★Service · Builder trade

Low-voltage contractor · new construction · Kansas City.

IntegrateIT is a low-voltage contractor for new construction, working for custom builders across Johnson County and Kansas City, Missouri, from Overland Park, Kansas: structured wiring, AV, alarm and the lighting feed as one trade, on one PO. New construction low-voltage is everything that goes in the walls of a Kansas City house that isn’t line-voltage power: Cat6A data, speaker wire, coax, fiber, conduit and back-boxes, alarm and camera rough-in, and the low-voltage control feed for lighting and shades. It lands in one narrow window — after framing inspection and after mechanical, electrical and plumbing rough-in, before insulation and drywall — and it is typically five to twelve days on site depending on the size of the house. Control4 Platinum Dealer with a Control4 Certified Showroom, Crestron Elite Partner, Lutron Certified Dealer. Call (913) 804-7575.

Below: where the trade lands in the build sequence, how we review a plan set, what physically goes in the walls, what Kansas City sites do to the rough-in, and the two ways builders buy this.

What’s different about how we run a low-voltage trade

• One trade, every system. Alarm, cameras, structured wiring, AV pre-wire, Cat6A, fiber and the Lutron feed, all under one trade contract. Most Kansas City builds split these across three or four vendors; we consolidate.
• The alarm stays in-house. We permit, install and certify the alarm ourselves. No second-vendor handoff to Vivint or Brinks, and no gap in the warranty where two trades meet.
• Universal pre-wire design. If the homeowner picks a different integrator at finish, the pre-wire still works: Cat6A, conduit, back-cans, a structured-wiring panel and room-by-room termination that any reputable AV shop can pick up.
• Insured the way builders require. General liability, auto, umbrella and Workers Comp, with the builder named as an additional insured on the project COI and the certificate in your office before the crew reaches the site.

Where low-voltage lands in the build sequence

The single most expensive mistake on a low-voltage rough-in is not a missed drop. It is a trade that mobilizes twice. We land once, in the window between MEP signoff and insulation, and everything before that window exists to make sure the window is real. Square footage puts a house in a scope tier; the drop count, the amount of lighting and audio scope riding in the wire, and the length of the runs are what decides the number.

The plan review and the framing walk are no-cost, and they are where the problems that show up at stage 7 get prevented. Stage 6 is the one that pays for itself the first time somebody needs to know what is behind a wall.

The plan review, step by step

This is the process, in the order we do it, on a drawing set a builder or architect sends us:

1. Read the room list before the square footage. Drop count comes from what happens in each room — televisions, desks, cameras, readers, access points, equipment locations — not from a per-square-foot rule. Two identical 7,000 square foot houses can land well apart on drop count.
2. Mark the reflected ceiling plan first. Access points, in-ceiling speakers and camera positions all live on the RCP, and all three fight with can lights, registers and structural beams. Settling those on paper is free; settling them on a ladder in front of the framer is not.
3. Overlay the room-by-room drop schedule and check it against the plan. Every location gets its pull written down, so the count that goes into the scope of work is defensible line by line rather than estimated. We use the same room-by-room drop schedule builders and homeowners can walk on their own.
4. Find the panel and the rack, and argue about them early. The structured-wiring panel wants to be central and reachable. The rack wants to be conditioned, quiet and not in the mechanical room. On a walkout lower level these are usually two different places, and the runs between them get planned now.
5. Identify every exterior and cross-building run. Cameras, exterior access points, gate and driveway hardware, pool house, detached garage, barn. These need conduit, they need it buried at depth, and they need to be trenched while there is still a trencher on site.
6. Flag the specialty rooms. Theater, media room, golf simulator bay, gym, wine room, panic room, elevator. Each carries pre-wire that has nothing in common with a bedroom, and each has a ceiling-height or clear-span requirement that has to reach the framer, not just the electrician.
7. Write the scope of work and price it fixed. The builder gets a document that lists what is pulled, where, and what is explicitly excluded — after a no-cost site walk, not from an email description.

What actually goes in the walls

Structured wiring is the general term; here is the specific list. This is a pre-wire, which means wire, pathway and terminations — not equipment. No televisions, no speakers, no cameras, no access points, no controllers, no programming. Those are trim-out and finish, quoted separately.

