Self-storage security
that answers at 2 a.m.

What goes wrong at a storage facility?

Break-ins at the unit, not at the office. Someone tailgates a tenant through the gate, or walks in over a back fence, and cuts locks down a row where no camera reaches. In a 2025 Inside Self Storage survey, 85 percent of owner-operators said they were worried about theft and break-ins1. In the same survey, 57 percent had dealt with repeated break-ins.

Most of those facilities already had cameras and a keypad: 92 percent used cameras and 71 percent used digital keypads. Yet 79 percent saw the same or more break-ins year over year. The equipment recorded the problem. Nothing on the property responded to it. The rest of this page is about closing that gap: cameras where the losses happen, a plate for every car, and a person who answers.

Which cameras does a storage facility need?

Cameras go where a thief has to pass or has to stop. That means the gate lane in both directions, every main driveway, and the end of every row, looking down the row. It also means the office door and counter, and the RV and boat lot, where one stolen trailer outweighs a year of unit claims. The back fence line matters too, because plenty of thieves never use the gate.

We wire the cameras on PoE back to a recorder in the office. Row ends are often far from the office, so the cable plan is drawn first: trenching, aerial runs between buildings, or a wireless bridge where neither works. Every camera is checked at night on the walk-through, because a view that works at noon can be black at 2 a.m. under one wall light. Details of the camera lines we install are on the security cameras page.

A plate for every car at the gate

A second camera on the gate lane has one job: reading plates. It is narrow, aimed at the spot where a driver stops to punch in a code, and lit for night. Its footage goes to a Milesight NVR with plate search, so you type a plate instead of scrubbing an evening of video2.

The plate matters because of tailgating. A tenant's code opens the gate and a second car follows it in. The gate log shows one entry. The plate camera shows two cars, and a plate police can act on.

Keep your gate system, and watch it

Your gate keypad and management software stay where they are. They already hand out tenant codes, set access hours and lock out delinquent tenants. Ripping that out would cost you your tenant records and your staff's habits for no gain.

What we add is the video that makes the gate log useful. When a unit is hit, the log shows whose code opened the gate and when. The gate lane camera and the plate camera show who actually drove through at that minute. Washington's self-service storage law, RCW 19.150, sets when a delinquent tenant can be denied access and how a lien sale runs3. Your gate system enforces it. Our cameras record what happens at the gate while it does.

Who answers when someone is in a row at 2 a.m.?

Either you, from your phone, or a remote guard. Cameras on their own record the cut lock and send an alert. If nobody answers it, the footage waits until morning, and the tenant finds the unit before you do.

Live guard monitoring puts a guard behind the lenses that matter at a storage site: the gate lane, the RV and boat lot, and the rows along the back fence. Set the monitored hours to your gate's access hours, so the guard is watching exactly when no tenant code works. A tenant loading at 7 p.m. is not an event. A person in the back row at 2 a.m. is, and the guard talks to them through a speaker at the camera before the lock is cut.

It costs $150 a month for the first camera and $75 for each additional camera, as of October 2026, with a one-year term. How the guard works, the speakers and the camera requirements are on the remote video monitoring page.

An alarm on the office

The office holds the cash drawer, the recorder, the gate controller and the tenant files, so it gets its own intrusion alarm. We fit Ajax contacts on the office and back doors and a MotionCam over the counter, so the operator at Becklar, a UL-listed central station, gets photos of whoever tripped it. Whether a camera clip can be added to those alarms is covered on the verified alarm monitoring page.

Unit door alarms across a whole facility are a different product. They usually come from the gate system vendor, because they tie each door to the tenant's code. Rows of steel doors also block radio, which is why we keep wireless alarms to the office and a few high-value units. We aim cameras where the unit alarms report.

What drives the cost?

The site plan does. Buildings and rows, the length of the back fence, a vehicle lot, and the run from each row end back to the office set the camera count and the cabling. Trenching across asphalt costs more than an aerial run between buildings. The days of video you want kept set the recorder size. The lenses you choose to monitor are billed monthly, per lens, on the same proposal.

Where we work

We install from 415 Railroad Ave S in Kent and cover south King County and Pierce County: Kent, Renton, Tukwila, Federal Way, Auburn, Covington, Maple Valley, Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Bonney Lake and Gig Harbor. Rivas Technology Group holds WA electrical contractor license RIVASGL799DR, active, bonded and insured4, and is an Ajax Systems dealer listed on ajax.systems. Storage on an apartment property is covered on the multifamily page, and the rest of the commercial platform on business security.