Most AV companies will not put a number on a page. These are real ranges from projects we have completed across Maryland, DC and Northern Virginia. Your house is not a catalog item, so every project still gets a free in-home consultation and an itemized proposal with every part and every labor line spelled out. But you deserve to know roughly where you stand before you pick up the phone.
One hour minimum, then straight time at the hourly rate, plus whatever material it takes to fix the problem. That is the whole bill. We service existing systems no matter who installed them. While we are there we will tell you what we would do differently, and if that turns into real work you get a full itemized proposal for it, with no obligation. Our own clients also get free 24/7 remote support through OVRC, which fixes a fair number of problems before a truck ever rolls.
A porch or patio system on its own runs about $2,700.
A Wi-Fi 7 mesh paired with a coax cleanup lands around $5,200.
UniFi programming bills at $225 an hour. It is specialist work and we do not pretend otherwise.
A 5.1 system built into an existing room starts around $9,500. A dedicated Dolby Atmos theater in a typical DMV basement or attic runs $12,000 to $25,000, depending on seating, screen size and how much construction the room needs.
A simulator room is measured, not guessed. The $500 covers the site measurements, the ceiling height and throw calculations, the screen, hitting area and launch monitor layout, and a system design that is yours to keep. It is credited in full against your installation.
Completed builds run $25,000 to $57,000 depending on the launch monitor and whether the room needs structural work. If that is not the neighborhood you had in mind, tell us now and we will save you the deposit and ourselves the drive.
This is the request we get most often and the one people underestimate most. Running Cat6 or Cat6a through a house that is already finished is not a wiring job, it is construction. Every drop has to be fished through closed walls, insulation, fire blocking and finished ceilings. That is one to four hours a run at $195 an hour, and then drywall patching and painting at $85 an hour behind it. Home-running twenty drops in a finished house lands between $8,000 and $12,000 in labor alone, before a single switch or access point.
We do this work, and we do it properly, including the patch and paint so your walls look like we were never there. For a gut renovation or an addition with open framing it is absolutely the right call, and it is far cheaper while the walls are open. For a finished, lived-in house, it is usually cost prohibitive, and we will tell you that before you spend the money.
The better answer is almost always a hybrid. Be flexible on brands and approach and we can reuse the coax and Cat5e already in your walls, add a small number of strategic new runs where they actually matter, and cover the rest with an eero mesh or hardwired access points. That path typically runs $2,800 to $9,600 and gets you most of the performance of a full rewire for a fraction of the disruption. We check what is already in your walls first, on every single job.
Verizon now sells 300 Meg, 500 Meg, 1 Gig, 2 Gig and 5 Gig across most of the DMV. Verizon rates 1 Gig at up to 940 Mbps wired, 2 Gig at up to 2.3 Gbps, and 5 Gig at up to 5 Gbps. Paying for the top tier does nothing if the wire in your wall cannot carry it, and this is where most people waste money.
Two more things nobody tells you. First, the switch and the network card at each end have to support the speed too. A 5 Gig plan through a 1 Gig switch is a 1 Gig network, which is why we are moving clients to 2.5 Gig switches as the faster Fios tiers roll out. Second, most laptops, TVs and streaming boxes still have 1 Gig ports or connect over Wi-Fi, so the honest gain from a 2 Gig or 5 Gig plan usually shows up on one or two machines and on how many devices can pull hard at once, not on a speed test from the couch.
Our advice is boring and it saves people money: match the plan to the wire and the gear you actually have, put Cat6 where it earns its keep, and spend the difference on coverage instead of a number on a bill.
Two very different philosophies, and the choice drives the price more than any other decision you will make.
People hear that list and assume the rack, the UPS and the managed power are upsells. They are the opposite. They are what makes a UniFi system serviceable. Our managed power unit pings the internet every fifteen seconds, and when the connection drops it reboots the ONT, then the gateway, then the switch and access points in the right order with the right delays between them. Pull the plugs yourself and the access points come back holding an old address while the gateway pulled a new one, which is why an hour of unplugging things never fixes it. That one device clears roughly 95 percent of service calls on its own, usually overnight, and it is registered to our account so we can tell whether a fault is your provider or your house without driving out.
Skip those pieces and you have not saved money, you have bought a system nobody can support remotely, which means every problem becomes a billable truck roll at $195 an hour.
So the honest recommendation: if you have a large or complex property, a lot of cameras, or you want one app running network, cameras and door locks, UniFi is worth the full build. For most homes in Bethesda, Potomac and McLean, eero gets you the same everyday experience for a fraction of the money and none of the closet construction. We install both, we are not paid to steer you, and we will tell you which one your house actually needs.
Finished walls versus open framing. How far a wire has to travel and what it has to travel through. TV size, since anything 55 inches and up gets a dual-arm mount into two studs. How many zones, how many cameras, how many rooms. Whether we can reuse the cable already in your walls, which we always check first. Ceiling height and access.
What does not move it: we are a design-and-install company, not a per-TV mounting service. We do not do the $99 hang, and we do not bid against companies that do. What you get instead is one crew that starts and finishes the job, a written proposal with every part listed, Maryland low-voltage licensing plus DC and Virginia, $2 million in general liability with workers compensation, and 78 years of combined experience between Rick and Bear on your job site.