On this episode of “Simplifying Life Through Technology,” Mark, Michelle, Eric, and Andrew sit down to discuss the Pre-Wire / Rough Phase of a project at SoundVision.
"My motto is wire it silly."
Learn about the intricacies of the pre-wiring phase as we reveal why meticulous planning and execution of cable pulling is paramount in tech integration projects. If you've ever wondered about the process of integrating technology into your home or business, this episode is your introduction to understanding how professionals like us ensure that every wire and label paves the way for a harmonious integration. From the strategic steps that set the stage for the success of a project, to the crucial collaborations with electricians and HVAC specialists, we discuss the art behind a pristine and functional technology integration.
Join us for an enlightening discussion on the future-proofing of our homes, touching on aspects often overlooked and the importance of thorough documentation for any future troubleshooting. We share real-life examples of common struggles and highlight how a simple photograph can save the day when outlets go missing under drywall. With our Design Engineer Eric's insights and our team's experiences in the field, this episode promises to equip you with the knowledge to understanding the pre-wiring phase, ensuring your next project's success is not just a possibility, but a guarantee.
On this episode, we discuss:
What a Pre-Wire / Rough Phase
What SoundVision does at a Pre-Wire
Future-proofing your home
Why wired infrastructures are still indispensable in a wireless age
Our planning and design process
The importance of documentation
Running conduit
Low voltage wiring
Whether you're a homeowner looking to integrate technology into your living space or a business planning a commercial integration, this episode will provide you with the knowledge and understanding of the importance of choosing the right integrator. Tune in to discover how SoundVision navigates the pre-wire phase of projects, ensuring a seamless and successful integration.
To learn what a Lead Technician at SoundVision does at a Pre-Wire:
Welcome to Simplifying Life for Technology. Today, we'll be diving into the pre-wire stage of our projects and what exactly that means. This stage is crucial in setting up a project for success. Listen to discover how our pre-wiring process sets us apart from other integrators and ensures seamless technology integration in every project. Today we wanted to come in here and talk a little bit about the pre-wire stage that we do at our projects.
Speaker 2:
We really wanted to showcase the steps from the beginning of it to the end of it sort of soup to nuts so that our customers can understand more what's involved, and so that pre-wire stage is really the first part of it. One of the reasons we bring Eric in is that Eric has had a lot of experience in this in previous companies and with us been a weed technician with us and now as our design engineer. So is it safe to say that you've pulled a lot of cable.
Speaker 3:
Yes, very much so.
Speaker 4:
For those who aren't familiar with the pre-wire or what pre-wire means, can you give us just a very high level explanation of what that is?
Speaker 3:
Yes, it's basically the start of a house For us. Once the design has been approved, we need to go in and then pull all the wiring to the specific locations that are on the plans. Basically, we have our head end and we just need to get all the wire from the head end to its specific locations in the room, whether that be network or security or AV or audio. It's just a matter of pulling the specific wires to their locations.
Speaker 2:
Importantly, this is at the stage where the home is framed, so it's kind of a shell. You've got walls, you've got a ceiling, you've got a roof, sometimes there are windows, sometimes there aren't, it depends. And other trades like your heating and air contractor, your plumber and your electrician have all been in and have run their parts and pieces that go behind the walls. So this is the point at which we run everything the infrastructure, the wiring that goes behind the walls, that you don't ever see. That helps support the system that we have designed for you.
Speaker 3:
And that is key, because we always, if possible, want to be the last people in their wiring, because our wire sometimes has specific rules to it as far as not being able to run alongside or with other wiring, and so we want to make sure that nobody's going to come behind us and just run their wire willy-nilly because there are no rules to their wire, but that will mess up our wire, so we always want to be last if possible.
Speaker 4:
There's another advantage to the prewire process, and that is they call it future proofing your home.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, good point, Michelle.
Speaker 4:
This is your opportunity to get every wire you think you might need in the future. Extra network jacks, extra HDMI cables run while the walls are still open, before they're up, so that you don't have to incur that expense or hassle later on.
Speaker 3:
And a good point to that that's something we have started doing recently is running conduit from the head end location either down into the crawl or all the way up into the attic, to give us future access for possibly retroing wires that have been added later on.
Speaker 2:
One other thing to bring up, and we brought this up in other podcasts the whole wireless Wi-Fi not connected devices comes up a lot. It's really important to understand that there are always wires needed to support various technologies and so, as Michelle said, future-proofing has Eric just brought up running Conduit, things that we do at this phase so that you can have the ability to do whatever you want when you move in. But it's really critical that you know that you do have to have wires. Even in a wireless application of a network or of printers, television, streaming video, all that stuff, there's still wires that support that behind the walls.
Speaker 3:
That is a good tech tip Nothing is actually wireless. Everything requires power, which requires a wire.
Speaker 1:
What I noticed about our pre-wiring stage is how meticulous our process is. We're labeling each individual wire. We're grouping them accordingly so that when other trades do come in, our wires aren't being affected.
Speaker 2:
It's a good thing to talk about the way that the project is done. From the very beginning we are extremely detailed. We're very process-oriented about even how we run wires. Eric mentioned just a second ago about our wires. If they're too close to power wires, if they don't cross at certain angles and at certain spaces, there can be noise down the road, there can be hum that you actually see on your displays. So that's really important. But the care that we take is really really important and it's very purposeful and intentional. So how we run stuff, how we terminate stuff, how we label stuff, how it's all the same length, how we protect it is something that we go over, that you may never even see. But I encourage you, if you are wiring a home or a place of business, to take a look at that. That's just the precursor to what's to come on, how much detail and care we take in every part of the project.
