Why Your Dream Home Needs Low Voltage Planning: A Reality Check
This episode dives deep into the often-overlooked world of low voltage systems that form the invisible nervous system of modern homes. Bill Reid explores the comprehensive categories of low voltage work including telecommunications, audio/video systems, security, and home automation, explaining why these systems must be planned during the design phase rather than as an afterthought. He discusses the difference between low voltage consultants and contractors, shares real-world examples of costly delays, and provides actionable planning strategies including pre-wiring, equipment room design, and budget considerations.
[00:00:00 - 00:02:00] Introduction: The Low Voltage Reality Check Bill introduces the critical but often overlooked world of low voltage systems in home construction. He paints a vivid picture of the homeowner's nightmare: moving into a dream home only to discover missing cable outlets, no provisions for security cameras, wifi dead zones, and malfunctioning smart switches.
[00:02:00 - 00:14:00] What is Low Voltage? A Comprehensive Overview
• Telecommunications [00:04:00]: Phone lines, data cabling, CAT6 wiring, cable and satellite connections
• AV Systems [00:06:00]: Whole house audio, home theater setups, video distribution systems
• Security Systems [00:07:00]: Hardwired alarm systems, video surveillance cameras, POE (Power over Ethernet) systems, gate controls
• Home Automation [00:09:00]: Smart lighting controls, automated blinds and shades, HVAC integration, smart appliance connectivity, voice control systems
• Monitoring and Management [00:12:00]: Smart electrical panels, water consumption monitoring, solar panel systems, indoor air quality, irrigation controls
[00:14:00 - 00:16:00] Design Integration and Coordination Why low voltage planning affects structural design, electrical systems, and architectural details. The importance of concealed blind systems and proper coordination between trades.
[00:16:00 - 00:22:00] Low Voltage Professionals: Consultants vs. Contractors
• Low Voltage Consultants: Focus on design and planning, create specifications, provide objective product recommendations
• Low Voltage Contractors: Handle installation and equipment, may specialize in specific categories
• Design-Build Approach: When contractors handle both design and installation
• The Electrician Crossover: When electrical contractors also handle low voltage work
[00:22:00 - 00:27:00] The Timing Trap: Why "We'll Figure It Out Later" is Expensive Real-world example of a client who waited until after drywall to consider low voltage needs, resulting in 2-3x higher costs and compromised aesthetics.
[00:27:00 - 00:32:00] Planning Questions and Pre-Wiring Strategies Key questions for homeowners to consider, the value of dedicated equipment rooms, pre-wiring multiple locations, and future-proofing investments.
[00:32:00 - 00:37:00] Complexity, Budget Reality, and DIY Considerations Scaling approach from basic to comprehensive systems, budget ranges from hundreds to tens of thousands, DIY possibilities and limitations, and the importance of infrastructure over equipment.
[00:37:00 - 00:43:00] Action Steps and Conclusion Five-step process: assess interest level, educate yourself, integrate with design team, plan budget, and design equipment spaces.
Key Topics Covered:
• Low voltage system categories and applications • The difference between consultants and contractors • Why timing matters in low voltage planning • Pre-wiring strategies and future-proofing • Budget considerations and scaling approaches • Integration with overall home design • Action steps for homeowners
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
So picture this: you've just finished building your dream home. The paint is perfect. The kitchen is stunning. Everything looks exactly like those Pinterest boards you've been obsessing over for months. But then you try to connect your TV in the living room and realize there's no cable outlet. You want to add security cameras, but there's nowhere to run the wiring without tearing into those beautiful new walls. Your teenager is complaining about the wifi dead zones, and you can't figure out why your smart light switches keep going offline.
Welcome to the world of low voltage. This is the invisible nervous system of your home that nobody talks about until it's too late.
