Promenades Gates (update)

Update: 12/19/2024

This morning we finished the maintenance work on the Promenades swing gates. As you can see below we cleaned off a bunch of sand and debris from inside the mechanism

We ordered some new belts from Amazon on Monday, and replaced the old, worn out ones

and we gently lubricated the chains and all other moving parts (hinges, swing arms, etc.). Some of the swing arms are starting to rust and sag with wear. They will need attention in the near future.

On one of the exit actuators it looks like the second motor (used by the battery backup when the power goes out) had seized in the past. Instead of replacing it with a new motor the belt had been changed for a shorter one, bypassing the pulley on the second motor (see below) and the battery unit itself had been unplugged. The battery unit was dated 02/2023 so we assumed it was good.

A new secondary motor will be purchased, installed, and then the belt needs to be replaced with the correct one running on all three pulleys. The battery can then be reconnected and the whole system tested. Although this work can be done by skilled volunteers (four bolts) it will likely be handled by a professional.

There are two more tasks needed to complete maintenance on the Prom gates:

Clean up and labeling of all the low-voltage cabling on the swing-gate actuators. This will make future maintenance and repair much easier. The three pictures below are of the wiring in three different gate mechanisms all at Prom.
Addition of a new Electrical Enclosure on the wall and better distribution of the components that are currently all stuffed into one. This will give better access for future maintenance and repair.

This work will take place in January as it will be more time consuming. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to Sherri, the BTCA Community Manager.

Update: 12/19/2024 Part 2

The right swing arm at the Promenade entrance is not closing consistently. It will work a few times then stop working again. We suspect the issue is either with the cabling from the Master barrier arm (left-side) to the right side, or possibly with a component (relay) on the control board itself. Management is going to open a trouble ticket to have a tech troubleshoot and resolve.

Saturday 12/14/2024

You may have noticed a small group of resident/volunteers working at the Prom Gates on Saturday morning. They were there doing some very basic preventative maintenance. Simple things any homeowner can do like; clean, lubricate, check belts, batteries, and do a complete visual inspection of all cables and moving parts.

We found batteries that were about to explode and belts that were about to break (see pictures below). These were replaced and everything was given a good clean and lubrication. There is more minor work to be done at the Prom gates which should be completed this weekend. The plan is to do the same type of preventative maintenance at all the entrance gates before the end of the year.

While this was going on more intensive cabling work was being done to clean up the mess that's been created over the years. Low-voltage cables that operate the gates were groomed, wrapped, and separated from the ethernet cables used for the cameras. High-voltage power cables were kept separate from both. Similar work has to be done at each entrance to make future maintenance easy to perform.

Management and the Board are working with 3 different vendors to come up with a more comprehensive, long term maintenance and hardware refresh plan of action. Hopefully the combination of multiple people's efforts will help to restore stability and reliability to all the gates quickly and permanently.