Bald Hills is older housing on larger blocks, with the highway on one side and the river flats on the other. Straightforward to cable, and the block sizes usually mean more than four cameras.
Bald Hills is not all suburban. There is a solid band of housing, lowset brick and tile with older timber homes and pockets of newer infill, and then there is a genuinely rural side toward the river flats with farmland and working properties on it. Which half you are on changes the job completely.
On the suburban side, bigger blocks with side and rear access are the pattern, and that decides the camera count. A 400 square metre estate block has one way in around the side. A 900 square metre block here often has two, plus a back fence onto a reserve. On the rural side it stops being about the house at all and becomes about the gate, the shed and the machinery.
The older lowset homes are simple to work with. Tiled roof, timber trusses, central manhole, and generally enough cavity to feed cable out toward each corner without lifting a sheet.
Properties on the lower ground toward the river flats are worth thinking about differently. Anything on a flood prone block should not have the recorder sitting on the floor of a garage. It goes up on a wall mount or inside the house, which costs nothing extra if it is decided before the install rather than after.
Cat6 per camera back to one recorder, through the roof and down an internal wall or out through the eave soffit. Power and video on the same cable, so there is nothing plugged in up in the roof.
Where a run goes out to a shed or a back fence camera, it goes in conduit with surge protection at the building change. Long outdoor runs done cheaply are the ones that fail first.
Five is common here rather than four, because larger blocks usually have two ways in. Driveway and street, front entry, both side accesses, and the rear yard.
If the back fence adjoins a reserve or a laneway, that becomes the priority camera rather than an afterthought. A back fence with something public behind it is the easiest approach on the property and usually the least watched.
The same standard applies whether it is a four camera house or a sixteen camera site. Individual Cat6 runs back to the recorder, weatherproof cameras mounted and sealed properly, the recorder set up with your retention period, and the app running on every phone in the house before we leave.
Installing cameras you already own starts at $490. A four camera 4K wired system with the recorder, drive and cabling starts at $1,690 installed, and the active deterrence package with siren and strobe cameras starts at $1,890. Larger blocks, two storey homes and long cable runs add to that, which is why the quote is itemised rather than a single number.
We quote before we start and the price does not move unless you change the scope. If something on site turns out to be harder than it looked from the driveway, you hear about it before any work happens. For the full breakdown of what drives a price up or down, read what CCTV installation costs in Brisbane.
Installing security cameras in Queensland requires a security equipment installer licence, and running the cabling that connects them requires ACMA cabler registration. We hold both: QLD Security Provider Licence 4930731 and ACMA Registered Cabler A058225, with $20 million public liability cover. Ask any other quote you get for the same two numbers.
It is the part worth covering properly. A rear boundary with public land behind it is the easiest way onto a property and the least observed. We normally put a camera on that fence line and set the detection zone to your side of it.
Somewhere dry, ventilated and not on the floor. On lower lying blocks around here we wall mount it or put it inside the house rather than sitting it in a garage. It costs nothing extra to decide that up front.
We work across Brendale and the surrounding Moreton Bay suburbs, with no travel surcharge anywhere in the area.
Worth reading if you are still deciding what to install or who to install it.
What a four camera system really costs installed, what drives the price up, and where the cheap quotes make their money back.
PlanningFour covers a standard suburban house. Here is how to work out whether yours is standard, and which positions matter most.
Buying adviceBattery and wifi cameras suit some jobs and fail badly at others. The honest comparison, including what nobody tells you about battery life.
Buying adviceThe three brands we install most, what separates them, and why the badge on the camera matters less than the sensor and the lens.
Tell us the property type and what you want covered. You get an itemised written quote, usually the same day, with the camera positions written down rather than decided on the day.