Face mounted and deck mounted horizontal sliding mezzanine gates
When discussing mezzanine gate projects, a number of customers seem to have some confusion as to what is meant by face mounting a mezzanine gate. I think in this post, I’ll go over the differences between deck mounting and face mounting and why you might want to mount your gate in such a way.
The vast majority of mezzanine gates are deck mounted. This means that the gate system sits on top of the mezzanine deck back behind the rail. Below are a few examples of the various gates we offer mounted to the deck of the mezzanine.
Deck mounted manual horizontal mezzanine gate behind existing hand rail
Deck mounted stainless steel vertical mezzanine gate.
Occasionally though, the gate is being used in an unusual situation where setting the gate on top of the mezzanine is not an option. In these cases it might be better to mount the gate outside the mezzanine, attaching it to the face of the platform. We would call this situation face mounted.
Electric horizontal mezzanine gate face mounted to the deck
Not all of our mezzanine gates can be mounted to the face of the deck. The most common gate that we would mount on the face of the mezzanine would be the horizontal sliding mezzanine gate. As the gate needs to be tied back to your existing railing with clear passage in one direction approximately the length of the opening size plus two feet, pulling the gate outside the deck could help avoid interference with existing equipment up on the mezzanine deck. In this case, a face mount track would need to be added and attached to the face of the mezzanine just below the opening to support the gate.
Vertical mezzanine gate mounted to the face of the mezzanine
Another gate that can be mounted to the face of the mezzanine is the vertical mezzanine gate. The vertical mezzanine gate doesn’t take up much room on the deck of a mezzanine, so the applications where you would want to face mount are a bit more specific. Most commonly, this is done in situations where we are mounting an electric vertical mezzanine gate on the outside of a wall opening. This would allow you to load and unload materials from the deck through a doorway while having a line of guard rail blocking the opening while the doors are open. Another situation where face mounting a vertical mezzanine gate might be advantageous, would be in situations where the left column (when viewed from below) would be against some obstruction such as a column. The left column is the drive column and you’ll want to have it unobstructed just in case you need to access it. By mounting the gate on the outside of the deck on a couple face mount brackets, the gate flips around placing the drive column on the right side.
Face mounted self closing pallet gate being used to guard a second story doorway.
Another gate that we can do as a face mounted unit would be the self closing pallet gate. This is typically done in applications where the customer wants to mount the gate on a wall opening. In such applications, we recommend you still have a second area for offloading the pallets from the deck. While the self closing pallet gate is incredibly efficient at getting materials up onto the deck, offloading materials from the deck can be cumbersome due to the spring loaded hinges wanting to keep the gate closed.
If you ‘re trying to mount a gate in an unusual situation, perhaps mounting it to the face of the deck might help. Give us a call, and we’ll be happy to work with you to try and find a solution.
