CCTV installation that covers the spots that matter

After something happens, the questions are always specific. Who came through the gate at 02:10? What did their face look like? Which car did they leave in? Good CCTV installation starts with those questions and works backwards to where each camera goes.

That usually means two kinds of camera. Wide cameras give you an overview of the yard, the driveway or the warehouse floor, so you can follow what happened. Closer cameras sit at the points everyone has to pass through, like the gate, the front door and the loading bay, so faces and vehicles are big enough in the picture to be useful. A camera that sees everything from far away often ends up showing nothing clearly.

Light matters too. A camera that's sharp in daylight can be useless at night if it faces a streetlight or has nothing to light the scene. We look at each spot in the conditions the camera will actually work in.

Homes

Start with the gate and driveway, the front and back doors and any side passage. Those few cameras cover the places a household needs to see first.

Estates and complexes

The entrance gate is the priority: clear views of every car and every visitor coming in and out, plus coverage of the perimeter wall. CCTV at the gate works well alongside guards and biometric access control.

Business premises

Entrances, the yard, loading areas, the stockroom and the till or cash office. For warehouses and workshops, after-hours coverage of the perimeter is usually what matters most.

Your cameras feed a recorder on site, which stores the footage on a hard drive. How many days you can go back depends on the number of cameras, the picture quality and the size of the drive. We size it so you have enough footage to look back on, not only the last few hours.

Most systems let you watch live and recorded footage on your phone, as long as the property has a working internet connection. We set that up at hand-over and show you how to find and save a clip.

Two things to ask about: backup power for the recorder and cameras, so they keep recording during a power cut, and a simple way to check that the system is still recording. Too often, people find out the recorder stopped weeks ago only after a break-in.

Recorded CCTV gives you evidence after the fact. It's valuable, but it relies on someone looking at the footage. Monitored CCTV means the cameras are watched off-site while things happen, so someone knows about a problem straight away.

A simple way to decide: ask who would look at the footage, and when. If the honest answer is "only after something has happened", recording may be enough for now. Many homes and businesses start with recording and add 24-hour off-site monitoring later. Because DBS installs the cameras and provides the monitoring, we can plan the system for monitoring from day one, even if you switch it on later.

We don't publish prices, because the number and type of cameras depends on the site. These are the things that change the quote:

• How many cameras you need, and where they go.
• Cable runs, mounting heights and how hard each spot is to reach.
• Night conditions, and whether extra lighting is needed.
• The recorder and how many days of footage you want to keep.
• Phone viewing and the internet connection at the property.
• Backup power for the recorder and cameras.
• Whether you want off-site monitoring.

Already have cameras? Tell Marco the make of the recorder and cameras. He'll tell you straight whether they can stay and be linked to monitoring.

DBS Security is family-owned, with 25 years in the trade. Pieter de Bruyn Jr and his son Marco quote every job themselves. Get a free quote for CCTV installation, or see the areas we cover.