Fencing
Gate won't close or latch
Why won't my gate close properly?
Nearly always the hinge post moving or the gate frame racking out of square. Adjusting the latch treats the symptom — the gate will drift out again within a season.
Check the post before the gate
Stand at the hinge post and look at whether it's still plumb. A gate hangs its entire weight on that one post, pulling on it every single time it swings.
If the post has tilted, the gate hasn't changed shape at all — its mounting point moved. Straightening the gate would make it worse.
Racking
A gate built like a fence panel — pickets on light rails, no diagonal brace or welded frame — slowly deforms from a rectangle into a parallelogram under its own weight.
You can see it: the latch side drops relative to the hinge side. Once that's happened, the fix is a proper frame rather than a bigger latch.
The seasonal version
A gate that binds part of the year and swings fine the rest is a soil story. Clay swells in the wet months and moves the hinge post with it.
That points at footing depth, not hardware.
What actually fixes it
Re-setting or replacing the hinge post, re-squaring or reframing the gate, and hardware rated well past the gate's real weight.
Done properly it's a repair, not a replacement — and it's one of the most common things we get called out for.
Moving the latch moves the problem. It doesn't solve it.