The Prewire Checklist for a New Build in the East Valley

Every smart system in the house, cameras, audio, streaming, work from home, rides on the network, so it deserves to be planned first rather than as an afterthought once everything else is decided. Plan cat6 or cat6a runs to every TV location, office desk, planned access point position, and camera mount. A modern household easily runs 50 to 100 connected devices once phones, laptops, TVs, cameras, thermostats, and smart speakers are all counted, and a wired backbone is what keeps all of it fast and reliable through Arizona's block wall construction. See our networking page for how we design the network itself.

Speaker wire is inexpensive to run during framing and genuinely difficult to add later without opening a finished ceiling. Run wire to the rooms and outdoor zones you may ever want music in, even if you are not installing speakers on day one. It is far easier to leave a wire capped in the wall for a few years than to explain to a drywall crew why you need to cut into a finished ceiling. See our whole house audio page.

Walk the plans and mark every entry, corner, and driveway sight line you would want covered, then run wiring to those points during rough-in. Wired cameras are more reliable than wireless ones, and running the wire before drywall is a fraction of the cost of adding it later. Include the video doorbell and any gate or intercom locations in this same pass. See our security systems and surveillance page.

If motorized shades are even a maybe for any room, especially west-facing rooms that will get hit hardest by afternoon sun, get power or control wiring run to those window headers now. This is one of the cheapest decisions in the whole prewire and one of the most commonly regretted skips, because retrofitting shade wiring into a finished window treatment later is genuinely difficult. See our lighting control page.

Every wire in the house needs somewhere to land. Plan a proper low voltage panel or rack location, not a leftover corner of a closet, with power and ventilation considered from the start. In Arizona, a garage or an unconditioned closet can get hot enough in summer to shorten equipment life, so location matters more here than in a milder climate.

A handful of empty smurf tube runs to key walls, even ones you have no specific plan for yet, keep the house upgradeable for decades without opening drywall down the road. This is inexpensive during framing and effectively impossible to add later.

The wiring plan should exist before the frame goes up, not after. Getting your floor plan to us early means the prewire design is ready to go the moment framing and other trades rough-in wrap up, rather than causing a delay while a plan gets created under time pressure. We coordinate directly with your builder or GC on scheduling. See our structured wiring page for the full process, and our new construction page if you are a builder managing this across multiple lots.