[:You didn't realize that you could integrate automatic blinds, for example, into the project, but you didn't realize that needed to be thought about ahead of time before the home is built, before the walls are closed in. So let's move into the first segment of this episode.
m back down in the Bay Area, [:So what is low voltage and how do you go about tackling it at the right time? Let's talk about what low voltage is. In the past we've talked about plumbing contractors, plumbing consultants, electrical contractors, electrical consultants, mechanical contractors, and their consultants during the design phase.
If you've been listening along, we are in this section of The Awakened Homeowner podcast called The World of Design. We're still talking about things that you have to work through before you even begin construction, and these are the people that are supposed to help you do it.
It's even a separate license [:I'm going to go down a list here, and I'll try to post this list in the show notes so that you can take a look at it.
Telecommunications: That has to do with your telephone wiring, your good old landline wiring. Now, as most of us know, landlines have been going by the wayside, but that type of cabling, whether it's a phone line and good old classic landline, or you're doing voice over internet, the cabling is essentially the same.
[:Data wiring can be used for phone lines, it can be used for voice over internet devices, it can be used for streaming video to your TV, it can be used for a lot of different things. Even though a lot [00:05:00] of people do depend on wifi throughout their home, in a new home, it's a good idea to run cabling - hardwired cabling - back to a central point location since all your walls are going to be open.
You'll find that if you work at home a lot, if you're like me, if you're online a lot doing video work, you're going to find that if you're plugged in directly to a network as opposed to depending on wifi in a lot of areas, it makes all the difference in the world.
So we have telephone lines, data networks, and we have cable and satellite connections. Good old cable TV and then satellite connections began with their own proprietary cabling, but now that's even going to data cabling. These are examples of what is called telecommunications cabling that should be done throughout the home prior to construction.
next category is audio video [:Security: Security is the next one we're going to talk about. Security can cover a lot of different things and this is the one that's often overlooked during the design process and even during the construction process where actual hardwired alarm systems can go in during construction before the walls are sealed up.
reless, and of course it's a [:Alarm systems is definitely the first one under security. The next one is video surveillance and cameras. Cameras, again, there are wifi systems - the one I'm thinking of right now is the Arlo system where you have to recharge the cameras periodically. I have some of those in one of my homes, and honestly it works pretty well. I don't have to charge it up that often, but the dependability is not there because it's depending on wifi [00:08:00] connection and the internet connection.
So you can install all different sorts of cameras. One term used is POE - Power over Ethernet. Ethernet is what I spoke about earlier, the CAT six ethernet wiring. You can run CAT six to all of your camera locations and you can use some of the wiring to power the actual camera so that you never have to recharge anything and it all goes back to a central hub.
One that a lot of people forget, especially if you're building a larger custom home with maybe a gate that's a quarter mile away down the driveway - gate systems can also be part of a low voltage contractor's scope of work. Again, pre-planning this, getting the wiring out there for reliability and security is something that you're going to want to think about.
[:Home Automation: Think about this under the smart house revolution. Smart lighting controls and switches - everywhere that you have switches, you can do some relatively simple process by installing wifi enabled switches that are controlled by your mobile phone, or you could get all the way into lighting control systems. One brand I can think of off the top of my head is Lutron, and there are other ones out there where you can get really complex and you can include your lighting control systems into the mood of the room that you walk into.
[:You can get into automated window blinds and shades. You can literally have - and I think Lutron has the same system where you can control all of your window shades and blinds. This all has to be wired before the home is insulated and drywalled. Again, that's why we're talking about it today - because this is part of the smart planning process.
d air conditioning systems - [:This is another one, a relatively new one, where you could on your way home, turn your oven on and heat your oven up or control any of your home appliances via your mobile phone on the wifi network. That doesn't necessarily need pre-wiring, I believe, but it's something to think about.
Voice control is really coming on, so that's your Alexa and your Google, and there are some other higher end systems out there. That can be integrated into a home automation system, so a specialist in that - if you declare that you want to be able to voice control, they'll consider that when they're designing the system.
ne that starts to get into a [:Smart electrical panels are able to be connected to your mobile phone and you can see where all the power is being consumed by identified circuits. Then you can turn things on and off so that you can manage your electrical power, and that also can apply to your water consumption. If you put water meters on your water supply system, you'll be able to understand how much is being consumed and where it's being consumed.
