Managing access at Houghton Estate's established, high-walled homes
Houghton Estate is about 6 km south of Sandton City. On many Houghton Estate properties, the main house is set far back from the road, behind high walls and mature gardens. A visitor at a gate on a quiet road like Central Street or West Street is often completely out of sight and hearing. The established nature of these gardens and long driveways can also make running new cables from the gate a complex and disruptive task.
A video intercom is important for these large Houghton properties, allowing you to see who is there before granting access. We often install systems with multiple indoor monitors for convenience in a large home. Where laying new cables is impractical, we can fit an intercom that uses the mobile network to call your cellphone, provided there is a good signal at the gate.
For households with domestic staff, gardeners, and other services, managing who can enter is a primary concern. Instead of giving out gate remotes that are difficult to retrieve, we set up systems with individual access tags or codes. When a staff member's employment ends, their specific tag or code can be deleted from the system immediately, without affecting anyone else.
Everything we install and repair, and how a job runs from first call to handover, is on our intercoms and access control page.
Questions from Houghton Estate
Our garden is very established. Do you have to dig a trench to install a new intercom?
Not always. If trenching would damage your garden or paving, we often suggest an intercom that uses the mobile network to call your phone. This type of system only needs power and a mobile signal at the gate.
Is it safe to give our gardener a gate remote?
We recommend giving them a personal keypad code or an access tag instead. If they leave, you can delete their code or tag from the system instantly. You do not need to get a remote back or change access for other family or staff members.
Tell us what you have in Houghton Estate now and what is going wrong, and we will tell you plainly whether it needs a repair, an upgrade or a new intercom system, then put the quote in writing.