Securing your home: cameras, alarms and hiring an installer

What a home security install involves

A security installer designs and fits the mix that suits your home: cameras, an alarm panel and sensors, motion detectors, a video doorbell, and increasingly the app and automation that ties it together. A proper job starts with where the vulnerabilities are — entry points, blind spots, cabling routes — not with which camera was on special.

The systems split into wired and wireless. Wireless, battery or plug-in kits are DIY-friendly and cheap but limited; hardwired cameras and alarms give better reliability and coverage but need cabling run through walls and roof spaces, and power supplied properly. Monitored alarms add a monthly fee for a response service, which is a separate decision from the hardware.

How the cost scales

Home security is priced by the system, so the number of cameras and sensors and how much of it is hardwired set the band. A modest wireless camera-and-sensor setup lands at the low end; a whole-home hardwired system with an alarm panel, multiple cameras and professional cabling runs to several thousand and beyond. Ongoing monitoring, if you choose it, is a recurring cost on top.

Labour and cabling are where hardwired systems earn their price — running cable neatly through an existing home, mounting cameras at the right height and angle, and integrating everything takes real time. Treat the figures here as indicative; the live prices give a starting range, but the quote depends on how many devices you need and how hard your home is to wire.

Choosing an installer — and the licensing line

Here's the non-negotiable part: any work that connects to your home's mains wiring must be done by a licensed electrician, and in many states security and alarm installation itself is a licensed activity with its own security licence. Anything hardwired, anything drawing power from the switchboard, is licensed electrical work — never let an unlicensed handyman run mains cabling for cameras or an alarm.

Beyond the licence, look for an installer who designs before they sell: someone who walks your home, identifies the real weak points, and recommends coverage rather than pushing a box of cameras. Ask about who holds your video footage and data, whether the system locks you into one provider's app and monitoring, and whether they'll service it later.

Mistakes to avoid

Most security-system regret is buying hardware before designing coverage — a pile of cameras all pointed at the driveway while the back door stays a blind spot.

• Letting anyone unlicensed touch mains wiring — hardwired cameras and alarms are electrical work
• Buying cameras before mapping the actual entry points and blind spots
• Overlooking who holds your footage and whether the system locks you to one provider
• Signing up to monitoring fees without deciding whether you actually want a response service
• Mounting cameras too high, catching hats instead of faces
• Ignoring the ongoing costs — subscriptions, cloud storage and monitoring add up