not even recommended, or it says you cannot
install on a solar operator. Those are the things
you have to worry about. They do talk about what kinda solar power you will need to operate their controller. The other thing we find interesting is is that the solar panels
that the farm stores and the big box retailers are
carrying are the cheaper ones. Now, they make another solar panel, but most of the places don't sell that because it's more expensive,
and we're gonna get a little bit more into
the cost side of things and how they were upset
with me about the cost, which I thought was pretty
funny, here in a little bit. Put the solar panel on it,
put a couple batteries on it, and you're good to go. Other things that people don't realize when they get into these systems is they go into the farm store or wherever you're looking
at these, and they say, "Oh." You know, you look at
this arm, and you think that that's all there is to it. You don't realize that there's the arm, and then you have to buy the controller, and then you have to buy the battery box, and you have to buy the
solar panels separate, and if you want a lock
on that end of the gate, that's separate, and remotes are separate, and what we have down here is
a probe, and that's separate, and so they look at the cost
of this particular piece and think, "Oh, my fence
company's ripping me off because I can go down and get this stuff, and it's super-cheap," and they're $500, and they'll have an operator. There's a lot more to
the system than that, and that's not what you're seeing. By the time we get all
this stuff included, you know, we've got $1,500
wrapped up in just this. Here's where we get to talk about cost. I thought it was really interesting that when they sent me the
cease and desist letter that they were all wound up
about the fact that the stuff that I have shown in the
video did not cost $1,500. I apologize. I was shooting the video. I don't have script for anything. I was approximating cost.
That did not cost $1,500. They were very clear in the
fact that it cost $900 and... Hang on, I wanna be very accurate. It cost $940.57, according to them. I don't know. I can pull out the receipt. Maybe I should do that too. For all the hardware that we
have shown here in this video, we spent $865.75, so even
they were a little bit off. What I find interesting about this is that I represented that their product was more expensive, thereby insinuating that maybe it was a little bit
higher quality than they did. What I think that they
were irritated with me for is the fact that I was
telling people, the consumers, that the product was more
expensive than it really was, and that kinda goes to their mindset in that they really want
their product to seem cheap and affordable because they want everybody to put one of these on their gate, so they were irritated
with me that I represented that it cost more than it
actually did, but it's 100% true. So you have to buy the actuator arm. You have to buy every
single individual remote. You have to buy the battery box. You have to buy the solar panel.
You have to buy the keypad. You have to buy each individual probe. You have to buy photo eyes, if
you're able to operate those. So each individual piece adds up cost, and then you have the
cost of the gate panel, and you get the cost of
the post and everything, and then you get your
time of installing it, and pretty soon, you
have a lot more involved in putting these in than you can realize. Now, luckily enough, we've gone and done another solar operator
on Stoney Ridge Farm, so he's got some videos of the operator that we installed there,
as well as we have some more videos on our channel about a proper solar installation, and that one's even more major than the last one we showed you because we wanted to make sure it could have plenty of cycles. It was operating two really
heavy duty operators, and that just shows you
kinda what goes into it, and I think the common misconception is is that I get this
operator, and I'll be able to put it in really quick and easy, and that kinda goes to what we see when we look through
their website too, website and Facebook page and things
like that, which we've been to. Basically, they wanna keep
it super, super-simple because they know that this is gonna be an end user installing
these things themselves, not professional installation. They wanna keep the product as low-cost as they possibly can
in the consumer's mind so that more and more people put these on, and we think that's a problem. I personally, in my opinion,
think that's a problem. We don't have a way with
these particular systems to really terminate everything nicely like you saw in our other operator setup. We can't run conduits into this. Whoa, hang on, pause. Yes, yes, you can run conduits in these. However, they give you
half-inch knockouts, so if you need to run some
3/4-inch conduit, guess what? There's no room. If you need to run a bunch
of half-inch conduits, guess what, no room. They give you so little
room that there's really no good room to run any
kinda conduit over 1/2-inch, and I think they give you maybe
two or three conduit holes in there for those,
and the box is so small that if you needed to
run several conduits, you wouldn't have the room. Now, go look at some
of our other operators and all the accessories,
and once you start putting all the accessories on there
that should be on there, there's no room in the box. That's what I'm alluding to. Yes, yes, they do give you,
like, two or three 1/2-inch conduit knockouts, for what that's worth. What you're gonna see when you see a consumer-grade operator,
you know, this looks pretty sloppy, but this is
exactly what we're gonna see. We're gonna see wires that are
