Condo CCTV Wiring
Concealed vs Surface Trunking (2026)

Why a condo changes the wiring answer

In a landed house the cabling question is a budget question: chase the wall and pay more, or run surface trunking and pay less. In a condominium it is a permission question first and a budget question second. The wall between your entrance door and the lift lobby is not yours. The ceiling void above the corridor is not yours. The riser that carries the building’s services is not yours, and in most buildings it is locked. What you actually own is the inside of your parcel, and everything a camera cable does outside that line needs somebody else’s written agreement before a drill comes out of the bag.

That single fact reorders the whole job. A contractor who quotes you a condo camera install the same way he quotes a terrace house has not thought about it, and the first sign of that is a quote with no line for management approval, no note about the riser, and a cheerful assumption that the corridor wall is available. The second sign is a crew that turns up on the day and starts drilling, which is how a job gets stopped by the guardhouse at 10am and how a deposit gets forfeited.

The two routes, side by side

Every camera cable in a condo takes one of two routes, and the honest comparison is not “neat versus ugly” — it is about what you are allowed to do, how fast it can be undone, and what the wall looks like when you move out.

There is a third route that is neither, and in a condo it is often the right one: run the cable inside an existing false ceiling or above a bulkhead, so it is hidden without cutting anything. If your unit already has a plaster ceiling in the living area or the corridor inside the parcel, that void is the cheapest concealment you will ever get, and it should be the first thing anyone surveying the job looks at.

What the Klang Valley market charges per point

These are market bands published by other Klang Valley operators, not figures ClickBina publishes (market estimate 2026, indicative Klang Valley). Read the source note under the table before you use them to argue with anyone, because the two cabling rows do not come from the same place.

Where those numbers come from, honestly. The last two rows — adding a camera to an existing system, and installing a camera you already own — come from a single Klang Valley operator’s published rate card rather than from a surveyed market, so read them as one installer’s prices rather than as the going rate. The cabling rows are a different problem again. One Klang Valley operator publishes a flat rate of about RM150 per cabling point and does not distinguish concealed work from surface work at all. Nobody in the Malaysian CCTV trade publishes a concealed per-point rate. The concealed band above, the top of the surface band and the drilling charge are therefore taken from a Kuala Lumpur and Selangor electrical contractor’s published point rates — the adjacent trade doing the identical wall-hacking labour, because cutting a chase, laying conduit, re-plastering and testing a point is the same work whether the cable in it carries video or a light switch. So the honest framing is that concealed cabling in a condo is priced like any other concealed point, rather than that the security trade publishes a rate of its own. The same logic sits behind the per-point figures in adding power points and sockets and house rewiring cost.

Two lines are usually missing from a cheap quote and both are real money: making good (plaster, skim and paint back to the existing colour, which almost never matches a wall painted three years ago) and access equipment where a ceiling is high. Ask for both as separate lines rather than discovering them later. The whole-system picture sits on the CCTV installation cost guide.

What you can and cannot cut into

Before permission, there is physics. Some walls in a high-rise are not decorative partitions and cutting them is not a matter of asking nicely.

• Reinforced concrete shear walls and columns. These carry the building. Chasing into them cuts cover to reinforcement and can cut the reinforcement itself. This is not a negotiable item; a contractor who offers to do it should be removed from the shortlist.
• Post-tensioned slabs. Many Klang Valley high-rise floor slabs contain tensioned strands. Drilling blind into one is dangerous and expensive. Ceiling fixings in a PT building are a scanned-and-approved operation, not a hammer-drill decision.
• Wet-area walls. Chasing beside a bathroom or a wet kitchen invites a leak path through the very layer that is keeping water out, and the failure shows up on your neighbour’s ceiling months later.
• Dry partitions and brick infill inside your parcel. These are usually the only walls where a chase is even a conversation, and even then the building may still require a permit.

The practical result is that in most condos the concealed option, if it happens at all, happens inside your own unit on a non-structural wall, and everything from the front door outwards is surface-run or not run at all.

What the by-laws say about drilling and the facade

This is the part people guess at, so here it is in the by-laws’ own words.

