Why Retrofit?

Most of the things we install need wire, but some of our projects are in finished homes. There are wireless solutions for many products, but their limitations make them undesirable for certain applications.

For example, a wireless camera will either use a battery or has a small solar panel for charging it. Not stealthy. And not good in some locations because there is not enough sunlight on the solar panel, like under eaves. Or you can get out a ladder and replace batteries periodically. The Ring cameras only use cloud storage, but some clients want to store their camera footage on an NVR in the home. They are decent and offer good value, but they aren't the right solution for every application. 

Sonos wireless speakers are very popular. They sound good and you can carry them from room to room, or even outdoors. But they aren't truly wireless. They have a power cord that dangles down to the nearest power outlet, which dictates the location of the speaker, and they are an obtrusive box adding clutter to the space. Not a good look for a luxury home. Our typical implementation of Sonos is to use their amps to drive flush-mount speakers, providing discreet looks with the ease of use Sonos is known for. Sonos now has ultra high quality flush-mount speakers designed in collaboration with Sonance, a top manufacturer of flush-mount speakers. They require wire.

People often try to improve their WiFi coverage by adding extenders to their network. These extenders receive WiFi from the nearest access point or wireless router and then rebroadcast it to extend the reach of their wireless network. They work at half the bandwidth of the original WiFi signal, and they have other limitations that make them a compromised solution. A wired access point works at the full speed of the original access point, and in some cases can operate as part of a mesh network that provides seamless overlapping coverage throughout the home. 

Retrofitting wires in a luxury home is not for the faint of heart. There are custom finishes everywhere. Cutting holes and fishing wires must be followed by patching and painting. Or if cutting holes isn't an acceptable option then a very tedious and expensive process may be used to get wire to specific locations. Sometimes there is no way to do that. Then we must decide if a wireless option is a better choice.

So why retrofit? Because technology is an important part of our lives and too often a home isn't prewired for it during the initial build.