Carlsbad Metal Gates Group is North County's go-to team for compact coastal gates, specializing in ground-track slide gates, aluminum pedestrian walk gates, and steel courtyard gates. We offer stainless hardware packages and powder-coated aluminum fencing.
Our team provides custom shop fabrication sized to the inch, delivering gates that fit tight frontage for homes and durable shared entries for both residential and commercial projects. Backed by 14 years in business and our 2-year workmanship warranty, we've completed over 1,326 projects, from one aluminum walk gate on a side yard to a full slide gate, intercom and fence package for a shared drive.
From choosing 316 stainless fasteners that will not bleed rust onto a white finish to setting a slide track flush with the driveway apron, our team handles every detail. Serving Solana Beach and neighboring Del Mar, Encinitas and Rancho Santa Fe, we plan each gate around the few feet of frontage a beach lot actually has.
Request a free estimate, and our Solana Beach location manager will measure your frontage, your drive and the room a gate has to open into.
Ethan, bluff-top home with a two-level deck, Solana Beach
A deck stair and balcony with rusting painted railings on a bluff-top lot
Paul, narrow coastal lot, Solana Beach
A bluff-side yard where a painted steel fence had rusted through at the posts
Investment and duration figures are estimates. Your written quote sets the final price and schedule.
What you can hold us to
Paul's narrow coastal lot had the failure we see most this close to the water: a bluff-side yard where a painted steel fence had rusted through at the posts. We replaced it with 70 linear feet of fence with a matching walk gate in powder-coated aluminum, with stainless fasteners on new footings. The work was an estimated $3,200 to $4,900 and took an estimated 2 to 3 days on site, and Paul now has a fence that will not rust and needs only a rinse.
Ethan's bluff-top home with a two-level deck had painted railings that were rusting at every baluster. We replaced 42 linear feet of stair and balcony railing in galvanized steel, black powder coat, with slim square balusters under 4 inches apart, an estimated $3,600 to $5,200 job finished in an estimated 1 to 2 days. The new railings are built for salt air, keep the ocean view and pass the baluster spacing check.
Solana Beach gates are planned around space, because most lots here are too narrow for a driveway gate to swing open. Half the housing in town was built in the 1970s, unlike the 2010s stock in Harmony Grove, much of it as condominiums and compact homes on top of the sandstone bluffs before the city incorporated in 1986, so short drives and shared frontage are the norm. A swing gate needs clear, flat room behind it roughly as deep as each leaf is wide, and a beach lot with a garage set close to the street rarely has it. That is why our Solana Beach jobs lean toward slide gates, walk gates and courtyard gates rather than wide dual swing pairs.
Values here leave little room for a gate that fails early: the ACS top-codes the median owner-occupied home value at $2,000,001, and Solana Beach reaches that cap along with Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe and Fairbanks Ranch (ACS 2024 5-year).
A ground-track slide gate is the usual answer for a short Solana Beach drive, because it opens along the fence line in its own footprint. A ground-track slide gate is typically an estimated $1,500 to $5,000 for the complete system, with an estimated 2 to 3 days on site, and we fit post-mounted gate catchers, positive travel stops and guide roller shields on slide and cantilever gates so the leaf cannot leave its track.
On lots with no drive gate at all, a custom walk gate in aluminum or steel is typically an estimated $600 to $1,500 per gate installed, and most go in within an estimated 4 to 8 hours. We set them with self-closing hinges and a keyed latch, and with under 4 inches between pickets, with 1.5 to 2 inch puppy pickets at the bottom on request for owners with small dogs near the beach stairs.
Hardware fails before the gate does on a beach lot, here and in Del Mar alike, so we treat hinges, latches and fasteners as part of the coastal finish. On steel gates we use ball-bearing barrel or greaseable weld-on hinges rated for 500 to 1,500 lbs per pair, mounted after the frame is galvanized so no bare cut edges are left. On aluminum gates every screw and bolt is stainless, because a zinc-plated screw in salt air stains the finish within a season. Bluff-top owners who want steel still get G90 hot-dip galvanizing inside and out, so hollow tube does not rust from the inside.