stapled all over the place. It's just get it up. Okay, pause. Oh, this is- Boy, it's getting good now, yes. Yes, that's exactly what we see because they don't give
you adequate knockouts. They don't give you,
and really, their intent is not to have people use conduit. They don't plan on people using
conduit, and this is clearly what you see when you go to their website because what do we see on their website? We see the boxes installed on the post. We see wires just run
straight into the operator, just like this. There's nothing ever running conduit. I think we looked through
their entire website and only found one gate that had conduit, and that was probably
because an electrician brought power into the operator, and so he was required to
run conduit into the box. That was probably the only
reason on that one singular photo that we could find on their website that there was conduit in the picture. They really don't plan on
anybody ever using conduit. That's my opinion! My opinion is they don't plan
on anybody using conduit. The post is here. We're gonna see all this
stuff just plastered on the post right here because
that's the post we have. Maybe if we're lucky,
it's right over here, but because this is a minimalist system, we have very few wires coming into this. So we've got our solar panel right here, and here, we've got hardwired inputs. This is gonna be our
operator wires right here, and we do have a probe that
is going down this way, and you can use probes,
or you can use something called a loop detector,
and people all think that those loop detectors are
in the roadway and they're pressure-sensitive, or
they're doing something else. They're nothing more than a magnetic field that's sensing whether or not metal is introduced into that field. So that's a common
misconception about loops. This is a probe, and
it's sensing the vehicles that are driving by. So there's two things
that we're worried about when we're installing an operator is is can it damage property,
and can it hurt a person? Now, if we look up the manual right here, it tells us right here that
we have two different types of entrapment protection,
that we need to be careful about entrapment protection. This is all the space
in this entire manual that we get that talks about this. There might be a couple
other places in the manual where they talk about
entrapment protection and they talk about safety. What I was talking about
is this is the only place in the manual where it talks specifically about entrapment protection and the type of force limiting devices
that are installed on the operator. They don't talk about
recommending any photo eyes for additional protection. I could not find anywhere in the manual, in the entire manual, where they talk about vehicle detection loops. They talk about probes,
and probes are great. The way this probe is wired in there, all it can do is open the gate. It can't, so if we installed
one of these probes on the outside of the gate,
it would open the gate, and that would be a problem
because it would allow people to get into the property that
shouldn't be in the property. So there are different types of loops that are installed on these operators. There is a free exit loop, which means that once somebody is in the property and they've been allowed
access into the property, it will open the gate and
allow them to freely exit. Then there's something
that we'd put at the, just past the end of the gate, and that is called an obstruction loop. Then we have something that's
put underneath the gate that's called a safety
loop, and that safety loop is only active when the
gate's not in motion. Once the gate is in
motion, that safety loop drops out and allows the gate to close. We talked more about that
in the Stoney Ridge video. Then on the outside of the gate, we have another obstruction loop. All these loops work
for different functions. The only two that are
the same are the inside and the outside obstruction loop, and those prevent the gate
from closing on a vehicle. In conjunction with that,
usually we have edges, or we have eyes that can
also help prevent the gate from closing on a person or a vehicle. This gate has none of that stuff. It has a free exit probe. Once you get into the
swing path of the gate, the gate really has no
idea that anybody's there, and this is how almost, I can't say that I have ever seen one of these gates installed with any loops or with any eyes, for that matter, and
we'll get into that here in just a second, like I mentioned. There's a problem with the eye setup, but they do talk about safety. They do the bare minimum
to cover the requirements and let you know that these
things can hurt people and that it does have
inherent entrapment sensors, but it doesn't talk about
the risk that you run if you don't install the
proper vehicle detection, so the risk that it can
run of damaging property. It says that we have
an inherent entrapment, and then we have force
limiting and monitored contact, and so the monitored contact,
they actually give us some monitored safeties right here, and the neat thing about
this is this operator should not work without a
monitored safety device. They've done something super-special, as we mentioned in the
beginning of the video, to get away from that, and the
reason that they've done that is to keep it super,
super-simple and keep it super-dumbed-down for the
common installer, the end user. They wanna keep it as
basic as they possibly can, and they know that
monitored safety devices can cause a big problem, and
they can be a huge nuisance, so they wanna get rid of those, and that's why they've done
things the way they can. At least, that's my opinion
of why they've done things the way that they have,
