Sound Systems Conference Rooms LED Walls What It Costs Install Notes Free Site Visit

Power Is the Hidden Cost of Almost Every AV Install

On our own jobs the biggest single swing on an otherwise modest install has been electrical. It is also the item most often missing from a competing quote.

· Pro AV Service NYC

Curved ceiling feature and cove lighting being installed with crew on ladders
Ceiling work in progress. Everything that goes up there needs power and data brought to it, and that is scheduled before anything hangs.

Why AV keeps needing new circuits

Amplifier racks want their own circuits so that a kitchen compressor starting up does not land in the audio. LED walls and lighting rigs draw real current. Put a sound system, a video wall and a set of moving fixtures into the same older room and the question stops being which speakers and becomes whether the panel has capacity in the right place.

If it does, the electrical line on your quote is small. If it does not, somebody is running new wire, sometimes for 220 circuits, sometimes a long way through a finished room, and that is licensed work with its own schedule and its own inspection path.

The sequence that saves money

  1. Panel check on the first visit. Before any gear is specified, we look at what is there and where it is.
  2. Locate the racks early. Rack position decides cable runs and circuit runs together. Moving a rack on a drawing is free. Moving it after the conduit is in is not.
  3. Get the electrician in the same conversation. Anything that needs a filing goes through a licensed electrician. We coordinate with yours, or with your GC's, and we say plainly what is excluded from our scope rather than implying we cover it.
  4. Pull everything in one opening. If a wall or ceiling is going to be opened, pull the power, the audio, the data and a spare run at the same time. The second visit through the same wall is the expensive one.

How to read a quote for this

Look for the electrical line, or the sentence that explicitly excludes it. A quote that says nothing about power on a job that needs new circuits is not cheaper, it is incomplete, and the difference turns up as a change order after the room is already torn open.

We also price the opposite direction where it is real. Reusing cable that is in good condition, and keeping a rack where it is, are two of the few things that genuinely pull an install number down.

Related

Sound system installationCoverage, zoning, programming and what a commercial install includes.What it costsThe ten drivers that move an install number.All install notesEverything we have written down from the jobs.

Recognise your room in this?

We will walk it, measure it and send a design and an estimate. The visit and the design cost nothing.

Request a free site visit Or call or text (646) 280-9522. Ozzy answers his own phone.