Geelong is building at a pace few regional cities match. Armstrong Creek, Mount Duneed, Charlemont, Lara and the growing edges of Ocean Grove and Torquay are full of new homes where the driveway, front fence and landscaping are all being decided in the same few months. If an automatic gate is anywhere on your wish list, that window is the time to plan for it, even if the gate itself is a job for next year.

The reason is simple. Almost everything an automatic gate needs runs under or through the driveway and front garden. Once the concrete is poured and the turf is down, adding it means cutting, trenching and patching. Before that, it is a length of conduit and a conversation with your builder.

What a gate needs from the site

Whether you end up with a sliding or a swing gate, the motor and its accessories rely on a few things being in place:

Power to the motor position. Most gates run from mains power with a backup battery. That means a supply run from the switchboard to the gate, which is work for a licensed electrician.
Conduit for low-voltage cabling. Safety photocells, an intercom, a keypad or a pedestrian gate lock all need cables between posts, across the driveway or back to the house.
A solid base. Sliding gates need a level concrete strip for the track and a pad for the motor. Swing gates need posts or pillars set in proper footings that can carry the leaf and the motor.
Room to operate. A sliding gate needs clear run-back space beside the opening. A swing gate needs a clear arc on a driveway that does not rise through the swing.

Our guide Sliding vs Swing: Which Gate Suits Your Geelong Driveway goes through how to choose. On a new build you have the rare chance to shape the site to suit the gate you want, rather than the other way round.

Tell your builder and concreter early

The most useful thing you can do is put the gate on the plans before the driveway is formed. In practice that means:

Decide where the gate will sit and which way it will open, so the motor position is known.
Lay conduit under the driveway before it is poured, from one side of the opening to the other, plus a run back towards the house for power and any intercom or data cable. Spare conduit costs very little and saves a lot later.
Set the driveway levels with the gate in mind. A slight fall away from a sliding gate track keeps water out of it. A driveway that climbs steeply right at the boundary can rule out a swing gate.
Leave space for the motor and run-back so a garden bed, letterbox or meter box does not end up exactly where the gate needs to go.
Plan the pillars or posts with the fence builder so they are footed for a gate, not just a fence panel.

If you are not ready to buy the gate yet, we are happy to give you a simple layout for your builder showing conduit runs and the motor position. It is one of the cheapest ways to make a future installation quick and clean.

Check the estate rules

Many newer estates around Armstrong Creek and Mount Duneed have design guidelines or covenants that cover front fences and gates, including height, materials and how open the frontage must be. Check your land contract and the estate guidelines before settling on a design, and check with the City of Greater Geelong (or the Surf Coast Shire around Torquay) if you are unsure whether anything needs approval. It is far easier to adjust the design on paper than to change a gate after it is built.

Choosing the gate and motor for a new home

On a new build you can match the gate to the house rather than working around an old one. A few things worth thinking about:

Coastal positions. In Ocean Grove, Barwon Heads or Torquay, specify hardware and finishes suited to salt air from the start. Our article Automatic Gates on the Bellarine: Beating Salt Air and Coastal Weather covers what to ask for.
Access. Decide early whether you want an intercom, keypad or app control, so the cabling goes in with everything else. Our Intercom & Access Control service can be planned at the same time.
Solar. On larger blocks where the gate sits a long way from the house, a solar setup can avoid a long power trench. Our Electric Gate Motors & Openers (incl. Solar) page explains when solar suits.

The order of work

Every build is different, but the smoothest new-home gate projects we see follow a similar order: gate position and type decided, conduit and power laid, driveway and footings poured, fence and pillars built, and then the gate and motor installed and commissioned once the heavy machinery has gone. Fitting the gate last protects it from damage during construction and means the track and motor go onto finished, cured concrete.

Talk to us before the concrete goes in

If you are building in Geelong, on the Bellarine or along the Surf Coast, get in touch while the driveway is still a plan. Send us your site plan or a photo of the frontage, tell us roughly what gate you have in mind, and we will tell you what needs to go in the ground now so the gate goes in without fuss later.

Planning an Automatic Gate on a New Build in Geelong