Shared entries are common here because so much of the 1970s housing is condominiums on the bluff-top, and we phase them the way we phased a two-lane community entry in Fairbanks Ranch. For a shared drive or pedestrian entry we size the gate for the traffic it carries, add a video intercom, keypad or app entry so each owner gets a code, and phase the work so residents always have a way in. Board approval and any city permit are confirmed per property before fabrication; the city's view assessment process applies to new structures over 16 feet above grade, which a gate never reaches, but the walls and pillars around it still follow city height rules we check for each address.
A Solana Beach gate project is typically estimated at $1,500 to $5,000 for a ground-track slide gate system, and the opening width, the metal and the access control move the price most. Fences and railings are priced per linear foot, and a heavy-duty trackless cantilever gate only enters the picture where a drive slopes, as it often does in Rancho Santa Fe.
| Solana Beach job | Est. investment | Est. time on site |
|---|---|---|
| Ground-track slide gate | Est. $1,500 to $5,000 per complete system | Est. 2 to 3 days |
| Custom pedestrian walk gate | Est. $600 to $1,500 per gate installed | Est. 4 to 8 hours |
| Powder-coated aluminum fence | Est. $25 to $75 per linear foot | Est. 2 to 3 days |
| Stair and balcony railing | Est. $65 to $135 per linear foot | Est. 5 to 10 hours |
| Video intercom, keypad or app entry | Est. $1,200 to $4,500 per system | Est. 4 to 8 hours |
Paul's 70 ft aluminum run with its walk gate, an estimated $3,200 to $4,900, is a typical Solana Beach fence job, and Ethan's railing landed at an estimated $3,600 to $5,200. California limits the deposit on home improvement work to $1,000 or 10% of the contract, whichever is less, and we never ask for more.
Every price on this page is an estimate for Solana Beach and is subject to change. The written quote we give you after measuring sets the final price and the schedule, and it depends on the frontage, the metal and the hardware you choose.
Most of our work here and in Encinitas is in aluminum gates and fencing for coastal homes, with galvanized steel for heavier slide gates. Deck owners on the bluffs also ask about ornamental stair and balcony railings like Ethan's, or cable and glass view railings that keep the horizon open.
Our shop is roughly 20 minutes up the coast, well inside our 40 mile service radius, and our Solana Beach location manager runs the coastal schedule from the first measure to the final operator test. Our lead welder builds each gate to the measured opening, not a stock width, which matters when a beach lot has inches to spare. Each gate leaves the shop under our 2-year workmanship warranty on welds, hinge alignment, gate sag and gate travel.
We work every street in town, from the bluff-top condominiums west of the coast highway to the homes on the inland side of town. The same crew covers Del Mar homes between the two lagoons to the south and Encinitas, from Cardiff to Leucadia to the north, and the rest of our North County gate service areas reach Rancho Santa Fe, Fairbanks Ranch and Carlsbad.
Tight drives often call for slide and cantilever gates, walled entries suit courtyard entry gates, and shared drives usually add a gate intercom with keypad entry.
A ground-track slide gate usually fits best, because it opens along the fence line instead of into the drive.
A ground-track slide gate system typically runs an estimated $1,500 to $5,000, and your written quote sets the final price.
Yes for most fences and walk gates on the bluff side, because aluminum cannot rust; Paul's 70 ft run went aluminum for that reason.
Yes, shared entry gates get Cellular or Wi-Fi 1080p video intercom, backlit keypad, RFID readers and smartphone app entry, with one way in kept open during the work.
Most walk gates take an estimated 4 to 8 hours on site once fabricated.
Yes, Ethan's 42 ft of rusted deck railing was replaced in galvanized steel in an estimated 1 to 2 days.
Call us today, and we will measure your frontage and recommend the gate that fits a Solana Beach lot.
Your local contact
Names, photos and stories are on our about page.
Location manager covering Solana Beach
Runs the Solana Beach schedule from the first site measure to the final safety test.
Where we work
Call us or send the form, and we will book a site measure and a written estimate.
Calls only, we do not receive text messages.
