Free on-site gate assessment - hinges, posts, and your LiftMaster or Nice gate operator checked before anything is quoted
The assessment is free and the quote is the invoice.
Fast, Reliable Gate Access Control Across North Hollywood
Gate access control in North Hollywood means keeping your gate operator working through 110°F Valley summers and decades of hard-water wear. We fix keypads that won’t accept codes, remotes that stopped talking to 1980s circuit boards, and phone-entry systems landlords added years after the original gate went in. If you’re off Burbank Boulevard, up near Oxnard Street, or on a side street in Valley Village, call (350) 247-4763 and a live person answers. Not a voicemail tree. Not a chatbot. Hal Gatewood has been at this since 2001, and he’ll tell you what’s actually wrong before anyone shows up.

Why Gatewood Fence & Gate Is North Hollywood’s Preferred Gate Access Control Company
We’ve worked on more legacy apartment gate operators in North Hollywood than we can count. The 1960s to 1980s stucco complexes along Burbank Boulevard, Magnolia, and Vineland still run their original slide gate systems, and when those fail, the call usually comes to us. Not because we’re the cheapest. Because we show up, we tell the truth, and we fix the gate in the driveway instead of selling a replacement you don’t need.
Every job gets the 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing. If something isn’t right, one call brings us back. No runaround, no arguing. Hal’s name is on the shop and on every invoice, and that’s the oldest accountability there is. A live person answers the phone 24/7, so when your gate hangs mid-cycle at 11 p.m. and you can’t get your car out of the garage, you’re talking to a human who knows North Hollywood, not a dispatch queue three states away.
Scheduling and dispatch are coordinated from our Los Angeles office, but the crew that shows up at your gate is local to this area. We know the traffic patterns on Lankershim and the permit quirks at the City of LA building department. That local knowledge saves time. Time saves money.
Our Gate Access Control Services in North Hollywood
Here’s what we actually do for Gate Access Control in North Hollywood, and why each service matters on the older gates this neighborhood is full of.
Keypad Entry
A keypad on a North Hollywood apartment gate takes abuse. Full sun, rain, bored kids punching buttons, and hard-water scale building up inside the housing. Most keypads we replace aren’t broken internally. They’re corroded at the terminals or the membrane is UV-cracked. Typical keypad replacement in North Hollywood runs $250-$450 installed, depending on whether we’re retrofitting a wired keypad onto an old DoorKing or Viking operator or matching an existing system like the Ghost Controls units newer landlords prefer. We program it on-site, test it, and hand you the code before we leave.

Remote Control
When your remote works from ten feet away and only if you angle it like a TV antenna from 1987, the problem is usually the receiver board on the operator, not the remote. Older LiftMaster and Linear receivers cook in Valley heat and drift off frequency. Installing a modern receiver with fresh remotes in North Hollywood typically runs $300-$550 for the receiver, remotes, and labor. If your gate is on a multi-tenant building, we can program individual remotes for each unit and wipe all the old codes so a former tenant’s remote doesn’t still open the gate.

Phone Entry
Phone entry systems on North Hollywood apartment buildings were often added in the 2000s, wired into panels that predate modern electrical code. When a tenant’s phone number changes, the landlord calls us to reprogram. When a heat wave knocks out the unit entirely, we replace it and flag whether the feed needs rewiring. A basic phone entry unit for a single gate runs $600-$1,100 installed in North Hollywood, and that includes programming tenant numbers. If the existing subpanel can’t support it safely, we’ll tell you before we sell you the unit.

Card Reader
Card readers on North Hollywood gates sit exposed to UV and grit. We replace a lot of proximity readers that have simply worn out their weather seals. A HID-compatible or similar card reader replacement runs $350-$650 installed. We can also retrofit a card reader onto an older operator that never had one, though we’ll be straight with you: if the operator’s control board is original from the 1980s, you’re often better off upgrading the board first rather than adding a reader to electronics that are already on borrowed time.

