I was asked to wire up a house for phone, data, cable, etc. I have done this before, but have never charged (for family only). Normally I wire starting from a central location out to each room, and sometimes twice in each room. I install a 4 or six port plate on the wall, depending. My question is, how much do I charge? Do most of you charge by the wall port, meaning 1 port which contains 2 rg6 and 2 cat 5, or do you charge by each run of wire? I'm trying to get an idea what and how to charge this person. I will also make all final connections to 110 block, 66 block, catv, etc. Thanks for your help.

charge as much as you can get.....

make sure you use a structured wiring panel of some sort....onq, leviton, etc...... keep it simple

we charge cable by the foot, labor time and jack plate......

ed

ceied or anyone,

For example, let's say an average run is 100', and it takes 1 hour to run and connect to plate. How much would you charge ballpark? Do you charge for each cable, or one price for all since you are pulling them all at once? Thanks.

I know some contractors charge $150 for a simple cable line and the same for a phone line.

i charge 150 per hour 5.75 per jack 4.10 per plate and 1.50 trim plate plus head end stuff 2 wires to same location extra hour....by time you terminate bothends and check plus run time

Thanks. What do you mean by 2 wires to same location? In my case I will be running 4 wires to each location. Does that mean you would charge 4 hours, or still $150 per hour no matter how many wires? How do you charge by the foot? Is that included in the $150 per hour?

wire by the foot, 1 hour per run plus alittle extra per wire....so yeah i'm expensive but my time is valuable....

i charge roughly 1 hour per run

When you say 1 hour per run... 1 hour for all four cables to the wallport, or 1 hour for EACH cable in the wallport?

hire a pro

Thanks for your help ceied.

If anyone else could help me answer me question, I would appreciate it.

I charge by the run. Phone, TV, & Data are all the same price. I don't care how many go into a box, it takes the same amount of time. We charge extra for the enclosure and any module that we use.

I'm not being funny here, but why not add up the COST of your materials, and charge the customer for your time for doing it.
As you are learning off of this customer, expect to be paid less.

Folks here try to be helpful, but this is not CI school, where everything can be learned from scratch in a few posts.

May be you should consider working for a local CI firm to learn some tricks (and the trade) seeing as you are taking on more jobs that ain't for family.

Experience counts here, and you'd get lots of it working for someone else day in, day out.

On new home construction we Charge:
Dual RG6 Coax and one CAT5 - $120 per run
RG6 Coax - $75 per run
CAT5 - $100 per run
Speakers w/VC - $450 per room
Speakers w/Keypad - $700 per room
Plasma pre-wire (3 Con MiniRGB and one CAT5) - $500

These prices include wall boxes, wall plates, inserts, and fittings.

They DO NOT include the MRC, and AMP, Cable distribution amp, phone block, enclosure, network hub, stereo equipment, etc.

For Retrofit we charge Time and materials. Most companies in this area are chargin $100 per run, for wither CAT5, RG6, or Speaker wire.

Mike

I am reluctant to give pricing because I am not sure who everyone is. But I also w/ stereoguy823, this is not CIU. A simple question here or there is no big deal, but at this point I feel I am training a competitor.

If you cannot figure how much it is going to cost you to do the job, STOP RIGHT NOW! Put down the drill and back away. This is not rocket science, hell this is the easy part. Figure what everything is going to cost you, add on a fair markup, add a little for the opps factor, and there you go.

I will say this. Charge by the run. If you charge T&M, your customer is going to get hosed. This is going to take you a lot longer than you think, and more than what a professional, full-time installer would take. Not to brag, but any one of my guys can wire a 5K sq ft house with phone/TV/networking in a day. Now when I first started doing this, it took me 2 days to wire a 2K house. Mainly because I was so paranoid that I missed something, and I wanted everything to be perfect. Man, I still have dreams about that house.

Anyway, we are not trying to be negative (at least I'm not). It is just that we have spent years, and lots of money to get where we are at, and you want all of the knowledge in a few threads.

It boils down to your marginal cost to run an average run, what type of wire you use, what brand, etc. Our prices for pre-wire are on entry level wire. Also, we post this on our website, at our showroom, and with the builders, so it doesn't bother me having someone else see my prices.

figure out what your average run is, the connectors, the wall boxes, coverplates, inserts, staples, zipties, labor, etc. Add it all up and you have your marginal cost of running that wire. Basic businnes management. If you can't figure our your marginal cost on things, you better have a finance department, or accounting dept.

Mike

tschulte,

I started out doing everything for free. Now people outside my family are asking, and I am not going to do it for free. I am asking questions because I honestly don't know what to charge. I appreciate all the help everyone has given me. If anyone is offended by my questions, they don't have to answer. I am like you when you first started, so I hope you understand. I want everything to be perfect. I'm sorry if I have bothered you.