A residential building is a different project from a detached house or an office. One person does not make the decision; cameras face areas where dozens of people pass daily, and access to recordings usually requires more than one person. Therefore, installation begins before the technician arrives, with an agreement in the building's owners' association board.
Where cameras in common areas belong
- ●Main entrance and front door: who enters and leaves the building
- ●Basement areas and pram storage: typically the most common location for petty thefts
- ●Garages and driveway: vehicles, registration numbers, unauthorised persons on the premises
- ●Lift and corridors: preventing vandalism in common areas
- ●Bin storage areas and courtyards: common locations for disorder and unauthorised waste dumping.
Cameras are always directed exclusively at common areas, corridors, entrances, cellars and garages. They must not point into flats, onto neighbours' balconies or into their windows; we pay attention to this during the design phase just as we do to the layout itself.
Why the garage and cellar are not treated the same as the entrance
Garages and basement storage units have different lighting and spatial conditions than the main entrance, so they are also addressed differently from a technical standpoint. A garage is usually a spacious area with minimal natural light, where a camera with a wide field of view and good infrared range is suitable to capture an entire row of bays, not just one section. Basement corridors, on the other hand, are narrow and compartmentalised, so it pays to install several smaller cameras at key passages rather than one camera for the whole area. Both scenarios are addressed during the site inspection together with the building's owners' association committee, which knows best where problems occur most frequently in the building.
Souhlas SVJ v praxi
The installation of cameras in common areas is typically approved by the owners' assembly or the board according to the building's statutes. This is a matter for the building's owners' association, not us. What we can facilitate is providing the basis for decision-making: a clear proposal indicating where the cameras are aimed, which areas they cover and how long recordings are retained. With such documentation, voting is much easier than with a general idea of "let's put cameras there".
Once approved, we recommend informing the building's residents: a notice at the entrance and a brief message in the building's shared communication channel are sufficient. Transparency reduces the number of enquiries and complaints far more effectively than silence.
Shared access for the committee
In a residential building, access to recordings is typically required by several people: the chair of the owners' association committee, the building manager, and potentially a security agency in the event of an incident. The system is therefore configured so that each person has exactly the permissions they need: one sees the live feed, another also has access to the history, while exporting specific recordings (for example for an insurance company or the police) remains restricted to the authorised person. Changes in committee membership do not mean complex reconfiguration, access is simply transferred to the new manager.
Additional issues addressed during installation
Apartment buildings often have specific features that you do not encounter with detached houses, historic risers without free penetrations, heritage-protected facades, or the need to work outside hours when people are passing by. We therefore route cabling primarily through technical shafts and existing installations, and for more sensitive facades we agree on routes in advance with the building's technical engineer, if the building's owners' association has one. Implementation in larger buildings is often divided into stages per entrance so that building operations are not restricted in any way.
How installation in common areas is financed
The costs of the camera system in common areas are usually covered by the repair fund or apportioned among owners like other investments in the building. This is again up to the decision of the building's owners' association, not us. What we facilitate is the basis for decision-making: a clearly itemised price according to scope, so that the committee can compare a variant with fewer cameras at key locations against complete coverage of all entrances at once, and choose what fits the building's budget.
Provoz po instalaci
For a residential building, regular checks are far more essential than for a detached house, someone must monitor the records to ensure the hard drive has sufficient capacity and that access rights match the current composition of the board. Turnover in the building's owners' association board is common, and the system should respond as quickly as changing locks; otherwise, access to the records remains with people who no longer make decisions for the building. This management can either be handled by an authorised board member or left to regular servicing.