In a strata scheme the prescribed by-laws are those in the Third Schedule to the Strata Management (Maintenance and Management) Regulations 2015, and three of them decide whether you may mount a camera. By-law 11 provides that ‘A proprietor shall not change the appearance, colour code and facade to any part on the exterior of his parcel without the prior written approval of the management corporation and, where necessary, the approval of the appropriate authority.’ By-law 29(2) goes further: a proprietor shall not cause or permit ‘any fitting or fixture or any alteration or change to be made to the exterior of his parcel that will affect or change the appearance of the common property or building facade or encroach onto any part of the common property’ without the prior written approval of the management corporation, and it defines building facade to include ‘external windows, balconies, terraces, common areas, open areas and all other visible parts of the building which constitute or form part of the exterior appearance of the building’. By-law 22(2) separately provides that a proprietor shall not ‘drive nails or screws, or fasten brackets or the like into, or otherwise damage or deface, any part of the common property except with the prior written approval of the management corporation’, and adds that such an approval does not authorise any addition to the common property. By by-law 2(1)(a), a reference to the ‘management corporation’ in these by-laws is read as a reference to the joint management body where a JMB is in charge, so the same rules apply in a JMB-managed building. In practice that means a camera mounted inside your own parcel and looking out through your own window raises far fewer issues than a camera bracketed to a corridor wall, a balcony parapet or any other visible part of the building, which needs the management’s written approval first.

Read plainly, that is the whole condo cabling problem: a bracket screwed into a corridor wall, a clip fixed to a lobby ceiling and a hole drilled through into the riser are all fixings into common property, and they need prior written approval first. What your building then decides beyond that is its own affair — the rules for residents’ cameras, camera angles and where a bracket may go are set by your building’s own rules, and condo CCTV rules and your JMB covers them properly. Renovation permits, deposits and working hours are covered in strata renovation rules and what to do when management rejects a renovation. This is general information about the by-laws, not legal advice on your building; a specific dispute needs professional advice.

Getting management approval without a fight

Management offices refuse vague applications and approve specific ones. Give them a package they can say yes to:

1. A marked-up floor plan showing every camera position, every cable route, and which side of your parcel boundary each one falls on.
2. Photographs of the exact surfaces you propose to fix to, taken from the corridor as a resident would see them.
3. The fixing method in writing — surface casing, plugged fixings, no chasing, colour matched to the existing wall.
4. Your contractor’s details and workers’ particulars for the access pass, plus the working hours you are asking for.
5. A reinstatement undertaking — that the casing comes down and the fixings are filled and painted if the camera is removed.
6. The renovation deposit if your building takes one for this class of work. Ask whether it does before the crew is booked, not after.

Two things move an application along more than anything else: proposing surface casing rather than chasing, and keeping every camera looking at your own door rather than down the corridor. Angles that sweep a neighbour’s entrance are the most common reason a committee says no, and they are the most common reason a neighbour complains after a yes.

Where the cable actually runs in a condo

A surveyor is looking for a continuous route from the camera to the recorder that crosses as little common property as possible. In a Klang Valley condo the candidates, in order of preference, are these.

Where a cable does have to cross from one fire compartment to another, the hole is not simply drilled and forgotten — it is sealed back to the rating of the wall it went through. Any contractor who does not raise this on a high-rise is telling you something about the rest of their work.

Where the recorder sits, and how it is powered

The recorder is the part everyone forgets to site until the cables are already run. It needs four things: a permanent mains socket, air, physical security and somewhere you can actually reach it. Store cupboards and the top of a wardrobe are the usual homes; the sealed cabinet with no ventilation is the usual mistake, because a recorder that runs hot in a Malaysian flat all year is a recorder with a shortened life.

Put it where a burglar will not find it in ten seconds. A recorder sitting under the television next to the front door is the first thing removed, and with it every recording of the person removing it. If the unit is left empty for long periods, a socket on a circuit you can check remotely is worth more than a tidier position.

If you are adding a socket for it, that is mains work and belongs to an electrician, not to the camera crew — see adding power points and electrician services. Storm damage through that mains feed is a real and underrated failure mode; it is covered in CCTV lightning and surge protection.

Cable type, PoE and distance

Two practical decisions sit inside the cabling line of your quote. The first is what the cable is made of. Cheap patch cable sold as network cable is often copper-clad aluminium rather than solid copper; it is thinner, more brittle, has higher resistance and behaves badly on a long run carrying power. On a job where the cable is buried in a wall or a ceiling void you never want to open again, the cable is the last place to save fifty ringgit. Ask, in writing, for solid copper and the category being installed.

