Low Voltage Wiring???

taylorradley

wondering how to charge for installing surround sound systems and alarm systems for homes that have already been rocked and maybe even older homes where homeowners want wiring added ect.. I am trying to get started in houston texas doing some side jobs on the weekends. I dont know how much to charge for each drop ect...


Thanks, Taylor

mdshunk

Since the construction of each older home presents unique challenges, I would highly suggest that you do this type of work on a time and material basis. At least until you do a few and divide up the hours by the amount of work you managed to get done to get your own price per drop. In a newer home, with unfinished basement below or unfinished attic above, you could do a whole surround sound system in a couple of hours. For an older home, with finished spaces above and below, you could spend two or three hours just fishing for one jack plate.

Chicago

The good thing about LV wiring is that you have a fairly stable cost for your wiring. Coming up with your material cost is simple.
As MD said, time and material would be safe but I feel not necessarily fair to the homeowner if they have to absorb your learning curve with longer installation times.
I would suggest a flat fee for a basic install that takes a guy a full 8 hour day (rough,trim,test,calibrate) and then go up from there.
The thing I've found is that guys sell themselves short on all of the little details that go into a quality HT install. Things like knowing where to best place the speakers including a good out of the way location for the Sub. Things like determining where an in-wall speaker will fit and whether or not side speakers can be incorporated. Then there is the trim out, which can be a sloppy mess or something to be proud of. Then there is the calibration of the system and last but not least the training of the owner.

Just make sure that you educate yourself thoroughly. Go to remotecentral.com and do your best to come off not as a guy that is looking for a little side work, but as a guy that knows more than the average bear and should be paid accordingly.

mdshunk

It's not the learnig curve that caused me to suggest T&M.

hpfrench

Hey, just joined this forum and wondering how your doing?

Dave-Raleigh

Are you planning to do turn key setups or just the rough in?

Around here it seems the high end audio places do many of their own installs and offer turn key setups. I have had the opportunity to see some of these places/guys in action and believe me, on some of these installations the rough in is probably 20% of the job.

My daughter and her husband just had their whole house system 'tweaked' and two new speakers wired in. Took two guys about 2 hours to rough in the wire for the two speakers through the attic. Two other guys spent all day programming the computer, remotes, and sound out of the speakers in the media room and remote pads throughout the house. Everything had to be programmed through a laptop running 'special' software.

Another guy worked on the full blown rack system tweaking various things. They had a problem with the sub woofer that was finally trouble shot down to the main amp. Again a lot of this was done with a laptop running special software.

She got a 'loaner' of a different sub woofer and main system amplifier for 6 weeks.

I only mention all this because if you can learn the business and set up expensive systems I would think you could name your price. The rough in part is a nit (IMHO). I know the daughter paid somewhere over $3K just for the 'tweaks' and 2 rough ins.

BTW, they had a 6 week backlog so you had to schedule way in advance to get on their schedule. I asked them about purchasing the software. Seems its about $1000, and you have to go to the factory school to get trained before you can even buy it. Then there is the cost of updates on top of that.

These guys really seemed to know what they were doing though.

Oh yeah, this was probably a 'cheap' $40K system they were tweaking.

The 'system' also could control a lot of the lighting in the house. Its real weird the first time you are in a house where it is set on 'travel mode' and all of a sudden the music comes on/off and the lights start turning on/off at various intervals throughout the house.