Home Networking

I’ve found that it’s very hard to find companies that actually do good residential low voltage work. Most of the local electricians we looked at just didn’t touch network wiring. A friend of a friend is an electrician and said this is mainly due to a generational divide in the industry and the available training. High-end homes increasingly use low voltage for all manner of stuff but few dudes know the systems well. This guy made a killing doing multimillion dollar homes because he said there were so few electricians in his entire area that could do the work, especially low voltage lighting and blinds.

One caution with paying a professional: the work can be sorta shoddy. A lot of low voltage dudes literally just lay the wire in your attic, crawlspace, or string it up in your basement. Following code isn’t a thing. Doing it right can be fairly expensive; you may need to take drywall, run conduit for vertical drops, etc. I found that most of the installers in this space were TV and AV installers with very limited understanding regarding first principles of networking. We paid to have our home wired, mainly because the initial install involved thousands of feet of Cat 6 and significant in-wall work. We basically retrofitted the entire home. We paid a lot only to find that the installer left a mess of wire in multiple spaces. It’s been subsequently corrected but I do all of my own work now for this very reason.

If you’re going to get it done, I’d recommend finding a company that specializes in networking and is willing to do residential. Depending on your area this may be hit or miss. Otherwise really consider doing it yourself.