What to ask a CCTV installer before you hire one

Most complaints about CCTV are really complaints about installation. The cameras are usually fine. What fails is a cable run through a gutter, a recorder in a hot cupboard, or a system nobody was shown how to use.

We sell the equipment and we do not do the fitting, so this is written from your side of the conversation: what to ask before anybody drills, and how to tell afterwards whether the job you paid for was done properly.

Before anybody drills

A proper survey answers four questions: what are you actually trying to see, where does the recorder live, where does power come from, and how does cable get from one to the other. If a quote arrives without somebody having asked those, it is a price rather than a plan.

Ask for the camera positions to be agreed on the wall, not on paper. Ten minutes with a phone camera held where each unit will go saves the conversation that starts "that is not what I thought it would see".

Signs of a good installation

• Cable is in conduit or trunking wherever it is exposed, and does not share a duct with mains wiring.
• Cameras at 2.2 to 3 m. High enough to be out of reach, low enough to get a face. Above 3.5 m you get the top of people's heads.
• A drip loop at every outdoor camera, so water runs off the cable rather than into the housing. This is the single most common outdoor failure and it takes ten seconds to prevent.
• Every cable labelled at both ends. The first person to diagnose a fault in three years will be grateful, and it might be the same installer.
• The recorder somewhere ventilated and lockable. A recorder on top of a cupboard in a shop is the first thing a thief takes, which removes the evidence of the theft.
• A UPS on the recorder and the switch. In Pakistan this is not optional. A system that is off during load-shedding is off during the hours you most want it on.

Handover is part of the job

You should finish the day able to do four things without help: view live footage on your phone, find a recording from a particular time, export a clip, and know what the recorder's password is. If any of those was not demonstrated, the job is not finished.

Ask for the IP addresses, the recorder password and the app account details in writing. Installers change; your building does not.

Where we fit in

We do not install. We are an equipment supplier, and that is worth saying on a page like this because it changes what our advice is worth: we have no job to win, so when we tell you a quote has two cameras too many in it, we are not bidding against it.

What we will do is go through an equipment list with you before you commit — how many cameras the building actually needs, whether PoE or Wi-Fi, what the recorder and the drive should be, and where a cheaper model does the same job. Send a floor plan or a description. If you have a quote from an installer and want a second opinion on the hardware in it, ask anyway.

Start with choosing a CCTV system, then IP cameras and PoE switches, or Wi-Fi cameras if no cabling is possible.