To Automate or Not to Automate

[Rachel Dunham]

We are currently house hacking a property in Golden, Colorado, with a small studio, above a garage. We currently have a long-term tenant living there. We are fixing up the rest of the property and plan to split the house were living in, into a small 1BD 1B short-term unit and a 2BD 1B long-term rental. The property was fully fenced in when we purchased it in September, which was great for our two pups. Unfortunately, the winter winds tore down our manual driveway gate. We've haven't fixed it yet, because we can't decide if we should put up another manual gate or an automatic sliding or swinging gate. The convenience of the automatic gate would be great while we live here, but I'm hesitant to install anything that would end up requiring a lot of maintenance. We also have two manual garage doors and I'm having the same debate with those. Do we install garage door openers and risk the tenants damaging them or do we just leave them as is? Does anyone have any experience with these automatic gates and can weigh in on how much maintenance they require? Also, does anyone have any knowledge about which style and/or brand of automated gate require the least maintenance? Any thoughts are much appreciated! We love being outside and need to do something soon, as the constant harping on the pups to stay inside the fence is getting quite exhausting!