UL325 compliance

      If you have a gate opener that was installed after January 1st 2016 than you should be UL compliant.  Of course it is up to whoever installed the gate to make it UL compliant.  First let me tell exactly what being UL compliant means.  "UL 325 is the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) standard for Door and Gate Operators, as well as other products are tested. Since 2010 all commercial door operators bearing the UL Label must continuously monitor safety devices such as photo eyes and/or sensing edges, otherwise the operator must be limited to constant-pressure-to-close operation. Since 2000, external entrapment protection devices must be added to gate operators to meet these standards. Gate operator designs will be additionally required to continuously monitor entrapment protection devices by January 2016. Your installer will recommend correct equipment based on your system. Manufacturers of Listed and Labeled operators are subject to quarterly inspections at their manufacturing facility by UL or ETL inspectors to ensure that the operators being manufactured are in compliance"( www.liftmaster.com ).  So what exactly does this mean?

      This means that every gate operator that has been produced after 2016 has to be UL tested and approved.  This means that all of the operators have to have a monitored safety device attached or they will not function.  Usually a monitored safety device will either be a photo eye or an edge sensor.  Some installers have been know to cut corners and not install these required safety devices, or they have rigged them up so they serve no safety function at all.  It is extremely important that these safety device be hooked up and continue to function properly.  The whole purpose for having these standards is so people are protected from the power of a closing gate.  Without these devices countless people have been seriously injured by automatic gates, and in some instances some people have been killed because there were no safety devices hooked up to the gate.

      If you would like to read about some of these tragic accidents you can click on the link to an article by Safetyresearch.net.  Just picture a child trying to run inside of a closing gate before it shuts, but than they trip and they fall in the path of the gate.  Without a monitored safety device that child could get seriously injured, but with a monitored safety device the gate would have sensed that the child was there and it would have reversed.  Please make sure that a monitored safety device is installed on your gate system to ensure the safety of everyone who goes through the gate.