• Cat6A, not Cat6, for anything going into a wall. The pull labor is identical, the cable is the cheap part of the job, and the difference is headroom the house keeps long after the drywall closes. Two runs to every television location, one to each desk, camera, reader and ceiling access-point position, one to every permanent equipment location.
• Fiber for the backbone on anything large or multi-building. Copper has a hard distance limit — 100 meters, end to end — and a sprawling house or a run to a pool house can pass it. Fiber does not have that ceiling, and a second distribution point in an outbuilding beats one very long run.
• Conduit and sleeves wherever a future pull is plausible. HDMI to the theater and media-room projector positions, a spare to the rack, a spare to the attic, and sleeves at every floor penetration. Conduit is the only thing on this list that fixes a mistake you have not made yet.
• Speaker wire sized to the run, with back-cans placed at framing. In-ceiling and in-wall enclosures have to go in while the joist bay is open; retrofitting a back-can is a drywall job, not a speaker job.
• Alarm rough-in. Door and window contacts, motion positions, glass-break, keypad locations and siren. We permit, install and certify the alarm ourselves — no second-vendor handoff.
• The lighting and shade control feed. Lutron HomeWorks and Control4 both need low-voltage pathways that the electrician does not run. Shade pockets in particular are a framing decision with a low-voltage consequence, and they get decided at plan review or they get decided badly.
• Blocking, everywhere it matters. Displays, access points, cameras, speakers, wall keypads and mounted panels all need something solid behind the drywall. Blocking costs the framer minutes and costs everybody else days.

What Kansas City sites do to the rough-in

Poured concrete foundation walls are the norm on custom homes here, and they are the reason the lower level has to be decided at plan review rather than at rough-in. Nothing gets fished into a poured foundation wall afterward. If a television, keypad, camera or sconce is going on an exterior basement wall, either the framer builds a furred wall in front of it or that device does not happen — and that is a framing conversation, which means it is a stage-1 conversation.

Walkout lower levels are the norm on the Johnson County side, and they are functionally a separate building to a wireless radio: concrete on three sides, a glass wall on the fourth. That level gets its own ceiling access-point position regardless of what the square-footage arithmetic says, and it is usually where the theater, the bar and the golf bay end up, which means it also carries the densest pre-wire in the house.

Anything crossing to a detached structure — pool house, guest house, detached garage, barn — goes in conduit buried below frost depth, and it goes in while the excavator is still on the job. Coming back to trench a finished lawn is a different price and a worse outcome. On a compound, plan for a distribution point in each building rather than one heroic run from the main house.

Alarm permitting is municipal on both sides of the state line, and licensing and registration requirements differ by jurisdiction across the metro. We know the local process and handle the filings for the address as part of the install, rather than leaving the homeowner a form at closing.

One more Kansas City specific: golf simulator bays. If a bay is in the plan, it changes the framing — clear ceiling height, clear span, and a wall the screen can actually be tensioned against — and it changes the pre-wire, because the launch monitor, the projector and the ceiling or floor-mounted sensor each want a home run. IntegrateIT is authorized for both Foresight Sports and Trackman, which means the bay can be roughed in correctly before the homeowner has chosen between them, and the framing conversation happens once instead of twice.

Two ways builders buy this

The first is pre-wire only. We rough in the whole house, terminate at the panel, hand over the as-built and the labeled drawing set, and the homeowner brings their own integrator at finish. We design every pre-wire to be universal — Cat6A, conduit, back-cans, a structured-wiring panel, room-by-room termination — specifically so that this option stays open. A pre-wire built to lock a homeowner into one integrator is a pre-wire built badly.

The second is pre-wire through finish, where the same trade that pulled the wire also does the rack, the network, the lighting programming, the theater and the commissioning walkthrough. The labor rate is the same either way, and so is the five-year craftsmanship warranty on the work; equipment carries its manufacturer warranty. Builders who want the relationship terms — insurance limits, additional-insured language, change-order handling, schedule discipline — should start with the trade-partner packet. Builders who want a number should send the drawing set.

Common questions