Low voltage wiring charges?

Curious because I have no way to guage monies for labor for the following relating to wiring up an office for sound and wondering if anyone can make suggestions?

1 - meeting with contractor to go over office design
2 - drawing up specifications and parts list for office
3 - installation of 10 (5 pairs) of in ceiling speakers (9 foot ceilings) (plenum 16/4 and 16/2)
4 - putting wall plates in every room
5 - wiring up 4 controllers to zone amplifier (plenum Cat6)
6 - adding one remote audio input wall plate about 75-100 feet from zone amplifier (plenum Cat6 to baluns)
7 - connecting and testing zone amplifier for functions
8 - it was about 4 visits to the office scheduling around the contractor/builder's work (bare bones office, no wall up initially to final build out).

At this time I have done the above as a favor for a friend and did not request any monies.

Supply costs + labor (hourly rate)

Sometimes it takes me 5 times longer to do something compared with other people. Do I put a lot of effort and care into the final outcome? You bet. Does it justify a 5x greater expense? No way.

There is a huge gray area, open to subjectivity. If you need to charge for labor, charge what you think would be good. Everyone can usually agree on what is fair.

Is that the dentist? Maybe you can swing some free/cheap dental care. That can be incredibly expensive. Trading services might be a great way to get paid.

It is the dentist. She's only up to 50 patients so far and has her mother running the ofice.

I was thinking of the bartering and currently have "credit" now with her old dental partner. I use the dental insurance still but keep the credit on her books for dental work in case I need it. With the old dentist we kind of did a cash value credit (cleaning, fillings or root canal type credit).

I did take my time double checking connections, sound and functions.

Also greatly affected by market. (economy...) I worked for one company that charged $125 US per hour and just the next town over charged $80 US per hour for the same work. Both places have same gas rates, utilities, etc... The only difference I could see was maybe tax rate different in both towns. (And the higher one had 10 - 11K customer base so their RMR (recurring monthly revenue) was much higher... While the Lower one only had just over 900 - 1K customer base so his RMR was fairly meager... Go figure... )

my 2 pence :blush:

Here the rates are all over the place; almost non dependant on business but rather on lack of business lately. My brother in law is still working on getting quotes for his very difficult to place surround sound system and his quotes are more related to the total work being accomplished rather than an hourly rate for said installation. So I am guessing the quotes take into account a set guesstimate of time frame.

As it was a favor to her (friend-Dentist) I did not charge her an hourly rate nor any sort of mark up on the equipment. I did subcontract a cable installer who (didn't feel like climbing ladders) ran all of the cables to the communications closets (speakers and cat5e).

I may be a little late if this is already installed but in an office environment like this, check out some 72v gear. It is mono typically but most of the time people are under one speaker anyway. You can run long distances with smaller gauge wire (18 awg) and tap the crap out of it. This is what you see in most restaurants and such. The amps are much less too and there is a paging input. Just a thought.

Barter is a good thing!

Yes in the 80's/90's used the 72V amps and acoustic tile speakers (24"x24"). These worked with Musak large tape (8 track like). I recall having a monthly fee for the tapes, 5-8 hour tape music mixes. These worked fine for 10-20 years or so.

The Dental office with the Russound setup is relatively simple with 4 zones / 8 speakers and multiple sound sources and keypads here and there. Some of the rooms are acoustically isolated so you can basically run one zone in the front seating area and receptionist area, lunch room, private offices and dental work rooms. Not a huge office though. I did utilize cat5e to RCA line audio runs that were 75-125 feet and they did do good.

Helped another dentist a few months back as she was remodeling her office; made the sound update easy. Here we utilized a Chumby for one of her sound sources; her staff is facinated with the touch screen and its many features. Added outdoor speakers here as there is a nice peaceful small seating and garden environment behind the main office. Geez; age thing; I've known this dentist since the 70's.