Building a New Home? Talk to Us Before You Break Ground

Building a new home is one of the biggest investments you will ever make. You are making hundreds of decisions — floor plan, finishes, fixtures, appliances. Most of those decisions can be changed later, even if it costs money. One category of decisions is almost impossible to undo once the drywall goes up: your technology infrastructure.

We get calls every year from homeowners who just moved into a beautiful new build and are already frustrated. They want a home theater in the media room, but there is no wire run to the projector location. They want outdoor speakers on the back patio, but the only way to get wire out there now is a conduit strapped to the exterior wall. They want a clean TV wall in the living room, but the power outlet is in the wrong place and the cable has nowhere to hide.

Every one of those problems costs two to ten times more to fix after construction than it would have cost to prevent during framing. Some of them can never be fully fixed — you just live with the compromise.

That is why we ask one thing of anyone building a new home in the Abilene area: call us before the framing crew shows up.

What Happens During the Framing Window

When a home is being framed, the walls are open. Every stud bay, every ceiling cavity, every floor joist space is accessible. Running wire during this window is fast, clean, and cheap. A skilled technician can rough-in an entire home's AV and technology infrastructure in one or two days while the framers are still on site.

Once drywall goes up, that window closes. Getting wire from one room to another now means fishing through insulation, drilling through fire blocks, patching walls, and repainting. A job that would have taken two hours during framing can take two days after — and it still may not look as clean.

The framing window is the single most valuable opportunity in a new construction project. Most homeowners do not know to use it.

Pre-Wiring: What We Run and Why

Pre-wiring is the process of installing wire runs before the walls are closed. No devices, no terminations — just the wire, properly routed and labeled, waiting for the day you are ready to install equipment.

Here is what we typically pre-wire in a new home:

Home theater or media room. Speaker wire to every surround position — front left, center, front right, surround left, surround right, rear surround, and overhead Atmos channels if you want them. HDMI conduit from the equipment rack location to the display wall. Power in the right locations for the projector, screen, and rack.

Whole-home audio. Speaker wire to ceiling or wall speaker locations in every room you want music. A home run back to a central equipment location so you can add or change amplifiers without touching the walls again.

Television locations. Every wall where you might ever mount a TV gets a wire bundle: HDMI, power at the right height, and a low-voltage bracket that keeps everything behind the wall. No surface-mounted raceways, no visible cables.

Networking. Ethernet drops to every room — not just the office. Televisions, gaming consoles, security cameras, smart home controllers, and access points all perform better on a wired connection than on Wi-Fi. Running Cat6 during framing costs almost nothing compared to the performance and reliability you get for the life of the home.

Security and cameras. Wire runs to every exterior camera location, door and window sensor positions, and the panel location. Even if you are not installing cameras on day one, having the wire in place means you can add them later without drilling through finished exterior walls.

Smart home control. Keypad locations, motorized shade rough-in, lighting control wiring, and a central equipment closet or rack space sized for the system you want.

Conduit to the Outside: The Detail Most Builders Miss

This one deserves its own section because it is so commonly overlooked and so easy to solve during construction.

Outdoor AV — landscape lighting, patio speakers, outdoor televisions, security cameras — requires wire to get from inside the home to outside. After construction, the only way to add that wire is to drill through the exterior wall or foundation and run conduit on the outside surface. That conduit is visible. It is not the end of the world, but it is not what anyone wants on a new custom home.

During construction, we install sleeves — sections of PVC conduit — through the exterior walls and foundation before they are finished. These sleeves are hidden inside the wall cavity on the interior side and terminate flush or in a low-profile box on the exterior. They are invisible once the home is complete.

When you are ready to add outdoor speakers, landscape lighting wire, or camera runs, we pull the wire through the existing sleeve. No drilling through finished stucco or brick. No surface conduit. No patching. The wire appears exactly where it needs to be, and the exterior of your home looks exactly as it did the day it was finished.

We typically install sleeves to:

• The back patio or covered outdoor living area
• The garage exterior for cameras or gate control
• The front entry for doorbell, camera, and landscape lighting
• Any exterior wall where a TV or outdoor audio component might go
• The roofline for any future antenna or satellite consideration

Sleeves cost almost nothing during construction. They are a few dollars of PVC and an hour of labor. The alternative — drilling through finished masonry or stucco — costs hundreds of dollars per penetration and never looks quite right.

The Equipment Closet: Plan the Space Now

Every technology system needs a home. Routers, switches, amplifiers, smart home controllers, security panels, and AV equipment all need to live somewhere. In most homes, that somewhere is a closet — and most closets are not designed with technology in mind.

We work with builders and homeowners during the design phase to identify or create a dedicated equipment space. It does not need to be large — a well-organized rack in a 3-foot-deep closet can house an entire home's technology. But it needs to be in the right location, with the right power (dedicated circuits, not shared with appliances), the right ventilation (equipment generates heat), and wire runs that make sense for the floor plan.

Getting this right during design costs nothing. Retrofitting it after the fact — moving a closet, adding circuits, rerouting wire — is a significant construction project.

What This Conversation Looks Like

We are not asking you to commit to a full system before your home is built. We are asking for one conversation, ideally before the framing package is finalized.

In that conversation, we will walk through your floor plan with you and identify:

• Every location where you might ever want a television
• Every room where you might want music
• Outdoor spaces you want to use after dark or entertain in
• Where your equipment should live
• What conduit sleeves make sense for your exterior

We will give you a pre-wire scope and a price. You decide what to include. Even if you only do the basics — TV locations, a few audio runs, and exterior sleeves — you will be glad you did it.

The homeowners who call us after construction are not unhappy with their homes. They are unhappy that nobody told them to make this call six months earlier.

We Work With Your Builder

We have worked alongside builders across the Abilene area and are comfortable coordinating directly with your general contractor. We show up during the framing window, do our work cleanly, and get out of the way. We label everything so your electrician knows what is ours, and we provide documentation so you know what is in your walls when it is time to finish the system.

If your builder has not worked with an AV pre-wire contractor before, we are happy to make the introduction and explain the process. It is a straightforward coordination — we just need to be on the schedule before drywall.

Call Us Before the Walls Close

If you are in the planning or early construction phase of a new home in Abilene, Sweetwater, San Angelo, Merkel, or anywhere in the West Texas region, reach out now. The earlier we talk, the more options you have.

Call (920) 242-9495 or contact us through our website. We will review your plans, walk you through what makes sense for your home and your budget, and make sure you never have to look at conduit on the outside of your house.