Security and access: the gate, the guard and the intercom

Status: first draft, 21 Oct 2026, revised 3 Nov 2026 (perimeter trail in the belt inside the wall; the flagship on 16.9 rai). Costs are estimates from model/cost_model.py (generated output: model/results.md); kit prices are catalogue and package prices, not quotes. Legal points are summaries to be confirmed by the Thai lawyer in phase 0 (plan.md). Bracketed numbers such as [45] refer to sources.md.

The rules

1. Every vehicle and every person comes in through a gate. The estate has a perimeter wall and one staffed main gate with a pedestrian gate beside it. There are no unguarded side doors.
2. Residents and their regulars come in by plate or card. A camera reads a registered car's number plate and the barrier opens without the car stopping. Motorbikes, pedestrians and household staff use a card, a tag or a phone.
3. Visitors and deliveries come in only after the guard has called the house. The guard calls the tenant over the intercom, the tenant sees the driver on the camera and says yes or no. Nobody is let in on their own word.
4. Everything is logged, and nothing is kept longer than it is needed. Plates, times and who said yes are recorded. No ID cards are taken or copied, and recordings are deleted on a fixed schedule (Privacy).

The gate

The main gate sits on the public soi, in a 10 m frontage strip inside the wall that also holds guest parking, the energy centre and the workshop (site-plan.md). Behind the barriers the drive crosses the perimeter trail at a marked crossing, and the path from the pedestrian gate joins the trail. The barriers stand 11 m inside the wall, so two cars can wait at the gate without standing on the public road.

Thailand drives on the left and most cars are right-hand drive, so the inbound lanes are on the north side and the guard house stands on the island where every driver's window faces it. Thai motorbikes carry a number plate only at the back, so a front-facing camera cannot read them: motorbikes use a tag or a card. Village packages sold in Thailand pair plate cameras for cars with card readers for motorbikes.[51]

One gate or more. Each staffed gate needs its own 24-hour post, which is the expensive part. The flagship site is planned with road frontage on one side only, so it has one gate. If the chosen site has a second public road, two options are priced in the model:

A service gate at the utility yard for the sludge truck and contractors is only worth adding if the site has a back lane. Otherwise service vehicles use the main gate like everyone else.

Who gets in, and how

Visitors and deliveries: the guard calls the house

1. The visitor stops at the call point. A camera reads the plate (motorbike riders give theirs). The guard asks which house and who is calling.
2. The guard calls the house from the master station in the guard house. The indoor station in the house and the tenant's phone app ring together and show the live picture of the driver at the window.[52]
3. The tenant decides: let in, leave it at the gate, or refuse.
4. Let in: the guard opens the visitors' barrier once. The visit is logged with plate, house, who said yes and the time; it ends when the same plate leaves through the exit lane, and the guard house sees any visitor still inside after a set time.
5. Leave it at the gate: the parcel goes on the shelves in the guard house and the tenant gets a message. Heavy or bulky parcels are taken to the house by estate staff during working hours. Food waits at the window for the tenant.
6. No answer within about a minute: parcels are kept as in step 5; food waits or goes back; a guest waits or phones the tenant directly.
7. Refused: the car turns in the junction just behind the barrier, in the guard's view, and leaves at once.

The guard never lets a visitor in because the visitor says the tenant is expecting them. If the tenant cannot be reached, the visitor does not come in. Visitors park at the house or in the seven guest bays just inside the gate.

No ID cards at the gate. Holding visitors' ID cards ("exchanging cards") is common at Thai estates, but the card carries more personal data than the estate needs, and the back of the card holds the laser code that fraudsters use to open accounts.[54] The estate records the plate, the house, the name the visitor gives and who approved the visit, and keeps no cards or copies.

The intercom

One IP video intercom system connects every house with the guard house and the gate:

The house kit costs about 35,000 THB (catalogue prices of 12,120 for a villa door station and 19,410 for an indoor station, plus installation),[52] and the master station about 69,000.[52] Calls are not recorded, and there is no camera inside any house. The indoor station is also the night line for faults: outside working hours the guard takes the call and wakes the on-call technician (operating-model.md).

The intercom, plate cameras, barriers and CCTV run on the estate's own server and network. They use open standards (SIP for the intercom, ONVIF for the cameras), so a brand can be replaced without replacing the rest; the prices above come from one maker's catalogue and are not a brand choice. The brand is picked in phase 1b on security record, local support and spares.

Plates, cards and tags

• Issued at move-in, cancelled at move-out. Plates, cards and tags belong to the house and the lease; at move-out they are switched off the same day, before keys are handed back.
• Cards that cannot be copied. Encrypted smart cards rather than the cheap 125 kHz proximity cards, which can be cloned in seconds (engineering judgement; the reader choice is part of the phase 1b quotes).
• Plate first, card as backup. Plate cameras read about 95 to 99 % of plates in the vendors' figures;[49][50] when a plate is not read, the resident shows a card and the guard sees the miss on the screen.
• Lost card: the tenant calls the guard house, the card is blocked at once and replaced the next working day.

