Bray Park is five minutes from our Brendale base and shares the postcode. Mostly family housing, mostly four camera jobs, and all of it wired rather than battery powered.
Bray Park is close to all residential. Lowset brick and tile from the seventies and eighties on blocks around 600 to 700 square metres, with carports or single garages and a fair few pools out the back.
A lot of these houses have been extended or had the carport enclosed at some point. That matters more than it sounds, because an enclosed carport usually means the old cable path along the eave is now inside a lined ceiling, and the run has to come a different way.
The standard build here is a single storey brick veneer with a tiled hip roof and timber trusses. Roof cavities are generally workable, tight at the eaves and better in the middle, so we set up at a central manhole and feed out toward each corner.
Pools change the job. A camera overlooking a pool needs care with both the angle and what ends up in frame, particularly if the neighbour's yard is behind it. We aim those cameras at the gate and the fence line rather than the water, which covers the thing you actually care about without pointing a lens somewhere it should not be.
Cat6 from each camera back to one recorder, power and video down the same cable. Runs go through the roof space and drop down an internal wall cavity or out through the eave soffit, cut with a proper hole saw so the soffit does not end up looking chewed.
The recorder normally lives in a laundry cupboard, the garage, or a linen cupboard near the modem. It needs a power point and a network cable back to the router. Everything gets terminated with proper RJ45 plugs, labelled both ends, with a service loop left so the next person to touch it is not cutting cable to length in the dark.
Four is the normal count. Driveway and street, front entry, the side gate, and the back yard. If there is a shed or a caravan down the side, that often becomes a fifth.
We put the camera on a pole and show you the actual view before anything gets drilled. A position that looks obvious from the ground is often ten degrees off once the camera is at eave height, and it is a lot easier to move a pole than a mounted camera.
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.
Usually not at the water. We aim at the pool gate and the fence line instead, which covers access without putting swimmers on a recording. It also keeps you clear of pointing a lens at a neighbour's yard.
It changes the cable route rather than stopping the job. The original eave path is normally sealed inside a lined ceiling, so we come through the roof and down a wall instead. We check the route before quoting.
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.