to keep it super-simple, super-basic, so that the end user can install their own product. All the other manufacturers out there, with the exception of maybe one or two, are requiring a monitored safety device to be installed before
the gate will swing, and that's what I'm referring to here. So you either need to
have a monitored edge, or you need to have monitored photo eyes for that gate to swing
freely or to work properly, and so on all the gates that we install, you're gonna see one or
both of those devices, or in some cases, you may see
multiples of those devices, depending on the circumstances
and the safety concerns that we have regarding that
particular installation. But these guys don't want
you to install this stuff because they know that
that's gonna be problematic, and that adds cost and stuff like that. So they're gonna make their operator, they allow their operators to work without that stuff installed,
as you can clearly see. What that means to you
is is that this gate may or may not know
that a vehicle's there, but it has no idea that a person's there. That is true. It has no idea that a person's
there until it hits them. Once it hits them, then it can use one of the force limiting
devices or the inherent entrapment sensor to determine
that a person's there, and it doesn't still
know a person's there. It just knows that the
motor's working harder than it should, and so it stops and says, "Hmm, what the heck's going on here?" And no gate operator knows
that it's technically a person. There are contact and
non-contact, so a safety edge must come in contact
(hand smacking) with something before it can reverse path, and a photo eye is gonna be
like on your garage door. It'll break the beam, and
once that beam's broken, it makes the operator
stop and reverse course, sensing that something's there, and there may be an issue, so. The gate to swing freely,
and if the gate's trying to swing, and it trips
out that force setting, it'll automatically reverse the gate, so if it won't close all the
way or something like that, we can increase the force setting, making it provide more
pressure to close the gate. If we back that off a little bit, it'll take less pressure
before it trips out and says, "Hey, something's in the way." So we'll play with that
here in just a second and show you kinda what that is. So the monitor in a
non-contact, basically, if you press on it hard enough, it trips a sensor and makes
that gate reverse course. The other type is a non-contact sensor, and that's basically just like
your garage door photo eyes. It means that if something
breaks that beam, then it's gonna reverse,
and so that's the things you're gonna see us
install on all your gates is we're either gonna use gate edges, or we're gonna use photo eyes to prevent that gate from closing on a person. Now, on something like this,
there's not a high likelihood that it's gonna hurt
somebody, but you never wanna open yourself up to that, but what it can do is it can
seriously damage your vehicle So you get this gate, and
you're thinking, "Oh, wow, I got a great deal on my gate operator," and then it goes and runs
into the side of the car, tears up your whole gate,
whether it's a nice gate or not a nice gate, messes up your arm. You have to redo everything,
and then you have to pay for a bunch of damage
to somebody's vehicle. That's when the gate's not cheap. This becomes extremely
important when you start talking large, heavy gates
that are hard to stop. The gate that we've got
on here is really light, but if you've got a gate
moving with any kinda force and you've got a small
kid, it can cause a lot of injury very quickly,
and there's a lotta cases across the US where exactly
that same thing's happened. So I want to challenge anybody
that's watching this video, if you have had one of these
gates hit your vehicle, drop a comment right now. We know that they're out there. We know there's thousands
of 'em across country. I went and visited
somebody in North Carolina, and they had told me and
showed me their vehicle that was dented and scratched because one of these operators had
closed on their vehicle. They're out there. It happens all the time, and it's because they're not installed correctly, and they don't know
the vehicles are there. I'm gonna go out here, and
I'm gonna say something super-controversial, that
this is my opinion again. I wanna be very clear about that. My opinion is that these
gates are such a piece of crap, they don't have enough force to actually hurt anybody seriously. They can barely do the job
of closing the gate as it is, so the chances that it's
really gonna crush somebody, it would have to be like a
really close pinch point, somewhere up there right by the operator, and so anything's always possible. These gates are so weak
and so underpowered and so poorly constructed that the chances that they're actually
gonna be able to physically crush somebody, especially
at the other end of the gate, are pretty minimal, luckily,
but the true cost comes when it damages a vehicle,
and it takes nothing to run that gate into a vehicle and cost you a new gate and a new arm. That is 100% accurate. I've heard stories of this
all across the country, so like I say, I challenge
you, if you've had one of these gates hit your vehicle,
drop a comment down below, and tell us your experience with these. So I wanted to talk about that because that's super-important, but this is basically exactly what we see when people call us to their project and say, "I need you to work on a gate," and that's exactly what they expect us that we're gonna install,
and they don't understand the difference between
this and the other operator that we showed you. If you wanna see the big
difference between this and the other operator, we're
gonna drop a link right here, somewhere, I don't know. - [Producer] Hold on a
second, Mark. I got you. Let me put "Link Below."
