Help Needed: Cost for Prewire Cat6, Coax and 5.1
Hi,
My contractor says he can run whatever wire we need but I need to be the expert and go purchase the wire and then tell him where we need it. The price is right but I am no expert. They also wont terminate.
A expert in prewiring and termination provided a quote. The quote includes 35 hours to run the prewire, terminate and its $135 an hour. I live in Northern California. Overall to wire a 2400 SQ ft house its ~ 5k for the wiring and another 2k for the equipment.
Does this sound right? I am not getting much help from my contractor except he says its high. My fear is i want this done right but i don't want to be taken to the cleaners.
Thanks,
Meghan
Comments (10)
User
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoIt will not be $1.98. You have hired the wrong GC if he does not have his own subcontractor that can do this under his supervision. Hiring a sub yourself technically makes you the General Contractor on the job and responsible for the outcome, and coordinating your sub with the rest.
weedmeister
5 years agoTo me, $135/hr is a lot to just pull wires. If this is just the rough-in stage, the GC can get it done with the other electrical. You'll need to show on the plans where you want the boxes. And you'll need to supply low-voltage boxes for the rooms. As to the central 'hub', you'll need to specify where this is, and how many AC outlets you'll need in that location (1 or 2?).
Basically, after the rough-in is done, someone else can come along and terminate everything. You'll probably supply the Ethernet 'switch', coax stuff, and so on.
freeoscar
5 years agoThat sounds very high for a 2400 square foot house, but nothing surprises me when California is involved. How many points are you running to?
User
5 years agoDo you need cable? We stream everything, so there's no need to run wire. We have a 2700 sq. ft. duplex. Our side is 1700 sq. ft. and the other side is a 1000 sq. ft. apartment we rent through Airbnb. Comcast ran a line from the street to a box on the side of the house. I ran six feet of coax from that to a terminal in my wife's office, plugged in a router, put a wifi extender in the apartment, and that was it - total cost around $400 - and it's all wireless. We and our guests use iPhones, laptops, desktops and TVs without any problem.
Joe T.
5 years agoIt could be high; it could be right. It's hard to say without seeing the actual bid with how many drops, etc. Make sure testing is part of the bid. $135/hr doesn't sound high to me for Northern CA. I do find it odd that a GC there doesn't have a network guy, though.
I wouldn't have your GC's electrician do the work as they say they won't terminate, which means they aren't guaranteeing their install. Ethernet isn't trivial to terminate, either, although, as @freeoscar says above, it's not an impossible skill to master. Speaking from experience, don't cheap out on your punch-down tool if you decide to terminate yourself.
Michael Goss thanked Joe T.Ron Natalie
5 years agoUnfortunately, wiring as with many other home contracting things varies highly by region. Your best bet is to get bids from multiple contractor and CHECK REFERENCES.
I have a pretty big house. The first half, I had the regular electrician run the video and cat 5 wiring. While "running" the wire is no big thing, the morons terminated it all wrong. I had to go back and redo it all myself and there were still some suboptimal things in the way they did the video wiring. The second half of the house (built ten years or so later), I had a professional home automation guy come in and he brought in a crew of specialized low voltage wiring guys. I was much happier.
I had taken pictures of the walls before the drywall went up (but after the wiring and plumbing) and thought I was pretty smart. This came in handy when helping the electricians find a few boxes that got drywalled over. I forgot to take pictures of the ceiling. They also drywalled over one of the ceiling speaker roughins. Fortunately the specialized wiring guys had taken their own pictures of their work in the ceilings.Michael Goss thanked Ron Natalie
PRODavis Audio & Video
5 years agoI am not in your area, but I would say the price sounds about right. Maybe a little high, but not crazy. The comparisons to the electrician are not really comparable. High voltage electricians are typically not as knowledgeable as a qualified low voltage company and will they terminate the wires properly for 4k HDR and beyond? Will they run the correct wires? The company you reached out to may have included design into their pricing - If they are advising on what wires to run to what location to make sure the house is wired for the forceable future. The wiring will be in the house forever. It is far smarter to pay for an expert now, than save a few bucks with your cheapest option only to learn later that your wiring is incorrect or worthless and it will be way more expensive to fix it later.
PROTechnospeak Corporation
5 years agoFor as many drop points yes that price is in the ballpark. Generally a pre-wire can cost at little at $1,500 or as much as $15,000 or more if you are talking about a 20,000sq ft plus house with multiple structures, full home-automation system etc. A cost of $135 is reasonable if you are talking about the installation, trim-out and testing of each of those runs. You will see a lot of electricians, GCs, Handy-men etc type willing to pull in whatever wires you want as that is the easy part. The hard part is knowing what wires to pull in where, what wiring to stay away from, how to terminate the wiring and then how to use it via the various electronic devices you want in your home. You should task the GC with hiring a Low Voltage contractor who connects and configures the finished equipment in your home. That type of Low Voltage contractor is best as he or she has to make sure they wiring they installed works correctly or they don't collect a check.
PROSunbelt Technology of Chattanooga, LLC
5 years agoWhat if they were charging $90 an hour and estimated 52.5 hours to complete the job? Its that same total, but a lower rate. What I'm getting at is none of those number should matter. Compare the total cost of the project to the scope of work and determine if you find value in the job they're doing. Think about any meetings you've had or will have with this company. They probably don't bill you for that time, but it does have to factor into their pricing. They'll have at least two visits for rough and trim and possibly a third for finish from the sounds of it. If they use project managers you'll have someone keeping tabs on your job through the whole process to catch cut/missed wires, covered boxes, etc. If this is the same job from another post you have finish equipment in this estimate and it's definitely worth the price. If it doesn't have finish equipment it may be a hair on the high side, but as others have mentioned your location could justify that difference easily. Good luck!
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freeoscar