Security company in Roodepoort, run from Horizon View

DBS Security works from Unit 5, Medgate Centre, on the corner of Kingfisher and Pheasant Streets in Horizon View. When you ask for a quote anywhere in Roodepoort, Pieter or Marco de Bruyn comes back to you and stays your contact after the installers have packed up. There is no call centre in between.

Roodepoort was its own municipality before it became part of the City of Johannesburg in the late 1990s, and it still feels like its own place. It grew out of the gold rush at the western end of the Witwatersrand: the Struben brothers found gold on the farm Wilgespruit in 1884, and the town that grew up around their mine became the Roodepoort Municipality in 1904. Today it mixes mining-era suburbs, newer estates and complexes, office parks and industry, with the N1 Western Bypass as its main freeway.

Roodepoort doesn't have one typical property, so we don't quote one typical package. What we suggest depends on what you live or work in:

• Freestanding family homes in suburbs like Helderkruin, Roodekrans, Weltevredenpark and Wilgeheuwel. Start at the perimeter: a sound wall, an electric fence where it makes sense, and a gate motor that works every time. Then add outdoor beams and an alarm.
• Estates and complexes, such as the estate living around Ruimsig and the sectional-title complexes in Honeydew. The estate wall and gate are the HOA's or body corporate's job. Your front door, your garage and your garden are yours, so an alarm in the unit and a camera at your door fill that gap.
• Office parks in Constantia Kloof, which has become Roodepoort's business node next to the N1 and 14th Avenue. Here it's about who comes in: biometric access control for staff, cameras on the entrances and parking, and guards where there's a reception or a boom.
• Industrial and logistics yards along Main Reef Road towards Randfontein. Large yards are hard to watch from one guard hut, so cameras watched off-site at night, with guards on the gate during working hours, usually make more sense.

For a suburban district, Roodepoort has a lot of open space. Kloofendal Nature Reserve covers about 128 hectares, the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden about 300 hectares, with a cliff face and waterfall, and suburbs such as Roodekrans look out over the ridges towards the Magaliesberg. That's a big part of the appeal.

From a security point of view, a boundary that faces a reserve, a koppie or open veld is different from one that faces a neighbour's garden. Nobody on the other side will notice someone at the wall, so the wall has to tell you itself. On properties like these we usually look at three things:

1. An electric fence on the open-facing walls, zoned so you know which side was touched rather than only that something happened.
2. Outdoor beams in the garden, so the alarm reacts while someone is still in the yard, not once they're at a window.
3. A camera covering that back line, linked to 24-hour off-site monitoring so there's someone on the other end when it triggers.

Not every home needs all three. If your back wall faces another house, money is usually better spent at the gate and on the alarm. We'll tell you which applies when we see the property.

Plenty of Roodepoort homes and businesses already have an alarm panel, a gate motor or a few cameras, sometimes fitted by a previous owner. Before we quote anything new, we look at what you have and whether it's still doing its job: does the alarm still signal out, do the cameras still record, does the gate motor's battery still carry it through a power cut?

Tell Marco the make of your motor, panel or camera system, and send a photo on WhatsApp if you can. He'll tell you straight whether it's something we work on. Then we quote only the layers you're missing, and nothing you don't need.

Get a free quote for a site visit anywhere in Roodepoort, or see the full list of services first.