We're getting into a [:Other ones that I'm seeing used are indoor air quality monitoring and irrigation controls - managing all of your landscape irrigation throughout the home.
Here's the thing: the more boxes that you check on this list, the more you need a low voltage professional involved in your design. I'll bet you checked more boxes than you expected on this little list that I just threw at you.
[:It takes detailing, it takes the architect actually detailing out the ceiling construction method so that this can actually happen and your blinds can disappear. When you do this coordination effort early on, this really prevents potential conflicts and allows for optimal design and placement so that you're not making compromises with the big, huge blind stuck to the [00:15:00] wall when it didn't really need to be, and it didn't cost any more to actually conceal the blinds in the ceilings.
It's just one small example of proper coordination and design considerations. A lot of the things we're talking about today and in the past are not necessarily things that will cost you more. It's about thinking about what you need to do, what you need to know, and bringing it up and planning it. Maybe you'll invest a little bit of time in the planning, the architect's fees or whatever to put the blinds up in the ceiling, but these are not necessarily things that have to cost you more - it's just that you need to know what you need to know. I know I keep saying that, but this is a big part of what this podcast is about.
Segment Two: Low Voltage Professionals
[:Low Voltage Consultant: A low voltage consultant focuses purely on the design during the planning phase of the project, and they understand and help you - and while they help you understand what's even possible, because this is a big one where you don't necessarily know what the possibilities are. You may be able to articulate how you'd like to live in your home or the features that you might want, but there are things that you didn't even think of, and that's what a low voltage consultant is really good at.
They create specific plans [:This kind of empowers you to be able to get competitive bids on the process, to get apple to apple bids on the process, and removes a low voltage contractor that has their own way of [00:18:00] doing things or the products that they're most affiliated with and pushing specific products. A low voltage or home automation design expert has the knowledge of all of the products out there, or most of them, and then can tailor the ones or offer the ones that they feel best fits your needs.
ings you're going to want to [:More often than not, when it comes to low voltage work, the design-build approach is usually what you're seeing happening on custom home, single family residential custom home projects. What that means is it's usually the low voltage contractor that's helping you with the design and the placement and the products and the installation, which is totally opposite of what I just said earlier about having a separate design consultant and a separate contractor. This is not a bad way to go, so don't immediately rule it out. Depending on how much time you have and are willing to put into it to learn about some of the [00:20:00] products out there, this is not a bad way to go, and it might even be more cost effective depending on the low voltage contractor and what their capabilities are.
or we don't do that. That is [:Related to what I just said, here's where it gets interesting, and this comes straight from my book, The Awakened Homeowner. The low voltage trade is really close to the electrical trade, right? You're talking about high voltage and low voltage. Sometimes your electrician can also be your low voltage contractor, but - and this is a big but - be careful. There's a vast difference between somebody who can pull network wiring around your house and somebody who's deeply entrenched in the rapidly evolving world of home automation.
"Jack of all trades, master [:The Timing Trap
[:When? What does later mean? Does that mean after I move into my house or does that mean after the specific task at hand during the design process? Because anytime you hear the words "we'll figure it out later," you may not remember that you needed to [00:23:00] figure that out later. Sure enough, you're moved in and your internet's not working because there's no wiring in the walls.
That can be a really expensive phrase to use on a project. Let's just remember that low voltage and electrical systems are interconnected. They need to be thought about at the same time. Smart switches sometimes need specific wiring from the electrician, not the low voltage contractor, depending on the system that you go with. Home automation panels need to have dedicated electrical circuits. When you design a networked home with home automation and all of these other fun devices, they need a place to live and that has to be designed into the home.
a network room or a network [:As I mentioned earlier in this whole timing trap thing we're talking about, the automated blinds that retract in the ceilings - believe it or not, structural design implications can come into play when you are thinking about some of the cool features that you want in your home. In the past I've mentioned what's called a reflected ceiling plan, and that is literally like a plan of your ceiling and ceilings in your home and your architect will create that and you can be looking up at your ceiling and all of the things can be factored into this design so it's aesthetically pleasing.
