Hurricane Fence Expands In-House Gate Operator Services
RICHMOND, VA - August 05, 2026 - PRESSADVANTAGE - Hurricane Fence, a Class A licensed fencing contractor serving the
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RICHMOND, VA – August 05, 2026 – PRESSADVANTAGE –
Hurricane Fence, a Class A licensed fencing contractor serving the Mid-Atlantic since 1994, has expanded the residential and commercial work handled by its in-house gate operator division, the automatic gate and access control team the company says was the first dedicated division of its kind at a Virginia fence company. The division designs, permits, installs, and wires automatic gate systems without subcontracting the work, whether the job is a single residential driveway gate or a crash-rated commercial entrance.
Most fence crews stop at the gate itself and hand the automation and electrical wiring to an outside contractor. Hurricane Fence keeps all of it in-house, from the design through the final wiring.
The gate team holds the credentials that back that up. It includes an IDEA-certified Automated Gate Systems Designer, a credential that covers gate design, safety codes, and access planning, along with installers certified through the CAGOI program, short for Certified Automatic Gate Operator Installer. Access control layouts are handled by a Certified Gate Attendant Designer, or CGAD. Team members also hold electrical licenses, which matters because a powered gate runs on a wired 120-volt circuit that most fence installers are not licensed to touch.
On the residential side, the division installs swing and sliding driveway gates along with the operators that open them, and the access control hardware that decides who gets through, from keypads and phone-entry intercoms to in-ground vehicle sensors that open the gate as a car approaches. Every residential operator the company installs is built to UL 325, the federal safety standard for automatic gates. That standard requires a gate to sense a person, pet, or vehicle in its path and stop or reverse before it makes contact, using photo-eye beams and contact-sensitive edges. A gate that closes on someone without reversing is the exact failure that standard exists to prevent.
On the commercial side, the same division builds higher-security entrances. Those include crash-rated barriers, which are gates engineered and tested to stop a moving vehicle at a set weight and speed, and pedestrian gates built to the accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act so a wheelchair user can pass through without a barrier. The company designs and installs these systems itself, pulling the permit, setting the fence and gate, mounting the operator, and wiring the controls. It has completed gate and access control work at military, government, and data-center sites across the eastern United States, under confidentiality agreements that keep specific facilities and locations private.
The company has seen more homeowners across the Richmond suburbs ask about automatic driveway gates in recent years, driven by security and property-value concerns. Those installations carry a detail most homeowners do not expect. A gate post has to be set deeper and in stronger concrete than a standard fence post, because a post that shifts even a fraction of an inch throws an automatic gate out of alignment and can stop it from closing. Hurricane Fence also handles the required Miss Utility call, the state process for marking underground lines before any digging, on every job.
“A gate operator is the one part of a fence that can put a two-thousand-pound moving object between a car and a child, and that is the exact part a lot of companies sub out to whoever is cheapest that week,” said Mike Kelly, co-owner of Hurricane Fence. “We keep the safety wiring and the operator setup on our own certified crew, because when one of these is installed wrong, nobody notices until the day it hits something. That is not a corner we are willing to let someone else cut.”
Homeowners and property managers can reach the division by phone or read customer reviews on its Richmond Google Business Profile.
About Hurricane Fence
Hurricane Fence is a Class A licensed, bonded, and insured fencing contractor headquartered at 1300 Dinneen Street, Richmond, VA 23220. Founded in 1994, the company serves Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and completed 3,143 projects in 2025. Hurricane Fence installs vinyl, aluminum, wood, and chain link fencing, and operates a dedicated in-house gate operator and access control division for residential, commercial, and high-security work. The company is a Class A Contractor (CIC FIC & HIC #2705024990), an AFA Blue Ribbon Company, BBB A+ rated, and certified SWaM (Small, Women, and Minority-Owned Business). More information is available at https://www.hurricanefenceinc.com/ or by calling (804) 353-6030.
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For more information about Hurricane Fence Company, contact the company here:
Hurricane Fence Inc.
Tina Estep
(804) 353-6030
testep@hurricanefence.com
1300 Dinneen Street, Richmond, VA 23220
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