There’s a window during construction — after framing, before drywall — where running a cable costs almost nothing. Once that window closes, the same cable costs twenty times as much and involves someone cutting into your new walls.
Most people don’t know the window exists until it’s shut. If you’re building in Orange County, or mid-remodel with walls open, this is the checklist.
Start with the honest truth about builder packages
Your builder’s low-voltage package is priced to be competitive on a spec sheet, not to make your house work. Typically that’s a few coax drops, a couple of Cat5e runs, and a structured panel in a closet. It satisfies the line item. It is not a designed system.
That’s not a knock on builders — it isn’t their trade. But it does mean the package is a floor, not a plan.
The checklist
Run more Cat6 than you think you need, and run it in pairs. Every TV location, every access point location, every camera position, every keypad. Two runs per location, not one — the second one costs a few dollars now and saves a wall opening later. Cable is the cheapest thing in the entire project.
Home-run everything to one location. A single central point — a closet, a garage wall, a utility room — where every cable terminates. Distributed panels scattered around the house look tidy at rough-in and become a maintenance problem forever after.
Give the rack real space, power, and ventilation. This is the most common mistake we find. A rack needs depth (24 inches minimum), a dedicated circuit, and a way to get heat out. A closet with no airflow will cook equipment and shorten its life measurably. Plan for the rack like you’d plan for a water heater.
Put access point drops in the ceiling, not the wall. Ceiling-mounted access points cover far better than wall plates. Decide placement from a coverage survey, not from where it’s convenient to drill.
Wire for cameras even if you’re not installing them yet. PoE runs to eaves and soffits during construction cost very little. Retrofitting them into finished stucco is genuinely unpleasant work.
Decide lighting control before the electrician finishes. Centralized dimming needs the lighting circuits home-run to a panel, and that’s an electrician decision made at rough-in. If you might ever want centralized control, this is the moment — retrofit wireless dimmers work well, but the panel-based system is better and this is the only affordable time to get it.
Pull speaker wire to the ceilings you might ever want audio in. In-ceiling speakers are the cleanest whole-home audio there is, and the wire is trivially cheap now. You do not have to buy the speakers.
Add conduit between the rack and the main TV wall. A single run of 1.5-inch flexible conduit is the best insurance in this entire list. Whatever cable standard replaces what we use today, you’ll be able to pull it without opening a wall.
Shade pockets and power at the windows. If motorized shades are even a possibility, framing the pocket and getting power to the head is a rough-in decision. Battery shades are a good retrofit answer, but hardwired is better and this is when it’s cheap.
Photograph every wall before drywall. Walk the house with your phone and photograph every open bay, wide enough to place it in the room. Two years from now when someone needs to find a stud bay or a cable path, those photos will be worth more than the drawings.
When to bring in your integrator
Earlier than most people do. Ideally during design, so the low-voltage schedule is coordinated with the electrical and the architect knows where the rack lives. At minimum, before rough-in.
A walkthrough at that stage takes an hour or two and routinely saves five figures against retrofitting the same capability later. Even if you’re only installing a fraction of the system now, the infrastructure decisions get made once.
If your walls are already closed
Not a disaster. Most of our work is retrofit, and there’s more that can be done cleanly than people expect — attics, crawlspaces, and closet stacks give real paths, and wireless lighting and RF shades cover much of the rest. But it’s more work, it costs more, and some options genuinely close off.
Which is the whole argument for doing it at rough-in.
Building or remodeling in Orange County? We coordinate low-voltage design directly with builders, architects, and designers so the infrastructure is right the first time. See smart home automation and structured networking, or request a free consultation — if your walls are open, sooner is genuinely better.