What's In A Network Design Survey (And Why It's Worth Paying For)

A homeowner in Olivenhain called us last spring after collecting three "free quotes" for a whole-home network. Two came back as text messages with a dollar figure. The third was a PDF with a logo on it, two bullet points, and a price. Nothing about where the access points would go. Nothing about what cable would be pulled or where. No equipment list beyond "UniFi gear." No coverage map. No wiring diagram.

He asked a reasonable question: "If I pay one of these guys, what do I actually own?" The answer, in all three cases, was nothing. You own a bill. You own whatever got installed. You do not own a design, because no design was ever written down.

That's why a real network design survey exists as a separate product — and why we charge for it.

What a quote-shopping visit actually is

Let's name the thing. When a low-voltage contractor comes out, walks your house for twenty minutes, nods a lot, and emails you a number later that week, that is not a site survey. That is a sales call.

The contractor is trying to win your business. The quicker he can produce a number that fits in your budget, the better his chance of closing. There is no incentive to document anything, because documentation takes hours and the only deliverable the customer sees is the price. If you don't hire him, the walk-through evaporates. If you do hire him, you still don't get the document — because it was never written.

This is the industry default. It's not malicious. It's just how most of the trade works, and it leaves homeowners with no leverage, no second-opinion material, and no record of what the network is supposed to do before the drywall gets opened up.

What a real network design survey includes

A paid survey is a deliverable. Several hours on-site, several more hours at a desk, and the output is a document you own. Here's what's in it.

1. Coverage map

A floor plan of your home — either from your existing plans, a Matterport scan, or a measured sketch — with signal coverage overlaid on it. This isn't a guess. We walk the property with a spectrum analyzer and a reference radio, read actual signal strength through actual walls, and map it. Stucco with chicken wire lath reads completely differently from drywall over wood framing, and a Rancho Santa Fe estate ranch reads differently from a Carlsbad two-story. The map shows exactly where coverage lands with the proposed access point layout, including the backyard, the pool deck, and the garage.

2. Equipment list

Line-item, by part number. Not "UniFi gear." The exact gateway, the exact PoE switch (with port count and wattage budget), each access point model, the mount hardware, the cable spec, the rack or wall-mount enclosure, the UPS. Quantities. SKUs. Street pricing noted separately from install labor, so you can see what you're paying for.

3. Cable scope

Where every drop goes and what gets pulled. A proper home network isn't wireless — it's a wired backbone with wireless radios at the end of it. The survey documents every Cat6 or Cat6A run: origin, destination, approximate footage, routing path (attic, crawl, wall chase, soffit), and any obstacles the installer will need to deal with. If a run has to cross a fire-blocked wall or a slab, the survey calls it out.

4. Architecture sketch

A logical diagram of the network itself. Where the ISP handoff lives. Where the gateway sits. Where the switch sits. How VLANs are segmented — the family network, the kids' network, the IoT network for your cameras and smart locks, the guest network. Which SSIDs broadcast on which radios, and which VLAN each one tags into. This is the piece that separates a network from a bag of boxes.

5. AP placement plan

Each access point marked on the floor plan with a mount type (ceiling, wall, in-wall), a mounting height, and a justification. "AP-4 — ceiling mount, hallway outside primary bedroom, 9'6" ceiling, chosen for coverage of primary suite and backyard patio while avoiding co-channel interference with AP-3 in the great room." This is the kind of thinking that most mesh installations skip entirely, which is why mesh installations fail in large homes.

6. Scope boundaries and assumptions

What's included, what's not, and what we're assuming. If the attic is accessible from a pull-down ladder, we assume we can get there. If there's asbestos insulation or no attic access at all, that's a different scope and we flag it. If the main electrical panel can accommodate a dedicated circuit for the network rack, we note it. If it can't, we note that too. This section protects both parties.

7. Phasing options

For larger properties, the survey often recommends a phased build — core infrastructure first, outbuildings or detached guest houses second, exterior AP coverage third. The document shows which pieces are prerequisites for which, so you can budget across quarters without painting yourself into a corner later.

Why it's worth paying for

A written specification changes the economics of the entire project in your favor.

You can shop the design. Hand the document to any competent low-voltage contractor in San Diego County and ask them to bid the build. You'll get apples-to-apples pricing on the same hardware, the same cable scope, the same AP count. Right now, most homeowners are comparing bids that have nothing in common — one contractor planned for four APs, another for six, and the pricing difference is meaningless because they're quoting different projects.

You own the design regardless of who builds it. If we survey your property and you decide to hire a friend-of-a-friend to pull the cable, that's fine. The document is yours. We'd rather you build a good network with someone else than a bad network with us.

You get a second opinion on the design, not just the price. A paid survey from a competent designer will sometimes tell you things that cost you less, not more. "You don't need an AP in that room — the one in the adjacent hallway covers it." "Skip the switch upgrade; your port count is fine." Free quotes never say that, because every free-quote visit is incentivized to upsell.

You have recourse during the build. When the installer wants to deviate — "we can't get a cable to that ceiling spot, let's put the AP on the wall instead" — you have a document to measure the change against. Deviations might be fine. They might not be. Without a spec, every change is invisible.

You get a record for the next homeowner, or the next remodel. Five years from now, when your contractor opens up a wall for a kitchen remodel, the as-built drawings tell him exactly where the Cat6 runs are. When you sell the house, the network documentation becomes part of the disclosure package — and buyers in this price range notice.

How the engagement works

Our site survey is a flat-fee product, scaled to the size of the property. For most homes in Carlsbad, Encinitas, and Del Mar it's a half-day on-site and a few days of design turnaround. For larger estates in Rancho Santa Fe or multi-structure properties in Fallbrook and Ramona, it's a full day on-site, sometimes two, and about a week of design work.

If you hire SentriCraft to build the network, the survey fee credits in full against the installation. So in practice, if we end up doing the whole job, the survey costs you nothing on top of the build. If you don't hire us, you still walk away with a complete, contractor-agnostic specification you can take to anyone.

This is deliberate. We'd rather be judged on the quality of the design than the aggressiveness of the sales pitch, and a paid survey filters for homeowners who want the same thing. The people who are shopping for the cheapest number don't call us, and that's fine. The people who want a network that's going to work in a 6,000-square-foot house for the next ten years do, and the document is the starting point for that conversation.

A build without a design is just an installation. A design before the build is infrastructure. Get the document right first and everything downstream — the pricing, the install, the long-term reliability — follows from it.