New gate design: Gate in a gate

[Evan]

I have been doing some welding lately building a new gate. We needed a wide gate at one part of our house fencing to allow for vehicle access to the back of the house but also wanted to have easy walk through acesss. It's a pain to open a large gate when you want to walk through and also allows the dogs a chance to escape. I came up with a design I haven't seen before although I am sure it can't be original.

This is my design for a gate in a gate. It takes a page from the design of hangar doors that have a man door in the main sliding doors. The small gate is easy to open and step through while preventing the animals from charging for the opening. The lower truss is what supports the entire gate and is strong enough to stand on. The entire gate isn't as heavy as it may look as it is all .063" thinwall HSS tubing that I welded up with my Miller 130 wire feed. Total weight is around 100 lbs.

The fence post lying at the bottom is to stop the guy in the picture because he is a world class digger.

[Lew Hartswick]

Evan, Why did you use the wood pannels rather than more of the metal
"art" work in the man gate. Also the high "stepover" may be difficult
for several "types of folks" :-)
Nice looking job.
...lew...

[lynnl]

Evan, what are the two trees directly behind the gate (center of pict.)? ...Aspens?

[Evan]

I'm conserving my steel supplies to a certain extent. It also makes it more obvious that there is a gate there in the main gate. As for ease of use, well you can always open the main gate if you can't manage the step over.

[Evan]

I believe that is a Russian Poplar, it's a single tree with a double trunk.

BTW, the wood panels are fir that I planed from rough myself. Putting in that fence was one of my major projects this year.