(keyboard clicking) Let me put in a few
arrows for you, all right. (pen tapping)
There you go, man. - They're gonna put a link to the video from the Stoney Ridge
Farmer, and we'll show you what a real high-class
operator looks like. Now, not saying you need
something quite that fancy, but there's a huge difference between this and that product there. So really, people will ask
us how much a gate operator costs, and it really
depends on what you want the gate operator to do,
how fancy you want it. The sky's the limit. We install gate operators
from, let's say, $7,000 all the way up to
100-plus thousand dollars, so it really depends on
how fancy you wanna get when you talk about a gate operator, what you want it to do, how
well you want it to function, how important is reliability? You know, redundancy, backup systems, things like that can add extra costs, so. Let's talk about the install. We're pretending that this
is the outside of the gate on the unsecure side of the property, and we have our keypad monitor right here because you wanna know why
we put the keypad right here? Because there's a post right
here, and that's convenient. A lotta times, we'd see
that actually on that side because that's the driver's
side, and we wouldn't wanna go set another post back
here, but that's another thing that doesn't meet UL 325. This keypad and anything that you use to operate the gate needs
to be placed a minimum of six feet away from any
part of the gate operator. Ghost Controls, actually, in
their manual does spell out the right requirement,
and that is the keypad needs to be more than six feet away from any operating portion of the gate. That is not correct. Ghost Controls does not recommend that. However, we found it really
funny that when we went to their website, we
could see some pictures where the keypad was
actually installed right on the gatepost just
like we were discussing. So if they're super-serious
about not installing gates improperly, maybe they
wanna step up their game on their website and take down the photos of the installations that
don't meet UL 325, just a tip. People usually find it
disingenuous if you talk about how much you care about safety when you don't actually make
sure that the installations you're featuring on your website are safe. 'Cause they wouldn't
want somebody reaching through the operator and
trying to operate the keypad, so they're worried that
somebody could come over here and try to operate a
keypad or a doorbell button or something like that and
get hung up in the gate and get hurt, and so that's
why we wanna maintain six feet away from the gate, which
is basically a tall person's not gonna be able to do both,
either get into the gate and touch a keypad, so
the keypad actually needs to be out here somewhere
at a bare minimum. Another thing we see a lot
of is we don't see anything to stop this gate, so
as it sets right now, this gate has no idea
if there is a vehicle or a person anywhere in this swing path. We've got a probe out there
that will open the gate, and that's what a lotta people do because they're like, "Well,
I wanna be able to drive up my driveway and have the gate
open," but they don't think about what's gonna make that gate stop if it starts closing, and so they forget that they need a probe
or something out here. They need a probe on that side so that if somebody pulled up to the gate, and then they'll get
sidetracked or something, and that gate will start closing and run into the side of their vehicle, and that's when you get damage. So on any gate that we're
installing, we're gonna put either a loop or a probe
on the outside of the gate. Typically, we use loops. We're gonna put one on
that side of the gate. That's called a shadow loop, and that goes underneath the gate, in
the swing path of the gate, and what that does is it works right up until the gate starts
moving, and then it drops out because if it didn't
and that gate swung over since it's made of metal typically, that gate swung over, it would
just automatically trip it and make it wanna go
back the other direction. Outside the swing path of the
gate, we have another loop, and then further on down the driveway, we'll have another loop,
so that's four loops that we're gonna put in
there that most homeowners or end users that install their
own operators are not using. Nowhere in the manual did
I see anything that talked about loops or their installation
or how to install 'em, how to wire loop detectors
into their system. Nowhere in their manual
was there any discussion whatsoever of any kind of
vehicle detection loops. They did talk about
probes, but probes are not the same thing, and probes
don't serve the same purpose. Probes are really great for free exit, and that's basically what
the probes on their website are being sold for is they're being sold as free exit devices. They're not selling any
probes for obstruction that I could see, so I'm
sure they'll let me know if I'm wrong. The other thing, I don't
know where we covered it, but we talked about the eyes. I found it very interesting
that the eyes that you go- Yeah, sure, they sold the
eyes on their website, but if you look on their
eyes, it says right on, and you go down, and you
follow all the information on the eyes, it says, "Not
for solar installations." So if you're installing a solar operator, one of their solar operator
systems, you can't use the eyes, and it specifically says
