I am in the process of building a new home and have been a big fan of remote central. I often read the posts in the custom installers lounge and alot of you seem to be dealers as well as installers. So this question goes out to you.

We have a local dealer in our town that carries Crestron and other home automation products. My brother in-law is a Florida licsened LV installer. He has several distributors that he receives products from, but none of them carry Crestron products. I am trying to center the design of my system around the use of the Crestron STX-AV2PAK-C (AV2 control system & STX-1550C 2 way RF touchpanel). The local dealer will not sell or even give me a price on this product if I do not have him do the pre-wiring on my house. Of course, I am not willing to do this because of the brother in-law's business.

I have searched the internet and most Crestron dealers do not post prices for the products. I am looking to buy this product to interface with the other systems that are being supplied and installed by the brother in-law (Enerzone HVAC Statnet Control Panel, Russound PR4Z multi-room pre-amp, Caddx security system, Teledyne Laars/Jandy RS-8 swimming pool/spa controller, Lutron Radio RA lighting control). If the cost of the Crestron units are to high, I plan to pre-wire for them and purchase at a later date, but I would like to incorporate them from the start. (Will the price of the units put me into sticker shock?)

I know that part of the sales of the unit is derived on the time for programming the system, but between the brother in-law, myself, and Crestron's helpful web page, I am sure that we could figure it out (I'm not to bad with ASCII and Hex 232 codes).

I guess as a summary on this, I am looking for any input as to where I can get pricing on this and some other Crestron products. I was thinking of calling some of the custom installers in South Florida for pricing, but fear that I will potentially run into being forced with them doing the pre-wire and install as well. Anybody's input on this would be greatly appreciated.