Speaker 4:
A good point also is that we do pull low voltage wire. We are licensed to do that, we pull permits, we have inspections. You can kind of tell what kind of contractor you're working with by how many times they pass their inspections or how many times it takes them to pass their inspections. Just to give our team a shout out, we are actually very good. Our pass rate is very high. It is very rare that we actually fail an inspection. Not all contractors out there that pull low voltage actually go through the process of actually pulling a permit and having it inspected, and then you'll have other applications, whereas the electricians want to pull the low voltage wiring and sometimes they are more familiar with the high voltage side and a little bit less with the low voltage side. So it can pose some possible challenges.
Speaker 2:
If you're going to have a security system in your home or as part of the project, not only do you have to have a contractor, an integrator like us, that is licensed and has a low voltage license. They also have to have a security license, and we mentioned this in a couple other podcasts, but it's good to note that doesn't just extend to the people that are doing the installation. That extends to everybody in the project. So one of the things that we invest in in our company is making sure that everybody has been criminally background checked, everybody's had fingerprints, everybody is registered with the North Carolina alarm board and that is everybody. So that's very important again when choosing a contractor to do this kind of work.
Speaker 3:
Something to note with what Andrew was talking about our meticulous nature with how we prewire. We keep calling it a prewire, but it's also considered the rough phase, and it can be very rough with other trades and stuff, because lots of times you run into people who don't care. They're in there to do their stuff, they don't care about everybody else's stuff and they just get it done, throw it everywhere. That's why we wrap our wire, that's why we label everything, and the more you do it the front end, the easier it's going to be on the back end and that's why we do what we do.
Speaker 1:
So I was going to ask about challenges. Is that what you feel is like a big challenge during the prewire or the rough is just dealing with other trades and kind of working around each other?
Speaker 3:
Yes, because we all need to work together, because, especially for us and the electricians specifically, our stuff doesn't work without their stuff Right, you know? And so we always try to have a good relationship with the electricians. They're in there trying to get their job done. We're in there trying to get our job done. I'm not trying to make their job harder and I'm hoping they're not trying to make my job harder. So I'm always trying to be very respectful and mindful of what they're doing. If I'm pulling them away from their work, I try to do it as little as possible. But if we need an outlet put in place, maybe we added something that they didn't know about. So communication is key, you know. Working together is key.
Speaker 2:
And our systems are so interconnected nowadays In our world, we have certain projects where we interface with every other contractor. Certainly, we interface with electricians, no question about that, all the time. We interface with heating and air HVAC contractors a lot of the time because we're using smart thermostats that may be controlled by an app or by our system. And nowadays there's even plumbers. There's plumbing devices out there that are smart, if you will, and can interface too. So we quite literally interface with almost every other contractor that sets foot on the project. So it is really important, as Eric said, to have a good working relationship with them.
Speaker 3:
More and more nowadays, insurance companies are requiring certain things in a house to be insured, and a lot of that is like water sensors and water shutoff equipment. So if you were to have a leak, it shuts the water off to the house, as opposed to your house just filling with water. So we are running across that more and more nowadays of like having to get involved in that because we need to control the water sensors.
Speaker 1:
Right, Anything else. Eric, you feel that is important for people to know about the pre-wire?
Speaker 3:
As far as like for customers. My motto is wire it silly, because even if you don't use it, we can always pre-wire and bury it in the wall, because we take photos, we take measurements, we know exactly where that wire is. So even if you think you don't need it, wire it for future proofing, like Michelle said, and we can go back to it later on. I will tell you for myself. I don't think enough people do speakers in the garage. So many people go out in the garage and tinker. Some people have their workout gear in the garage, some people have their workshops in the garage, but I would say out of 10 homes, we have one home that does speakers in the garage. I just don't understand that. But that's just me. I would say wire it and we can find it.
Speaker 2:
Tech tip Eric's tech tips. Top tech tips. One other thing about the rough that we haven't touched on, and that's after we finish it. Eric just made a comment about making maps and taking pictures, and we're very meticulous with our documentation on the roughs. And again, this is important down the road, if something changes or wants the walls up and you can't see it in a lot of cases, we really go the extra mile of not only taking pictures of it but labeling them and making sure that we've got that down the road. That's really for us primarily, but over the years there have been numerous times where customers have called I know you don't have this, but did you buy any chance? Take a picture of this room? Well, yeah, actually we do have that. You got to be kidding me, really. So we use that for a lot of different reasons.
Speaker 4:
We used it very recently. We had a project that things actually got moved around and we were able to reference the photos that we had taken during the rough to figure out the solution versus you know, not knowing and just guessing. We do that frequently on the service side as well, when folks are trying to add equipment after the fact down the road. You know, michael say you know, let's check the rough photos and see if where the wires are at in that house, and it just makes it a thousand times easier and faster. You just come up with a solution.
Speaker 3:
Actually this sort of back tracks back to again where people you know it being a rough phase lots of times our stuff, which we have meticulously wired and put in boxes and everything gets buried and it wasn't meant to be buried. If I put a box in the wall for an outlet, the drywallers just cover it and don't cut it out, so it's buried in the wall. It wasn't meant to be buried. So we can now look at that photo and go, ok, I 100 percent wired it there. You know it should have been cut out, it wasn't. So that way it's also a chain of events situation where you can say, hey, we wired it there, it should have been cut out. They didn't cut it out. So that way you can say who needs to pay for that extra labor to fix that?
Speaker 1:
Right, so I think we should go ahead and wrap up for the day. Thank you, guys, for joining me and helping our listeners learn a little bit more about the pre-wiring phase of our projects.
Speaker 2:
Thank you very much, andrew. Thank you, thank you, andrew.
Speaker 1:
If you'd like more information, feel free to reach out and we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Join us next time as we delve into more fascinating topics, into the world of technology.