Guardian Selections (part 2)

Guardian... A Done Deal

That's right, we have FINALIZED our low-voltage wiring selections provided via Guardian.  This post is a direct follow-up from my previous post Guardian (part 1).

We met with Nate, our sales rep, again and it didn't take long at all because I knew exactly what we we're getting because we had plenty of time to review our selections from the first go-round with him.  So, with no further delay, here's a list of our final selections:

• A total of 7 CATV outlets (All 3 bedrooms, loft, family room, basement rec room, and basement unfinished media room).
• A total of 7 Data (Cat5e) outlets (Master bedroom, loft, family room, study, family entry for a project I'll be doing down the road, basement rec room, and basement unfinished media room).
• Flat-panel TV behind-the-wall cabling pre-wire (family room).  We'll have one plate above the fireplace for the TV and the other one will be on the same wall near the corner for our source equipment.  We elected the standard configuration for the wall plates (2 HDMI ports and 1 data (Cat5e) port).
• 2 Room Whole Audio System (includes 2 speakers and 1 wall-mounted volume control per room). We're doing the family room/kitchen area as one room since it's basically one big room, and the other room will be the basement rec room.  Note that we elected NOT to get the source receiver for this system, we will provide our own for much cheaper.  The system cables will terminate to a wall plate that will have a optical cable port in it for plug and play access (this will be in the basement - more on that below).

And a couple points of note....

• All of the CATV/Data cables will be ran to a "source" box that will be wall-mounted in the unfinished basement storage area.  That box will be connected to our non-wireless router, which will be connected to our cable modem.  A nice-and-neat configuration that will have all the major components wall-mounted in the same area to cut down on exposed wiring and overall clutter-ness.
• The whole-home audio system will terminate in the same area as the components mentioned above.
• We'll be running two servers side by side next to all of these components.  One is our main server, configured for DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, etc.  The other is our file server (or media server) which provides centralized file/media access and will be connected to our whole-home audio system AND our network, providing a source for our audio system AND any network-connected devices for streaming media.
• We did not opt for Guardian's security system.  Even though I like the hard-wired configuration, their equipment was just too dated for me.  Not to mention that I don't like long-term contracts for things I don't really "need" (they have a 36 mo. contract, but you do get the first 6 mos. free).

Pricing

• 6 wall outlets came included with our home (3 were included in our base configuration... adding study added 1, and adding the finished basement added 2), so had to add on a total of 8 outlets.  Guardian has a 6-pack of outlets for $495 and each individual outlet is $100.  So, our total price for outlets was $695 (not bad).
• Flat-panel TV behind-the-wall cabling pre-wire setup... $370 (which IMHO is pretty high, but with mounting our TV above the fireplace, we didn't want to mess with this after the house was built).
• 2 room whole-home audio system sans the source reciever... $1330.

That's it for now.  I like what we're getting even though I think some of the things are overpriced.  BUT.... still worth the price because of the a** pain to do some of things myself (which I am sure they are counting on and price aggressively because many people feel this way).

IN OTHER NEWS... we also had our flooring meeting with Rite Rug!  So expect a post with our flooring choices soon!!!!