You may have speakers [:You can get away with it without doing a reflected ceiling plan, but if you spend a little bit of time and ask your architect, "Can we go ahead and take a look at how all of this stuff is working together on the ceiling?" It is something they normally do, and if they don't do it or don't offer it, that's not necessarily the most professional architect that will help you. I call it the timing trap, but really it's something that needs to be thought out during the design phase.
t that could happen. I had a [:These are all the things that kept coming up. Guess what? It can be done, but it's going to cost the homeowner two or three times more to do it after drywall's in, because now we're cutting into drywall, we're making compromises, we have exposed wiring in some [00:27:00] locations. This is why I'm here to help you - to just let you know that you need to think about these things ahead of time, and now you know you need to think about these things ahead of time.
So why spend $9,000 to get the wiring in when it could have cost you $3,000? Thinking a little bit about it ahead of time didn't cost you anything. Maybe you had to throw together a low voltage electrical plan - that should have been done anyway. That's what we're talking about today - getting you positioned so that you can maximize your investment and meet your expectations.
Planning Questions and Considerations
[:• What's your actual interest level in smart home technology?
• Do you work from home and do you need robust networking throughout your home?
• Are you concerned about the speed of your internet at home? Being connected to wifi significantly degrades the speed of the device that you're on. If you're working with video, audio files, heavy CAD design files, you're working off the cloud a lot, you're going to want to think about that.
• Do I need robust networking, which means hardwired locations for maybe your big tasks? You're still going to have wifi throughout the home, hopefully, and that'll accomplish most of the needs, but you may want to plant yourself somewhere so you have the fastest connection possible.
• Are you planning an outdoor entertainment area that could affect low voltage design, audio, video?
your security comfort level? [:• Do you want to be able to control all of your lighting off your phone? Some people don't want that. That can get really confusing and fussy and sometimes it doesn't work if you've invested in a low end system. You're going to want to think about that.
I mentioned it a few minutes ago, but when you're starting to think about your key planning questions in your new home or your remodeled home even, be thinking about a dedicated room or space for your equipment, even if you're not even going to do it now. Think about a space that has dedicated electrical circuits run to it, ventilation, and then you can build upon it later.
pre-wiring. Let's say you're [:The network closet is a really valuable thing for you and it prevents equipment conflicts. It ensures optimal performance. It also allows your network, low voltage contractor - they're like kids in a candy store when they see that an architect has designed a low voltage closet or home automation room. They just love it. They feel like it's their own little room and make it as big as you can, within a reasonable closet size or a whole little room, like a little walk-in pantry somewhere that you can just have all of your lighting control and everything there, and they just love [00:31:00] it. That is really a smart thing to do.
Like I said, it kind of future-proofs your investment so that you can add to it later. Sometimes we'll even run conduits - so hard pipes in the walls to locations so that wires can be easily fished through the conduit. Here's an example: you're not sure if you want to do solar power on the roof. You've consulted with a solar contractor, they threw together a design for you, but you're not sure if you want to do it, but you can run all the conduits up into the roof system ready to go so that you have the cleanest installation.
g mess? If you can plan this [:Complexity and Budget Considerations
We're getting there. Let's talk about the complexity of this, because it does get a little complex for a homeowner who doesn't do this every day. I know that some of you are thinking right now this sounds incredibly complicated and expensive. You know what, it can be both, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming if you approach it systematically.
consider rough-in wiring for [:Budget Reality Check: Low voltage work can range from a few hundred dollars for basic network wiring to tens of thousands for comprehensive automation systems. The key is being honest about your actual needs versus your dreams. Don't get too crazy with this because you're going to get into a big heavy investment that you may not actually get a return on because you don't use it or you get frustrated with technology, which a lot of people do.
will restrict the data flow. [:One thing to keep in mind: technology changes fast and it's really changing fast now. The smart home system that's cutting edge today might be obsolete in five years. That's why focusing on good infrastructure - quality wiring, adequate space, proper power - is more important than the specific equipment brands. You're trying to future-proof your home behind the walls so that you have the cabling that you can always tap into later.
