Guardian Home Technologies (Concord: sales, new construction, contractor)

[raybourne]

I would leave my vehicle on the driveway if I am home. No vehicles visible to me implies no-one home.

[seahawks80]

Guardian installed our alarm and structured wiring package in our new Ryan home. Yes, they were pricey, but not out of line with other builder-related wiring companies that I've dealt with in the past, so I didn't have any "sticker shock." They actually did excellent work, especially with the structured wiring. All of the wires were clearly marked/labeled in the wiring panel, which made it easy for me to hook up my computers, satellite receivers, etc. I was definitely impressed with their work. For the alarm, you can probably get by with a cheaper installation down the road if you're willing to go wireless. but for the structured wiring, I'd imagine that would be a huge cost/mess to do once the house is already drywalled.

[flyingscotsman]

$110 a window contact sounds rather hgigh we paid $35 a contact.

[evan1229]

Seahawks,did you get any window contacts with Guardian and how much of the whole house drops did you do? What did DirecTV/Dish do to get you up and running? One line to the tap and a splitter there?

FlyingScot, yes, I agree $110 a window is high. We'll be trying to negotiate that next month when we come down. We are still in the air over where to build, but are looking at three Ryan communities. They are all using Guardian.

[seahawks80]

We didn't get the window contacts. We used a combo of glassbreak and motion detectors. We're considering adding wireless window contacts, which we could do at any point since the alarm system is both wired/wireless capable. The alarm system was expensive as it was, so we wanted as much protection as we felt immediately comfortable with for the price

We had Guardian do 3 wired ethernet connections for us, a HD satellite prewire (which put 5 total coax runs outside the house... 4 for the HD satellite, and 1 for a regular cable feed), 7.1 speaker prewire in the family room, outdoor speaker prewire on the deck, and a bunch of cable/phone prewires for all of the locations that we'd potentially want to have a DirecTV receiver. We also had them upgrade the standard structured wiring cabinet to a larger sized cabinet with a hinged, lockable door as opposed to a screw-on door. That cabinet was one of the best decisions I made. I have my internet router in that cabinet, and if I ever need to power-cycle it, it's takes 10 seconds to unlock the door, swing it open, and pull/replug the power. In my old setup, it would take a few minuted to unscrew the door to get at the router and then hold the door back up with one hand while screwing it back into the wall with the other hand

As far as setting up DirecTV service, the installer had to install the dish, connect the 4 lines running from the HD dish to the 4 satellite lines Guardian had run to the outside, and then connect a multiswitch inside our structured wiring cabinet (4 inputs for the HD satellite, 8 outputs for the TV's, which I've since changed to a 16 output multiswitch). It was easy to find the correct wires in the structured wiring cabinet because Guardian clearly labeled all wires. They put a numbered sticker on each wire, and then inserted a piece of paper in a pocket on the structured wiring cabinet door which listed each numbered wire and it's purpose (satellite input, bedroom feed, etc).

[njguy23]

I had them come to the house and i was impressed with their package. When I saw a 5 year contract staring me in the face I thought twice. I rather stick to 3 at most.

[evan1229]

I think we might have Guardian do security prewire and use our current company.

[blunite2]

I Personally Would Not Buy Anything From Them, Nothing But A Headache, If It Were Not For Ryan Homes Coming To My Rescue And Making Guardian Correct Their Errors My Electronics Would Still Be Mess. Thank You Ryan Homes Corporate, They Stepped In When They Did Not Have To. Do Only The Minimal With Guardian. Your Safe With Phone Jacks But Forget Anything Fancy. It Will Only Give You A Headache

[sharisse]

They were awful. We used them for our Ryan house. THey are too expensive, they messed up our install. We should have gone with Home Specialties who did our last house.

[NCHOMEBOY]

Originally Posted by evan1229

Anybody ever dealt with them for new construction services? Prices seem awful high, but I'm sure you can negotiate. I was curious about the quality of the work and the quality of the equipment they use, specifically with security systems. $110 per window contact seems steep, but you need all of your bottom floor windows contacted I'd say b/c if you're home with alarm set to no motion so you can move around, someone could pry open the window and you wouldn't know.

Be careful about being "required" to use the builders vendor for all the hardware. You'll usually end up spending about 50% too much i.e., the builders cut. At the most, just have the builders vendor pre-wire your home for all your needs and wants, then compare other vendors that can provide the stuff that goes on the other end of the wire. Also, when pre-wiring, run as much wire as you can. It will only cost a few dollars to pull extra wire (CAT5, RG6, etc, etc) from the head end (main distribution point), and leave it in the attic or crawl space for future use.

Technology has made it easy to do a lot of this stuff yourself, especially if your home is wired. But think ahead.....run multiple wires for TV's, audio systems, remote computer monitors, video cameras, lighting controls, etc.