Guardian home security/wiring meeting

This was the meeting I was looking forward to and hating at the same time. I knew it could get expensive.  The house we are renting doesn’t have hook ups in every room, so we run heavy on wireless and not all rooms have cable access in them. We met at the model home with the rep from guardian whose name was Ron.  He was nice and friendly.

Ron first pulled up the plans for our home and told us that with our home size we get 4 choices automatically. Now these could be either cable or data. He had us go through and put where we would want the 4 that come with the house. Ron asked us how many additional lines we think we would need installed. After discussing it we decided that 2 more additional direct internet lines would need to be added to the loft and the family room. This would prevent us from having to use wireless on the computer in the loft and downstairs on the game console.

Ron then went through and discussed with us that we could have lines going to each room or we could have a central hub downstairs where the wireless router could be placed and everything in the house would be hooked up here. The husband and I both thought this would be a great thing for us so we told him that is definitely what we wanted to do. This would make it easy for if in the future we decided we wanted to add anything to the house it could all be added through this central hub.

When he got to the part about the house vacuum he asked if we had any interest in one. After we told him no he just moved onto the next item. Ron asked us if we had any interest in a sound system and we told him no and without batting an eye he moved on as well. It was so nice with this meeting because he wasn’t trying to sell us anything we didn’t want. He took no as an answer and didn’t try to persuade us.

The last item we discussed was the security system. He asked what all we had heard about it. My wife being herself had already done some research on it so she was able to tell him what she heard was the standard price for install and the charge per month. He seemed a little surprised that she was pretty accurate on both prices and asked where she heard that from. So of course she had to give up her secret of the internet and fellow ryan home blogs.

Now neither of us has ever had a security system before so we obviously knew the basics of it but weren’t completely sold on if we wanted one. Both of us were right down the middle and could have gone either way. Ron discussed with us that if we got the system we could have a fire alarm hooked up to it as well as a carbon monoxide alarm. He let us know that if the system detects any type of smoke that would be from a fire they would send someone out. The same thing would occur if carbon monoxide was detected in the house. With having a son this started to become a no brainer.

Ron discussed with us that if we wanted we could get a motion detector in the home as well. Prior to bringing this up though he asked how much our dog will end up weighing when she is fully grown. Ron stated that they don’t really recommend it for people that have dogs that weigh over 80 pounds due to them being able to set them off. Our dog would not end up weighing 80 pounds but we still decided against it. Ron let us know that we could go with window sensors instead. This seemed perfect to the wife and I.

On top of the standard things already mentioned guardian has an app that you can install on your phone to use. This is a nice feature for if you are already in bed you can arm the system without having to get out of bed. Ron was even discussing that you can have your garage opener hooked up to your system so if you forget the garage door you can hit a button on the app to shut it.

After deciding that we did want the security system with the options we discussed Ron then pulled out his laptop to give us the price everything would be. Everything ended up coming to $1,075. Much better than what we both expected. The two extra data/cable hook ups were $100 each. So the remaining $875 was all for the security system. To us this was money well spent. Now we both feel our home, as well as our family, will be safer.

Now we wait to hear back about our loan.