What happens when you call
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A real person answersNo phone trees - you reach a local pro.
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You get an upfront price rangeHonest numbers before anyone is dispatched.
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A background-checked tech heads outLicensed & insured, dispatched right away.
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You approve before work beginsNothing starts until you say go.
Trusted Brands We Service in North Hollywood
We’re certified to service nine major gate operator brands, and in North Hollywood we see a lot of DoorKing, Elite, and Mighty Mule on the older buildings. DoorKing in particular shows up everywhere on 1980s apartment slide gates because they built operators that ran for a long time. The problem is the control boards from that era were never designed for 110°F summers year after year. When we replace them, we use current LiftMaster boards or factory DoorKing replacements, and we stock common parts so we’re not driving across the county mid-repair. That means faster completion for you, and fewer trips for us.
Common Gate Access Control Problems We See in North Hollywood Homes
- Heat-cooked control boards on 1980s operators. When summer temperatures hit 105°F and stay there, the enclosed housing on a slide gate operator builds enough heat to scorch solder joints. The first symptom is usually a gate that hangs mid-cycle, then refuses to respond to the remote or keypad. The fix may be a board swap, or it may mean a full operator replacement if the motor windings have also started to degrade.
- Hard-water corrosion on slide gate tracks and hardware. North Hollywood’s municipal water has high mineral content, and gates get washed, hosed down, or rained on, leaving scale on rollers, pinion gears, and racks. The corrosion binds the mechanism, the motor overworks trying to move it, and eventually the overload trips or the loop detector stops sensing a car. We clean, lubricate, and replace the worn gears before they chew through completely.
- Worn hinge posts on ornamental iron swing gates. Decades of dry-heat expansion and contraction loosen the hinge post in the concrete or brick. The gate sags a quarter inch, then half an inch, and the safety photocells at the bottom can’t line up anymore. The gate refuses to close, or closes but faults and reverses. You don’t need a new gate. You need the post reset and the hinges rebuilt. We weld on-site so your gate never leaves your driveway.
- Loop detectors that miss vehicles. Magnetic loop detectors buried in the asphalt at North Hollywood apartment carports fail from age, compaction, and occasionally from the same subpanel that was never wired correctly. If your gate opens for a car but takes ten seconds to respond, or doesn’t trigger at all for low-slung vehicles, that’s a loop or a sensitivity setting problem, not a motor problem. We diagnose before we quote.
Pricing for Gate Access Control in North Hollywood, CA
Here are the straight numbers. A keypad replacement in North Hollywood runs $250-$450 installed. A full remote and receiver retrofit runs $300-$550. Phone entry systems run $600-$1,100. Card readers run $350-$650. A complete slide gate operator replacement on an apartment carport, including the board, motor, and photocells, runs $2,800-$5,500 depending on the gate’s length and weight. You’ll get the exact price in writing before we start. No trip charge inside the county. $40 off any repair over $200. A free second opinion on any written estimate from another company. And if you’re a senior or a veteran, a permanent 10% discount. Call (350) 247-4763 and we’ll walk through what you have, what’s wrong, and what it costs to fix. No surprises at the door.
We Also Serve Cities Near North Hollywood
While this page covers Gate Access Control in North Hollywood, our crews work the whole central Valley. Van Nuys to the west, Sherman Oaks to the south, West Hollywood over the hill, and Panorama City just north. If the gate is in one of those neighborhoods, the same service, same pricing, same live person on the phone. Call and tell us where you are.
Serving North Hollywood, CA - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the North Hollywood area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage - if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
FAQs - Gate Access Control in North Hollywood
Because North Hollywood sits in the hottest part of the San Fernando Valley, regularly 20°F to 30°F hotter than Santa Monica or downtown LA in the summer, and that heat cooks the control boards on older operators. The 1960s to 1980s apartment stock was built with operators that were never specified for sustained 105-110°F temperatures. Add in hard-water mineral deposits on moving parts and the fact that many of these gates are 40 to 50 years old, and failure rates run higher than anywhere else in the metro. This is the single most common reason landlords call us. Call (350) 247-4763 if your gate operator is acting up, and we’ll tell you whether it’s a board, a gear, or the track.
Yes, in most cases you can. If the existing operator is a DoorKing, Elite, or another brand with a standard control board input, we can wire a phone entry unit or video intercom into it without replacing the whole operator. The limiting factor is usually the condition of the board itself. If it’s original and heat-damaged, retrofitting a phone entry system onto it is like putting new tires on a car with a cracked block. We’ll inspect first, tell you what’s actually viable, and quote you the retrofit versus a full replacement. Estimates are free.
It can, and this is something generic gate companies don’t mention. Many North Hollywood apartment buildings from the 1960s and 1980s have subpanels that predate modern arc-fault requirements. When we replace an operator that’s fed from one of those old subpanels, the City of LA may require the panel to be brought up to current code before final sign-off. We flag this before we pull permits, so you’re not surprised by an inspection delay or a callback. That’s a local knowledge issue, and it’s one of the reasons landlords in North Hollywood call us instead of a company that has never dealt with the LA building department. Call (350) 247-4763 and ask us straight up: “Will my building get flagged?” We’ll tell you what we know.
No. A sagging ornamental iron gate usually means the hinge post has worked loose in its footing after decades of dry-heat expansion and the gate’s weight has shifted out of alignment. That misalignment is what’s breaking the photocell beam. The gate itself is typically fine. We reset the hinge post, rebuild or replace the hinges, and weld any cracked joints on-site. Then we realign the photocells and test the full open-close cycle with the safety edges active. In most North Hollywood cases, repairing the post and hinges costs a fraction of a new gate. Call us first. If we think replacement is genuinely the cheaper long-term answer, we’ll say so, and we’ll show you the numbers.
Yes, and in fact North Hollywood is one of the few places in LA where solar gate operators can work very well. A full-sun afternoon exposure on a south-facing or west-facing carport means a properly sized solar panel and battery setup can run a slide gate reliably. The catch is the panel has to be sized for the gate’s weight and cycle count, and the battery needs to survive 110°F ambient temperatures without degrading. Most cheap solar kits fail on apartment slide gates because they’re undersized. We spec the panel and battery for the gate, not from a one-size-fits-all chart. If you want to explore solar for your North Hollywood gate, call (350) 247-4763 and we’ll do a free site assessment.
If your gate access control isn’t working the way it should, call (350) 247-4763. A live person answers, 24/7. No voicemail, no call center. Just a local crew that’s been fixing gates since 2001 and stands behind every job with the 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing. Free estimates, upfront pricing agreed before we start, and a name on the shop you can check. Gatewood Fence & Gate. North Hollywood is our neighborhood too.
Written by Hal Gatewood, Owner at Gatewood Fence & Gate, serving North Hollywood, CA and the surrounding San Fernando Valley.





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