Security for Florida's established homes and businesses

Florida was laid out in 1889 on the old farm Vogelstruisfontein and proclaimed in April 1890, which makes it one of the earliest parts of what is now Roodepoort. By 1904 it was a suburb of Roodepoort, and today it falls under the City of Johannesburg. It is a settled suburb of freestanding houses and flats, with Florida Lake to the south of the railway line and Goldman Street running through the middle as its main road.

For security, that history matters. On a new build you start from scratch. In Florida, many properties already have a boundary wall, a driveway gate and some kind of alarm, often fitted long ago and sometimes by a previous owner. So most Florida jobs start with a simple question: what is still doing its job, and what isn't?

We check that before we quote anything. Is the alarm still signalling out, or does it just make a noise? Does the gate motor's battery carry it through a power cut? Do the cameras still record, and can anyone actually find the footage? Then we quote the gaps, not a full replacement you don't need.

A driveway gate at a family home might open ten or twenty times a day. The vehicle gate at a block of flats or a small complex can open many times more than that, every day of the year. Motors are built for different workloads, so a motor that suits a house can wear out quickly on a shared gate.

On older properties, the trouble is usually one of three things:

• A tired motor on a heavy gate. If the gate drags on its track or the wheels are worn, the motor strains every time. We fix the gate first, then decide whether the motor can be repaired or should be replaced.
• A battery that no longer holds a charge. The gate works fine until the power goes off, and then it doesn't. Sometimes a new battery is all it needs.
• No motor on the garage door. Getting out of the car to open the garage at night is the part most people want to stop doing. A garage door motor solves it.

Tell Marco the make of your gate motor and send a photo on WhatsApp. He'll tell you straight whether it's one we work on and whether a repair is worth doing.

Goldman Street is Florida's main road and the spine of its local business and civic services, from shops and offices to the antique dealers at its western end. Flora Centre in Florida Hills is the area's biggest shopping centre. Like most high-street businesses, they are busy during the day and empty at night.

For a shopfront or a small office, the usual starting point is CCTV that records a clear picture of the front door, the pavement and the back or service entrance, together with an alarm on the building. Linking both to 24-hour off-site monitoring means someone is watching after closing time, not just recording for you to check the next morning. Where staff handle stock or cash, criminal background checks before hiring are worth a conversation too.

Florida Lake is flanked by homes to the north and parkland to the east and west, and the Springs to Randfontein railway line runs through the suburb. These are good things to live near. They also mean some Florida properties have a boundary with public space on the other side, where there is no neighbour to notice anyone at the wall.

For those homes we look at the back and side boundaries specifically: outdoor beams in the garden so the alarm reacts while someone is still in the yard, an electric fence on the walls that face open ground, and a camera on the back line if you want it watched. If your property is surrounded by other houses, your money is usually better spent at the gate and on the alarm, and we'll say so.