The second is Power over Ethernet. A PoE camera takes its power down the same cable that carries its video, so one run serves one camera and you do not need a separate power point at each position — a large saving in a condo, where every extra hole is another approval. The trade-off is distance and voltage drop: a long run, a thin conductor and a cold joint together starve the camera, and the symptom is a camera that reboots at night when its infrared illuminators draw the most current. That is the same fault pattern described in CCTV going offline when it rains, which is worth reading before you accept a long run.

Cameras outside your front door

Almost every condo CCTV enquiry is really about one camera at the entrance door. It is also the position that causes every dispute, so decide three things before anyone drills.

• Which side of the boundary the bracket lands on. Inside your door frame is your parcel. On the corridor wall beside it is common property, and that is the fixing the by-law above is about.
• What the camera can see. A doorbell camera looking at your own mat is a different proposition from a corridor camera watching four neighbours’ doors, and the second one is what gets a complaint.
• Whether a wireless door camera avoids the problem. It avoids the cable, not the fixing or the angle — and it introduces battery life, Wi-Fi coverage through a concrete corridor wall, and cloud storage instead of a recorder. The trade-offs are set out in Wi-Fi cameras versus professional CCTV. An intercom or video door phone is often the better answer to “who is at my door” and is treated differently by most managements because it is a door device rather than a surveillance one.

How a rushed condo cable job shows up later

What a proper quote must itemise

• Every camera position, with the route each cable takes and whether it is surface or concealed.
• The number of cabling points, priced per point, so you can compare quotes at all.
• Cable specification in words — category, solid copper, and whether it is rated for the route it sits in.
• Whether any fixing lands on common property, and who is obtaining the written approval.
• Trunking type, size and colour, and whether painting to match is included or excluded.
• Making good: plaster, skim and paint, stated as included or excluded, for every chase.
• The recorder position, and whether a new mains socket is needed and by whom it is installed.
• Fire-stopping for any penetration between compartments.
• Spare conduit or a draw wire in any concealed run, so the next camera is not another chase.
• Working hours, access-pass handling, and who clears the debris.
• What is excluded — repainting a whole wall, management deposits, scaffolding.

A quote reading “supply and install 4 cameras — RM x” is not comparable with anything and gives you nothing to hold anyone to.

What to ask before you sign

1. Have you installed in this building, or one with the same management, before?
2. Show me on the plan every point where a cable leaves my parcel.
3. Is anything being chased, and if so into which wall — and how do you know it is not structural?
4. What cable are you using, and is it solid copper?
5. Who applies for approval, who pays the deposit, and what happens if approval is refused after I have paid a deposit to you?
6. If I remove this in two years, what does the wall look like and who reinstates it?
7. What is your warranty on the cabling itself, as distinct from the cameras?
8. What do you charge for a call-out after the warranty ends? One Klang Valley maintenance provider publishes RM150 – RM250 per visit with parts on top (market estimate 2026, indicative Klang Valley), which is a fair benchmark for the question.

Testing, making good and the handover

Before the crew leaves, walk the job. Every camera on screen at once, at night as well as in daylight, so an infrared-driven voltage-drop fault shows up. Every trunking run fixed mechanically, not just glued. Every chase filled, sanded and painted, with the leftover paint left behind. Every penetration sealed. Then ask for the handover items in a message you can find again a year later: the recorder’s login and the fact that the default password was changed, the app set up on your phone, the cable routes photographed before the trunking lids went on, and the model numbers of the cameras and the recorder.

Photographs of the open routes are the single most useful thing you can keep. The next contractor — or the plumber who wants to drill that wall — will thank you for them, and so will you when a camera has to be added.

Why ClickBina

ClickBina wires cameras in Klang Valley condominiums, which means most of our work is a permission problem with a cable attached. We survey the unit before we quote — the ceiling void, the parcel boundary, the recorder position and the mains supply — and we tell you plainly which of your camera positions management is likely to approve and which it is not. Because we do not publish a package price for security work, every job is quoted from what the survey finds rather than from a list. Send us photos of the door, the corridor and your ceiling, or a floor plan, and we will quote after a site survey. See our electrical and plumbing services for the mains side of the work.