Smart Home Electrical in Wesley Chapel, FL
Power for What a Builder's Package Leaves Open|Licensed & Insured, EC13011268
In at least one Wesley Chapel community, the smart home came with the house, written into the builder's feature sheet. That sheet describes the house on closing day. Moving a switch or doorbell, adding receptacles, or bringing household power to the spot where a prewire ends is electrician's work, and we take the package one item at a time.
List the package items you have and where a device still needs power.
Call (352) 251-2795, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., or send a request online. Calls after hours are returned the next business day.
At a glance
Some New Wesley Chapel Houses Arrive Half-Wired for Smart Devices
One builder has included a smart home automation package, nine items long, in the standard features of one collection of houses in a Wesley Chapel community. Several of those items are cable left in place for devices the owner adds later, and the list names no receptacle to go with any of them.
About a third of the homes here date from 2010 or later, by census estimates. Packages like this belong to that newer stock. A house from the 1990s usually has none of these prewires, and its smart devices start from the wall boxes and receptacles already in place.
Nearly nine in ten households in town have cable, fiber, or DSL broadband, also an estimate. For most homes, then, the network a smart device joins already exists, and the electrical side comes down to power and placement rather than the internet service.
The package's prewires are low-voltage cable, a kind of work Pasco County lists as needing no permit. The receptacle a smart device plugs into is line-voltage wiring, and adding one calls for a county permit.
How it runs
Tracing the Prewires Ahead of the Visit
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1
Pull out the feature sheet
The sales papers or the builder's listing name the package and its parts. Keep that list handy for the visit, so each line can be checked against what's actually on the walls and in the ceilings.
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2
Find both ends of each prewire
A prewire runs from a plate in a ceiling or wall to a gathering point, often a closet or the garage. Note both ends if you can find them, along with the room each plate sits in.
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3
Mark each spot that's missing a plug
Walk the rooms with the devices you plan to add and mark every spot with no receptacle in reach. A cord stretched across a doorway or run under a rug is a sign that a spot needs one.
What we cover
A Builder's Smart Home Package, Item by Item
Each item below but the last is a line from one builder's standard list. Some carry an electrical part, some carry none, and two belong to other trades entirely.
The smart home controller and the thermostat
The controller and the security panel share one line on the list, and the security side is a system we don't install, move, or service. The programmable thermostat runs the air conditioner and heat, so it sits with HVAC. Changes to either one go to the trade that owns it.
The video doorbell
A second doorbell at a side door, or the first one moved to a new spot, is power and cabling work, with new cable run to the spot the doorbell will hang.
The touchpad entry lock
Most residential keypad deadbolts run on batteries housed in the door itself. Where the package's lock is one of them, it has no wiring to extend, and nothing about it calls for an electrician.
The smart switch at the entry
The package covers one switch location, and matching it in the other rooms is ordinary switch work.
Access point prewires for the house and the lanai
Those two cables wait for wireless access points the owner picks. Finishing them, or extending the cabling to a room the builder skipped, is network work. The electrical part is a receptacle wherever the network gear settles, if none is in reach of its cord.
The camera prewire at the garage
For cameras, Kennedy Electric handles power and cabling only. More cable runs to new positions, or a receptacle for a recorder, fit that line, wherever the garage prewire stops short.
The Wi-Fi garage door opener
Leaving aside the thin low-voltage leads to its push button and the safety eyes, the receptacle above the opener is usually the only wiring it uses. Its connection to a phone runs over the home network, so a weak signal in the garage is a network matter, not an electrical one.
Missing from the list: a smart panel
No item in the package reports on power use. Reporting circuit by circuit takes work at the panel itself: smart breakers, where the panel on the wall is built to accept them, or a smart panel installed in its place. Pasco County wants an electrical permit for either one.
Pricing
Smart Device Power and the Estimate
The distance from the panel to each new receptacle, and whether panel work is part of the plan, changes the price.
Custom homes and large or multi-phase projects are estimated as soon as we can, or on the timeline your project sets.
Repair and troubleshooting visits are billed by the hour from arrival: $100 residential, $150 commercial, one-hour minimum, then half-hour increments, plus materials. No trip charge and no service fee. No hidden fees: the 3.5% surcharge on card and ACH payments is listed in our terms.
We don't do upfront pricing. No job has a standard price with us: each one is tailored to the property and the work you've asked for, and priced once we've seen it.
We offer free estimates on installs, upgrades, and replacements in our service area. Estimates aren't free when the job needs troubleshooting or testing to price, falls after hours or outside our service area, needs several meetings to gather information, or is new construction or a custom remodel with multi-party walk-throughs. For most jobs, estimates arrive by email by the end of the next business day, and quotes are good for 30 days.
Our warranty
05If something we installed fails because of our workmanship within 30 days of completion, we waive the hourly labor to put it right. Materials Kennedy Electric purchases for your job carry the manufacturer's one-year warranty. To replace defective materials we supplied, or materials damaged by storm, flood, fire, or other acts of God, we charge a reduced warranty labor rate of $50 an hour residential and $75 an hour commercial. The warranty does not cover materials not purchased by Kennedy Electric, work performed by the customer, or materials the customer purchased or damaged. Our warranty terms are printed on the estimate, the invoice, and the receipt, and the product boxes stay with you so you can register each product with its manufacturer.
We bought a resale house in Wesley Chapel that came with a builder's smart package. Is it ours now?
Our Wesley Chapel lanai lights run from a plain switch. Can a smart switch take its place?
Should the new receptacle in our Wesley Chapel network closet be wired with 12-gauge or 14-gauge cable?
A device from the builder's package went dark. Who do we call?
Can an in-wall smart outlet replace a receptacle at the kitchen counter?
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Share the Feature Sheet for Your Wesley Chapel House
Tell us which package items you have and which rooms still lack a receptacle. Our office will reach you during business hours.