that right on their website. I've got screenshots of it that says, "The eyes are not for solar operation." So if you want to have eyes on your gate for entrapment protection,
that's not even an option for solar, and I would guess probably 95% of their operators are
being operated off of solar. It may even be higher than that. That's just simply a guess. It's just my gut feeling
based on what I've seen in the field 'cause all of
their operators are solar, and that's also why most
retailers don't carry the eyes is because they're not a
big seller because you can't use 'em in solar operators,
and the problem goes on and on, so that's because they're
the huge draw that they take, so they're constantly
taking power off of that, and these operators barely run. If you get a cloudy day, chances
are they're not gonna run. The operator that we put in
for Stoney Ridge, he talked about as soon as it reached 20 degrees, which you draw a lot more
power, it takes a lot more power to keep those things running in cold. So all of those are a factor. Things like keypads take power. Photo eyes take power. Loop detectors take power. Oh, what else takes power? Just about everything that you can put, any accessory you can put on these, which is why they keep it very limited, because they know that
the 10-watt solar panel that they're giving you
is barely enough to keep that thing running on a
good sunny day, especially out here in the west, in the
northwest, where we don't have a whole lotta sunlight,
especially in the wintertime. These gates go down all
the time because they just don't have the backup batteries, or if they put photo eyes
on there, they'd never work. Each one of those costs money, takes time. You have to do more
trenching, things like that, and so those oftentimes
don't get installed, and that makes for a very
dangerous installation. So we got the solar panel
and the battery box kit, and it comes with two
seven-amp-hour batteries, so that gives you a total of 14 amp hours. It's a little overcast today. So far, it's stayed charged,
but if we see a lotta cycles or it gets super-cold, those
batteries drain even faster, and we will see people that
say, "You know, it's been overcast for three days, and
I can't get my gate to work." That's why you see us,
when we install those, we're putting a lot more battery capacity with a lot bigger solar panels in there so that we make sure that
no matter what happens, what time of year it is, no matter what the weather conditions are. So there's calculations that most of the operator
companies'll do, and they'll give you calculations based
on your draw and everything and how many cycles a day you
think that gate's gonna move, and so when they sell you a
package, they're taking all of those things into
consideration to make sure that you have the backup reserve. Now, one company that we
did see, and I don't know when this video's gonna
come out, but we went and saw US Automatic, who
does a really good job of making sure that their
operators work very well and have very low draw, so
all of their accessories are super-low-draw, and
that would be a very good, comparable product as opposed
to this particular product. They're very focused on their safety. They're focused on things
that don't rob a lotta power so that they can use smaller solar panels and still keep the gate running. I think they were using a 30,
maybe a 30-amp-hour battery instead of two seven-amp-hour batteries. So we will put a link to a
package, a solar package, both a single and a duo gate package, in the video description down
below, so if you're interested in a good alternative to these operators, we'll show you one. US Automatic, made in Texas,
they've kinda been a pioneer in their industry for a very long time, and they actually put out
a product that can be used, when installed properly,
will be very safe. So we think that that's a good alternative to something like this that is, in our opinion, not safe enough. Gate for a long period of time, should there not be enough sun. It's been overcast for about two days, but we really haven't
used this gate either. So when we set the limits of this, that was one of the things
I didn't particular care for as I showed up today,
and on most of the operators, most, I can't think of
one that isn't this way, but we can set the open
and the close limit. On this gate, we can
only set the close limit, and the open limit is basically
when the rod is sucked all the way in, that's the open limit. There's no recommendation from
this particular manufacturer, Ghost Controls, to install better hinges. That's a (fist punching) lie! Okay, they actually do
talk about better hinges once you get over 200
pounds, so in the manual, they talk about any gates
that are over 200 pounds, you need better hinges,
and that's probably because it's an underpowered
piece of (fist punching). Because the gate's so
underpowered, it can't swing. It's gonna have a hard time
running a gate that heavy, and so they really need good
hinges, so they talk about it at that point in time, but
anything under 200 pounds, which this gate clearly is,
there's no recommendation that you do anything other than whatever your gate comes with. Any hardware will work,
and what we see there is they're just super-sloppy. Stoney Ridge Farmer showed us his gate. I mean, there's slop all over the place. It's just not a tight system,
which they do recommend good hinges as long as
