Camera positions and set posts in McLean, Virginia

Why the position is the hard part

A perimeter position is decided by geometry: the angle that sees the approach, a height that keeps it out of reach, and a route back to the house that a cable can follow. On a McLean lot those three rarely agree anywhere a structure already stands. The driveway is long, the setback is deep, and between the gate and the house there is lawn.

Setting a post answers all three at once, and it is the part of a perimeter job most often missing. It is also the part that is expensive to add later, because the trench, the conduit and the footing all want to be done once.

What is done today, and what is pending

Done today, in one visit: the post sited where the angle works, dug and set in concrete, plumbed and backfilled; shielded direct-burial Cat6 run from the house to it in conduit sleeves; a weatherproof enclosure at the top; and 12 V DC at the post through a PoE splitter with a battery buffer. You pay us the flat $400 labor fee and buy the parts yourself from retailers, and labor plus the parts you buy stays under $1,000 for the year.

Pending: mounting, aiming and commissioning the equipment itself. That part waits on Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Electronic Security Business certification, which is in progress and is not held today. Until it is issued, none of it is part of any job booked here, and nothing on this page is priced to include it.

The two halves separate cleanly, which is the point. The groundwork is a job in its own right -- it is most of the digging and most of the day -- and it is what turns the later visit into a short one.

What your McLean property needs

A route the cable can take from the house to the position, and a run under 328 ft from your network equipment. Past that, the Perimeter Upgrade Calculator asks for a documented mid-span plan before anything is submitted, and it asks about the position and the distance first because those two answers decide the rest.

Somewhere inside near the router for the PoE source, and ground that can actually be dug rather than slab or rock. McLean is an unincorporated community in Fairfax County; nothing about the service or the flat fee changes with the ZIP code, so we look at the ground and the route on your driveway instead of assuming anything about the neighborhood.

Work we don't take on

Line-voltage electrical work, masonry or structural changes, and jobs that need stamped engineering drawings are out of scope everywhere in the corridor. All of our work is low-voltage, under 50 V DC. A request that needs any of those is marked out of technical scope during vetting, and we tell you that plainly instead of quoting it.

Work happens outside and at points already reachable on foot -- we don't go into an attic or a crawlspace. We also don't install, service or rekey locks, deadbolts, electric strikes, maglocks or keypad/access-control entry hardware; that is locksmith work under Virginia law and isn't a service we offer.

Equipment work is the one case that is not a refusal but a licence: it is not yet permitted to us. A job that is only about the equipment is held out of scope until the DCJS certification is issued. The post, the buried line and the power to it are not held -- those can be booked now.

Before any post hole is dug, we call Virginia 811 to have utility lines marked at the site. That call is free, required by law, and ours to make.

Driveway gate automation in McLean is still the same service

If your gate already has an operator with a push-button or dry-contact input, the same buried PoE line can feed a Shelly Plus Uni wired to that input, so the gate is triggered from Shelly's app and its control gear keeps power through a short outage. We do not sell, install or rewire operators, and the GateWire site does not open your gate -- Shelly's app does.

Most jobs in McLean turn out to be both: a position at the road that needs a post, and a gate a few feet from it that has never been wired for anything. One trench serves both.

How the price compares, and why it isn't the same job

The Northern Virginia gate companies we looked at on 2026-09-16 quote by phone or site visit and publish no prices. Cost aggregators put a full automatic gate installation at roughly $2,500–$5,000. That figure includes the operator and hardware. Ours is $400 for labor alone, and you buy the parts separately at the retailer's price, so the two numbers aren't directly comparable.

How a job goes

1. Run the Perimeter Upgrade Calculator and add two line-of-sight photos.
2. Your job is vetted on technical scope only.
3. If it fits, pay the $400 refundable deposit (see the deposit terms).
4. Buy the parts through the Procurement Hub and upload your receipt.
5. Once the receipt is verified, tell us when you are free and we confirm a time.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• HomeAdvisor, security gate installation cost (retrieved 2026-09-16)
• Yelp Costs, automatic gate opener installation (retrieved 2026-09-16)