Alarm & monitoring

To have a camera system installed, and a monitoring service put in place can vary in costs depending on what type of monitoring they would look to have.

Peoples perception is that when they have a monitoring contract,is that somebody will be watching their home, via a monitoring station set-up, 24/7 and any suspicious behaviour will immediately be flagged and reported - this is far from the case. 

Incidents will only be flagged to the operator by an alarm in the camera or sensor flagging an activation alarm onto their screen, and the camera settings will need to accurately set up so as to not pick up people walking past (on a public road), movement of cats and other animals etc…. A cost for this service will vary and many operators, if getting constant false activations, will tend to start ignoring them - and that could cause issues if a real life activation occurred….

Depending on where the hard drive recorder is situated, if it is at the property then there will be no option for the monitoring station to review recorded footage - but will enable the householder to do this themselves (if at the property) or via an app on their smartphone.

In short, a good reliable monitoring service will not be cheap, and also need to factor in costs for 24/7 fibre internet, costs for any call-outs and ongoing maintenance and testing of the system.

It is completely feasible to do, and there are many good companies out there, it all depends on budget really - but don’t get drawn into claims by some operators that “the house will be watched 24/7 and any suspicious behaviour will be immediately acted upon” as this is very rare and, as mentioned above, if available - will come at a hefty cost..