it's over 200 pounds, but we recommend good hinges
regardless of how heavy your gate is because it
takes up a lotta that slop and that play, allows your
gate to close more accurately in the same spot every time,
and just reduces wear and tear on the operator because there's
not as much friction, so. And so the heavier your gate
is, the more important that is. We, even on a simple ranch
gate, will install a good pair of hinges that cost
about $100 just because we wanna make sure that swings as freely and easily as possible so
that there's no friction, and it just eliminates wear and tear. This is typically what we're gonna see, just the standard hinges. If you're looking for a good
set of hinges for your gate, they're called BadAss
hinges, and we'll put a link to those in the description down below, and they're made by D&D. Really good, solid gate hinge. Another one that we use a lot is called LiftMaster Power Hinge. So two very good options,
depending on how heavy your gate is, but that's a good hinge
option for any swing gate. They do put a buzzer, which is another warning device that's required. You gotta have lights or
buzzers or something like that, so they do have a nice buzzer here. They do give you some remotes. Now, one of the nice things
about most of the systems we install, we'll oftentimes
work with your vehicle remotes, so if you've got the vehicle remotes built into your vehicle, you can program one of those to your gate
operator with what we install. If you don't, we can program,
even give you remotes that'll work for your garage doors, like a three-button remote that'll work with your garage doors
and work with your gate, so that's a little bit of a plus instead of having to carry around
a whole separate remote. Other things we can do that
these guys aren't gonna be able to do is make it so that you can open your gate and control
your gate with an app. We're gonna label this one false. I misspoke right there. They do have an app. If you wanna buy one of these
operators, luck be with you. They do have an app you can
operate this thing remotely and crash it into all the
vehicles you want remotely. Have a good time with
that because they do offer that feature, so if you just
wanna sit up in your house and randomly open and close
your gate on vehicles, that's 100% something
you can do, so lucky you. The timer on this, which it
does have a built-in timer, it isn't gonna give you a seven-day timer or anything like that, so
if you wanted it to be open from eight to five, you're not gonna have any of that functionality with this. (gate whirring)
Another way that they keep the cost down is the only thing they offer is gonna be a wireless keypad. We're not a big fan of wireless keypads. In the right application,
they can work great, but usually, we provide wired keypads, and that just gives 100% reliability as opposed to having any
kind of signal interference that can cause reliability issues. Wireless keypads can at
times be problematic, so that's just our experience. That's my opinion. I'd prefer a wired keypad, in any case, where I can actually get
one, but it does require more trenching, more conduit, more work, and that's why they don't offer one. Not saying that you
can't even wire a keypad. I'm sure that we could get
a keypad wired in there. It's just not something that you're gonna be able to buy through them. About this is made so
that you can install it as quickly and easily as possible and hopefully have it
work most of the time. Do you wanna know why we installed the loops and stuff like
that? I think you do. I think you wanna see why we do that, so. What we see when people
see a gate closing, we know that the best course
of action is to just pause. Just put on the brakes. Just stop. Let the gate hit your vehicle very gently, and pause until it
finally reverses course. However, what happens in the real world is people try and race the gate. They see the gate closing,
they panic, and they gun it. That's what happens every time. It's just normal human reaction, and that's why what you're
about to see is exactly what happens, and this is
where the real damage comes in is because people end up
trying to race the gate. They don't just break and pause, and that creates that little wedge action, and like what you're gonna see is as the gate hangs up on the bumper, and this is a real-world
scenario of what could happen. So I don't care what you say. That's my opinion. This is
what we see in the field. This has happened in any cases, so if you've seen this
happen, drop us a comment and let us know because I
think what you're gonna see is this comment section
fill up with people that have had this very experience. Yeah, I'm gonna use the nice car. - [Bystander] What if
something happens to it? - (sighs) Nothing will. We've installed that gate as per the manufacturer's recommendation. How could anything bad happen? Mostly, as per the
manufacturer's recommendation. Some things were done
just homeowner adlib. We did kinda shoot from the
hip, kinda homeowner style there on a couple things, so
there are some things that are done not per the
manufacturer's recommendation. I need to be very clear about
that, but we've hopefully pointed all those inconsistencies
out through this video, and so now, you know what's
per the recommendation and what is not. (monitor beeping) Oh, crap, that thing's
gonna close on my vehicle! (gate crashing)
Dude, did you see that? - I did.
