Why New Homes?
Pre-wiring for low-voltage systems during the building process is very important to consider and offers several main benefits.
Firstly, and most importantly, it provides the opportunity to plan ahead for any added low-voltage systems, such as security cameras, home automation, or entertainment setups. This allows the homeowner to communicate exactly what they want ahead of time and leads to significantly happier buyers.
Secondly, it avoids any disruption to the house’s structure and aesthetic appeal after construction, which saves the homebuyer money from having to pay for expensive retrofitting processes.
Thirdly, pre-wiring increases the resale value of the house, making it more attractive to future homebuyers who value modern technology. Surprisingly, a big part of this is the hardwired ethernet that makes every device in the house faster.
Ultimately, pre-wiring for low-voltage systems is cost-effective, convenient, and offers significant advantages both during and after the construction process.
If you're not building from scratch and instead want a retrofit estimation for your house, we can also send you a quote or schedule a walkthrough for your application!
Retrofit
Retrofit is the process of running cable after the building has already been completed.
Retrofit should be avoided when building a home from scratch. The retrofit process is usually extremely difficult, which makes it drastically more expensive and laborious than pre-planning during the building stage. In fact, it might be entirely impossible in certain, more extreme, cases.
We understand that sometimes the future isn't always certain, and you might not know if you want cameras outside, access points inside for possible dead spots, speakers in the kitchen, et cetera).
We still recommend running the wire anyway, just in case, but if money is the issue, ask your builder to add a wall chase (any PVC pipe or conduit will do) ran from the attic to the low voltage area for later on. This makes it much easier to retrofit almost anything and will save you tons of money down the road.