CCTV Installation for Rural homes: a comprehensive Guide

As a homeowner living in a rural area, you may be concerned about the security of your property. Including your family, your belongings, and even livestock or large pets like horses.

Protecting your home from theft and vandalism can be a challenge, but a carefully planned and monitored security camera system can be your greatest asset. This article provides a concise and thorough guide for installing a CCTV system specifically for rural homeowners, based on our experience.

The Two Principles of why CCTV is effective

When reading through the list of suggested area to monitor, and when giving your system a thought in general, make sure you understand what it’s two purposes are: Deterrence, and Evidence.

Visual deterrent against intruders

Simply seeing cameras and other security measures discourages potential criminals. The presence of a security camera system, especially warning signs like “24/7 CCTV Surveillance” deters a lot of would-be criminals. It lets them know that their actions are all recorded and they will not go unnoticed.

Evidence for police investigations

Even if a burglar has ignored the presence of your CCTV system and gone ahead with a break-in, the system still has a very important part to play. It fights the crime during the act (if you have remote monitoring capabilities), and after, providing critical evidence for any police investigation.

The security camera footage should aim to capture the perpetrator’s identity, as well as concrete evidence of their actions; the items they stole and the damage they caused.

Areas to pay special attention to with CCTV on a rural property

This guide builds on our previous article about positioning residential cctv cameras. As such, it only features areas unique to rural homes, it doesn’t repeat the basics covered in the original article.

Driveway and entrance gate

Even though driveways are covered in the original article, rural driveways are a bit different than those at city houses. The length of the drive can be much longer, and it won’t necessarily be a straight line. There can be trees lining it, and offshoots to out buildings or paddocks throughout the drive.

It is usually not necessary monitoring the whole driveway on a rural property, and sometimes it is unreasonable to the factors mentioned above. You can achieve a very similar level of security by monitoring the entrance, and destination (your house). If you have a gate this is an excellent opportunity as intruders could stop and open it, giving your security cameras a chance to capture their vehicle, and any unmasked companions.

At such a distance however, connection can be tricky. Network cable will be quite costly and require you to dig up tens or hundreds of meters of earth alongside. However a wireless protocol may be blocked or interrupted by trees or other obstacles. You will need to carefully discuss wireless vs wired security setup with your installer and find the most suitable option for you.

Perimeter fence

The perimeter of a rural property is an effective means of securing a very large area. Often these large dwelling sections are split with straight lines, especially alongside a road. Using a narrow angle security camera with sufficiently high video resolution can cover straight perimeters with significant distances.

You can install such cameras on special raised posts along the fence, or even drill it into a tree. The maintenance of tree cameras can be hard however.

Sleepouts, barns, and other outbuildings

On a rural/lifestyle property, there is often more than one building worth monitoring. Many rural homes utility outbuildings like sheds and barns. Additionally it may have a sleepout/guest house. All of these structures require their own cameras if they are sufficiently far.

If you are shrinking back from the budget considerations of several clustered CCTV groups, weigh it up against the cost of losing whatever is inside those extra buildings.

Garage, carport, and other parking areas

Bigger land areas found on rural properties allow the possibility of separated garages and carports. Carports are generally less of a target than proper buildings, as the main valuable is the cars. A carport can be monitored by a single well placed wide angle camera.

Garages are covered in the original article, however rural garages need a separate mention. Often they can house different types of vehicles, not necessarily cars. Things like tractors and other rural equipment. They can be larger and require more careful monitoring.

Livestock enclosures and paddocks

A unique feature of rural properties that isn’t just “bigger” or “farther away” is the presence of large animals such as livestock and horses. There animals need their own paddocks, often far away from your main house or other structures. It can benefit you greatly to monitor your paddocks specifically, and you will have great peace of mind about your animals.

Even if not related to a burglar or intruder, watching your paddocks with remote monitored CCTV can let you track your lost animal’s last movements. Or you can check your animals from afar, saving you a lot of time driving over otherwise. This means you can keep better track of your animals’ health and welfare.

Conclusion: protecting rural homes with CCTV

Rural residential properties have their own unique challenges to deal with when it comes to CCTV and home security systems. Factors like distance, livestock, and special outbuildings must all be considered in the design and installation of your system.

Due to the distance of rural properties, you will need to take more thought about wired vs wireless system configuration as well. And in addition to external threats, surveillance cameras will let you have much better control and awareness of your animals’ health and status. Get in touch today to bring the safety of CCTV to your rural block and protect your home.