Overall I’m going to give the Pylex sliding gate kit 3 1/2 stars. The system works well, and makes building a rolling deck gate simple. However the system had some drawbacks which made me lower my rating.

In the box:

• 4 outside corner brackets
• 4 inside corner brackets
• 2 upper gate guides
• 2 lower gate guides
• 2 wheels
• Latch
• Latch post
• Handle
• Strike plate
• All of the necessary screws

Issues:

The first issue that I had was with the guides for gate. There are two upper and two lower guides included in this kit. The instructions state a set of upper and lower should be installed on the railing and a set should be installed on the gate itself. The issue for me was that my gate is longer than the space between the two posts on my deck. So installing a set on the gate would have prevented the gate from sliding open all of the way. I wound up attaching both uppers and a single lower all to the rails with none on the gate.

The second issue I had with the Pylex sliding gate kit was that due to the wheels raising the gate about 4″ high, the system essentially needs the bottom of your rails to also be about 4″ off high otherwise the guides won’t work. I modified my gate to have a decorative addition under the rail to lower the bottom of the gate down to the level of my rails. This allowed the gate to ride in the lower guide.

The last issue I initially had with the system was that it wants the top rail to basically just be a 2×4. Well, I have a 2×6 not just laid horizontally on top of the 2×4, I have a 1/2″ dado in my 2×6 so it interlocks with the 2×4. I wound up having to chisel out channels in my 2×6 for the top guides to sit in.

Since my initial build, I’ve also found one more issue. It’s been about a week since I’ve built the gate and the hardware is already showing rust.

Final Thoughts

All-in-all, even with all of the stated issues I still think the Pylex sliding gate kit is a decent design and really facilitates building a rolling deck gate.  The wheels are large enough in diameter to allow the gate to roll smoothly over the gaps in the deck boards, and they are wide enough for the gate to feel stable.  A few modifications to the way the guide brackets are manufactured would allow this rolling gate kit to be easier to install and use for a much wider variety of deck designs.

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