The guards

The estate hires guards from a licensed security company. A company that provides guards for pay must hold a licence, may only send licensed guards and must have a written contract with its client;[48] whether the estate could employ its own guards instead is a question for the lawyer. Since 24 April 2569 guards are owed overtime for every hour beyond 8 a day,[47] which is already in current quotes.

One guard position is one guard 12 hours a day, every day, with the company providing relief. A 2569 Bangkok quote prices that at 22,500 THB a month including Sundays, holidays and social security, before VAT;[45] another company quotes 24,500 to 26,000.[46] The model uses 22,500 plus 7 % VAT, which the estate cannot reclaim because residential rent is VAT-exempt (to confirm with the tax adviser). Chiang Mai wages are lower than Bangkok's,[40] so a local quote may come in below this; 20 % cheaper guards would lower the rent needed by about 1,200 THB a month.

Small estates pay a lot per house for a guard. A 24-hour post costs about 48,000 THB a month wherever it is. In a 150-house estate that is about 300 THB per house per month; in this one it is 3,400 for the gate post alone. The night patrol adds 1,700: without it, the gate guard cannot leave the gate and the perimeter is watched only by cameras. Dropping it saves about 2,000 THB a month of rent and is listed as a decision in plan.md.

What the guards do: run the gate and the visitor calls; watch the plate log and the cameras; keep the parcel shelves; answer SOS alarms and night calls from houses; walk the night patrol; meet police, ambulance and fire crews at the gate and take them to the house; keep the incident log. The contract sets the estate's own standards on top of the company's: background check and drug test,[45] the estate's service training, basic English for an international tenant base, and the same faces on the same shifts wherever possible.

Wall, cameras and light

• Perimeter wall with an anti-climb top behind the 8 m planted belt, lit along its length from the inside. The perimeter trail runs in the belt, about 4 m from the wall, with low bollard lights about every 25 m; it is inside the gated estate, for residents only.
• CCTV: cameras over the gate and along the wall about every 25 m, plus the club and the service yard, recording to the estate's own recorder. Video analytics on the wall cameras raise an alarm in the guard house when someone climbs at night; residents running or walking on the trail in the evening are expected, so the analytics watch the wall line, not the trail (to set up with the integrator).
• No cameras pointing into gardens or windows. Where a wall camera's view includes a private garden, that part of the picture is masked.[57]

Privacy

The estate records people, so it follows the Personal Data Protection Act:

• Signs at every gate say that cameras record and why, with a QR code to the estate's CCTV privacy notice.[55] The notice and the retention periods are part of the lease pack.
• Retention periods are a choice, not a legal number. Ricoh Thailand, for example, keeps recordings for 15 to 180 days depending on the area;[58] the periods above are proposals for the lawyer to confirm.
• No face recognition by default. Face data is sensitive personal data and may be used only with explicit consent or where the law allows;[56] if it is ever offered at the pedestrian gate, it is opt-in per person.
• Security of the security system. The cameras, barriers and intercom sit on their own network with no ports open to the internet, default passwords changed, firmware kept current, and an acceptance test before handover, following the national CCTV security guideline.[57]

When something fails

What it costs

Together the guards are about 5,200 THB per house per month on the 14-house flagship and 4,000 on the lean estate. The kit adds about 0.6 M to the flagship's infrastructure against the first draft, which had one 1.5 M line for fibre, gate, CCTV and access control. The gardens, pool, cleaning and office, which the first draft lumped in with the guards as 4,000 THB per house per month, are now priced on their own at about 5,900 on the flagship with its park, belt, lanes and club. Altogether, pricing the guards and the common services line by line and adding the gate kit raised the rent needed for a 5 % net yield by about 5,300 THB a month on the lean estate (costs-and-rent.md).

Open points

• Pre-booked visitors. The base case is that the guard calls for every visitor, as above. Access systems sold to Thai estates let residents give a guest a temporary QR pass in an app, so the guard checks the pass instead of calling.[53] Decide whether tenants may book visitors in advance, or only add standing passes for household staff and family. The intercom and access software support both.
• Night patrol on the flagship (5,200 vs 3,400 THB per house per month for guards).
• Second gate if the chosen site has a second road.
• Lawyer (phase 0): contracted vs in-house guards under the Security Business Act;[48] the CCTV privacy notice and retention periods; the house rules on visitors as part of the lease.
• Phase 1b quotes: guards from two or three Chiang Mai companies; gate kit, intercom and CCTV as one package from an integrator who also services it; the brand choice.
• Pilot: the two pilot houses get the same indoor and door stations, so the intercom, app and parcel process are tested with real tenants before the estate is built; the guard process is tested on the estate.