Saturday, January 7, 2012

GUARDIAN.......Angel??

Power outlets and electrical wiring...a complete no-brainer...but not while building a home...who knew deciding about them would be as traumatic as pulling out teeth!  We went to meet rep from Guardian totally unprepared. By the time he was done with us, we were sucked into a whirlwind of information but still had no decisions made.

Contrary to what I believed, Guardian does more than just electrical wiring for cable, data and phone. Technology is so advanced, that now there are some really amazing things that can be done in a house which I especially hadn't known up until this meeting. I sat there watching my husband and the rep talk about things in a language which might as well have been in Greek...thankfully one of us understood it! :)))

We did our research on all that he showed us AFTER the meeting.  Some of the things which we had to chose from included:

1. Home security system. They provide security sensors for all the doors only and motion sensors for the room with one keypad. For added keypad or security sensors for the windows there is an additional cost. They also offer security cameras but that does not have recording capabilities, so pretty much is like a monitoring system....but only if you are actually at home.

2. Lyriq: I thought this was pretty cool, unfortunately the price was not. Basically they install inbuilt speakers in rooms of your choice such that if you play music in one room, you can hear it in the other rooms.  We found wireless speakers at Best Buy which had the same capabilities but is not in-built and also way cheaper. 

3. Home Intercom System: This one is just a regular intercom system only you pay for every room you install it in.

4. Surround Sound System: They have 4 grade levels in this. The first 3 grades have Klipsch speakers. The 4th level is the Bose sound system. all the packages includes an LG DVD player, receiver, sub- woofer, amplifier and a universal remote.  They also have packages where they just pre-wire your home. However the DVD player, amplifier, woofer and remote are not included in this package.  

5. Central Vacuum: I hadn't heard of this one before this...its pretty fancy but at the end of the day a vacuum cleaner is just a vacuum cleaner.

After scouting around for all our options we decided to get only the security system with an additional keypad and the surround sound system with Guardian. Per the regulation of the home builders association, Ryan homes provides all their homes with a power outlet every 7 feet apart. That's a lot of outlets up until you actually start thinking about the furniture, TV and other electronic placements.  The power outlets can't be moved, for every additional outlet there is a an additional cost (as if the prices weren't adding up already).  

For now I think we are ok with all the wiring and outlet choices and placements...but heaven forbid I decide to rearrange the furniture...Oh well that's another topic all together.  





4 comments:

  1. I wanted the surround sound for my family room really bad, in the end my wife did'nt like the idea of paying for it for the life of the mortgage. Glad you have i, im jealous.

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  2. Our Garudian meeting is tonight and I'm dreading it. I have a feeling my husband is going to want everything and from what I've read on other blogs the price adds up really fast!

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    1. I hope your meeting went well. We were pretty overwhelmed during ours. You are right about the prices adding up quickly. We had to have another meeting with guardian before we decided on what we wanted and what we could actually afford!! :)) Good luck to you guys!!

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  3. Hello, I have browsed most of your posts. This post is probably where I got the most useful information for my research. Thanks for posting, maybe we can see more on this. Are you aware of any other websites on this subject. Office intercom upgrade

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