- Thing tried to close on my vehicle! Man, that's the last time
I come to your house! We'd better, I'm gonna
have to check for damage. If that gate had no idea I
was there, that's your fault. That's 100% on you. I was just minding my own business, doing what I was supposed to be doing. What typically happens in these cases is is that we'll be sitting here, and there's somebody that'd come along. "Well, hey, how you doing? I haven't see you in so long. Oh, by the way, did you get that letter that I sent you the other day? No, oh, crap, that gate's
gonna close on me again." (gate crashing) Oh, crap! True! Son of a gun! Son of a gun! Except for maybe the
letter, it woulda been an email or something. Your attorney, 'cause this
is gonna get real now. Look, look at what it
has done to my vehicle. There was not a scratch on this. This thing was mint before
your gate damaged my vehicle. None of this was there. Oh, you wanna argue?
You wanna argue with me? I'll show you. I'll show you! (gate clattering) (post crashing) (gate clattering) (car rattling) (door thudding) Don't argue with me.
It's your gate's fault. You know what, that gate's
never gonna hurt anybody ever again 'cause I
took care of it for you. Yeah, that's right. Now, let's talk about
all the damage you did to my pretty car. (post clattering) (chuckles) That's all I
have to say about that, and you have a good dang day. (lively opera music) (singing in foreign language) So hopefully by now, like
at the very end there, maybe you figured out
that some of what we do's a little bit tongue-in-cheek,
and we're a little edgy, so we always like to add a
little of comedy into things. I'm sure that if you're
from Spooky Controls, you probably don't find
much of this very funny, and we can't help it if
you don't have a good sense of humor, but maybe it will make you think about the way you market your products and about the safety of your products because a lot of what we've seen in here is what actually happens in the field, and maybe if you haven't seen this stuff, you haven't been out in the fields, maybe you need to go
follow some installers around and see what we see
when we install these things. The other thing I will
say in full disclosure is that our company has
not always followed UL 325. We have kinda stepped up
our game over the years, and we have always tried
to be at the forefront, so back in the early days,
we just installed gates, much like many people,
and then have slowly tried to bring our game up, and
so the gates that we install now are better than the gates
we were installing five years ago, and when we go back to
one of our old installations, and if we have done something incorrectly or we haven't followed UL
325, we bring those gates up to code so that anything
moving forward is up to code, and I think that's probably
what a large part of the country and the quality operator
installers out there are doing. So I'm not gonna say that we
don't have any gate operators out there that are not up to today's code, but we are constantly improving what we do and bringing better quality and safety to our customers through
education, and as we learn more, we bring that into our installation. So don't hear me say that we're perfect, and we've never installed
a gate that wasn't 100% perfectly safe and had all the safeties because that would be a lie. So hopefully, that clears up
some of the inconsistencies in the original video, and
we've cleared up what is fact, what is fiction, what is my opinion versus what is reality,
what is in their manual, what isn't in their manual, and
hopefully, I get this right. I'm sure that if I didn't,
I'll get another letter, and then we'll have to
sort all this stuff out all over again, but I'm
willing to take that risk. I'm a risk-taker. Until next time, you have a good dang day. Good for that. Anyhow, I got the flip-flops on, so. (mouth smacking)
#FlipFlopFencer, it's good stuff. Okay, that's it. (air whooshing) (flames crackling)