[:Working with Your Design Team
[:That's something that you may not hear your architect recommend unless you say so. Don't assume one contractor can do everything optimally that you want. That's another thing. Once you determine what features and functionality you want, without thinking about the actual technical solutions, but just think about: "Oh, I'd love to be able to walk into a home and hit a button and turn all the lights on a path to the kitchen automatically. Wouldn't that be cool? I want to be able to preheat my oven. I want to be able to do this and that." Think about your lifestyle. Think about how you're going to use your home.
y else's job. When you go to [:Action Steps Summary
That's where we're going with this, and I'm hoping I'm helping you with all this. Let's wrap this up. Let's talk about some action steps. It's kind of like a summary of what you should think about when you're in the design process.
Specifically for low voltage home automation, fire alarms, security, audio, video, network wiring, etc. What should you do right now?
Step 1: Assess your interest level. Go through the categories we discussed. Be honest about what you actually want versus what sounds cool. Consider your lifestyle and how technology fits in. Prioritize it. Am I a person that really wants to dive into that, or do I just want the basics?
: Education phase. Research [:Step 3: Design integration. Bring the low voltage professionals into your design team early. Don't wait until construction starts. If you get it before sheetrock, you're much better than after, but during the design phase, I highly recommend you bring somebody in to start working with you on all the things you want to do and ensure that there's good coordination with your architect and your electrical and your low voltage contractor. Once those people are brought into the team, and a lot of times architects will do that for you. You just say, "Hey, I want to talk about home automation, I want to talk about electrical. What do we do?" And the architect will usually say, "I've got specialists that [00:39:00] work with me on that and I can bring them into a meeting and we can have a meeting and specifically talk about that."
Step 4: Budget planning. Getting realistic estimates for the systems that you want is really good for your early budget planning. Low voltage home automation is one of those ones that really surprises people, especially if they haven't thought about it early enough. That's often the case. You remember I mentioned earlier, if you have a specific home automation, low voltage designer that doesn't necessarily do the work or can do both the design and the work, but provides you a set of drawings and specifications, you can get multiple estimates on the same project to help you with your early budgeting.
The low voltage is a separate dedicated category in construction estimating. As we get deeper into the awakened homeowner experience, we'll be showing you how the budget is broken down and there'll be one line item for low voltage.
[:Step 5: Plan your equipment rooms with extra space. Consider conduit systems for easy cable updates and invest in infrastructure that's hard to change later. Invest in it now.
Conclusion
[:But if you're one of the homeowner types that really wants to geek out and get into it, that could affect the cabling behind the walls. You're going to want to - there is a thing called CAT seven, believe it or not, which is even more robust than CAT six. But that's all going to be driven by the speed of the internet from your utility company to the house. You can get the data to travel around the house faster, but if the internet speed connection you have coming to the house is not any better than you're not really accomplishing anything.
It's okay to start simple and expand later if you plan for it. The bottom line is the low voltage might be the most overlooked aspect of home design, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming.
[:We went through architects and interior designers. Then we got into the doctors of our home - the structural engineering and the mechanical electrical plumbing design, MEP, if you remember. Now we're in low voltage, and these are all the people, all the stuff that goes behind your walls, holds your house up.
ble to pick that up and have [:As always, subscribe to the podcast channel. I did not get this one on YouTube this time, but I will do that next time. That way you didn't have to look at my face. Happy remodeling and building.
