Hanging a gate

Yup.

white cement brick dust and sharp sand, or perhaps buy epoxy mortar.

If you dont mind grey, car body filler.

Or fill the holes with what TNP suggests, leaving about 5 - 10 mm at the end. Then collect some of the brick dust you get when drilling the new holes, and mix that with a little mortar to retain as much of the brick colour that you can, and use that to fill the rest of the hole.

The colour isn't critical as it will be behind the hinge. Actually epoxy mortar sounds attractive. Are the small tubes easy to mix?

TNP's post made me think of using straight epoxy with milled wood or dust filler, as I'm used to using that. The stuff in the bottom of containers here will be out of date, but probably ok and I have a large container of milled wood fibres.

It's on hold now until the builder decides whether his reputation is worth more or less than two screws.

They tend to have spiral mixing nozzles, some of the tubes (concentric design) fit normal frame guns, others (side-by-side designb) need a special dual plunger frame gun.

Enlarge the holes, and use a "chemical anchor", also called "chemical fixing", to bond a bolt directly to the brickwork without a plug?

Not particularly cheap stuff, but possibly worth if you can just reuse the holes with a bit of blow.out and brush-out...

Thomas Prufer

On 18:56 9 Dec 2018, Bill snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@end.of.the.universe:

You're too hard on yourself. It seems reasonable that when you wanted the gatepost rebuilding that it would be for the gate to close properly. It wasn't an random or arbitrary gatepost you wanted building that had no other function than just be on its own.

Surely the builder would come back and do this? Or make the adjustments he says are possible. Especially if it's physically difficult for you to manage and more so if you have health problems.

Jeff Layman explained :

I once tried colour matching that way, it takes an awful lot of brick dust to give it any colour.

Its what you might expect from a computer. Brian

This is what happens when they try to work when its dark of course.

I nearly always find that existing gates have wear and hence drop so if the whole thing is true it still hits the ground and the latch won't work. I had some bushes fitted to my garden gate but now the pins of the hinges is wearing instead. Bah humbug. Brian

Regular greasing helps prevent corrosion and ease the metal on metal rubbing which prevents the pins from thinning and the holes enlarging.

Richard

What's the bottom hinge, is it easier to move that?

No, judging by my measurements and a small amount of guesswork, it looks to me as if the bottom hinge is correctly positioned. The small movement to put the top hinge vertically above it would bring it all true and within the adjustment available on the bolts.

Even though we used to open the gates every morning and close them at night, the hinges are not worn and everything was fine before this debacle.

Sureley if the builder rebuilt the pillar he should be responsibe for ensuring the pintles were aligned ?

If it is its more than most politicians anyway :-)

Thats why just colouring the surface mm or so is no bad thing

In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, fred snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

Yes, that's the point, and the pillar is set up correctly. His position is that the hinge re-instatement was not part of the quote and therefore was a favour to us. My position is that favour or not, it is a bodged job and obviously wrong.

We didn't manage to contact him today, as we have just got in from babysitting a sick one year old.

a friend who is a building surveyor has said he will stop by tomorrow to have a look and advise. I hope to run the suggestions here past him and get his opinion about whether to take on the builder or whether it's such a simple job that I, perhaps with a local handyman, would find it less hassle to diy.

I suspect the builder left the job to apprentices and didn't inspect their work properly when he picked them up in the dark. Their website says "We pride ourselves on customer satisfaction and continue to earn repeat business from our clients, many of whom have been coming back to us many years.".

Tricky Dicky brought next idea :

I think mine are bushed or have some sort of bearing in an eye bolt. They also have an adjustment top and bottom, to allow the centre/end to be raised or lowered - unfortunately the installer spot welded the adjusters once he had set them 8-o

I know mine don't because I made everything, including the hinges.

The bottom hinge is just a bolt welded to the bottom of the gate with the threaded end cut off with an angle grinder, sitting in a hole in a thick metal plate that is bolted to the wall. Same at the top.

I didn't bother because the walls the plates are bolted to are true. Easy enough to pack if the walls arent true.

- unfortunately the installer spot welded the