Home service
DIY assist setup
You already bought the equipment. In one visit we place it from a meter reading rather than from where there was a free outlet, configure all of it, get your smart home devices onto a network that suits them, and leave you a signal reading for every room. Four flat prices, set by how many access points and how many smart devices the job takes.
Packages and prices
What each one costs, and exactly where it stops.
$249
- Up to two mesh or access point units
- Up to ten smart home devices that have to be set up by hand
- Up to two and a half hours in the house
- One building. A detached garage or workshop is a different job
$399
- Up to four mesh or access point units
- Up to twenty smart home devices that have to be set up by hand
- Up to three and a half hours in the house
- One building. A detached garage or workshop is a different job
$549
- Up to six mesh or access point units
- Up to thirty smart home devices that have to be set up by hand
- Up to four and a half hours in the house
- One building. A detached garage or workshop is a different job
$749
- Up to ten mesh or access point units
- Up to fifty smart home devices that have to be set up by hand
- Up to six hours in the house
- Outbuildings included, since at this size there usually is one
Time past your package's limit is $125 an hour, agreed before we carry on rather than after. If it looks like more than that from the start, one of the other packages is the better fit and we will say so on the consult.
Which tier you are in is settled before we book, from three questions on the consult: how many access points you bought, roughly how many smart devices have to be set up by hand, and what the house is like. It does not change while we are there. If the job turns out bigger than we both thought, we stop at the hours in your tier, tell you what is left, and you decide: carrying on is $125 an hour and nobody is ever billed for time they did not agree to first. A survey beforehand is a separate thing at $75 rather than the usual $125. Its fee does not come off this price, because this is a flat price visit for equipment you already chose rather than a design. It is still worth having, because it tells you whether the equipment you bought can cover the house at all, before we spend an afternoon installing it.
What is included
- Placement of the units you bought, chosen from a meter reading rather than from convenience
- Full configuration, including network names, the guest network, and firmware updates
- Removal of the old equipment from the path, or a plan for keeping it where it belongs
- Your existing network name and password carried across wherever the new equipment allows it, so your thermostat, your television and your twenty other devices reconnect on their own instead of being set up again one at a time
- Your smart home devices joined to the network and put where they belong, so a cheap one cannot reach the computer with your tax returns
- A signal reading for every room, written on one page, which is yours to keep. A list of numbers, not the heat map the paid survey produces
- A walkthrough so you know how to add a device and change a password yourself
What moves the price
- Four flat prices with stated ceilings, set by how many access points and how many smart devices the job takes
- How far out you are, which we settle on the consult once we know the address
- A survey beforehand is separate and optional, and is $75 rather than the usual $125. Its fee comes off a designed installation, not off this
- A larger house, more units, more floors, or a lot more smart devices, all of which are priced before we book rather than at the door
- Mounting hardware, if anything has to go on a wall or a ceiling
Anything beyond the package you booked is quoted before it is done, never afterward.
Which of your things count
The limit above is about devices that have to be opened one at a time, not about everything you own. Most of a house reconnects by itself. Count the ones that have to be set up by hand, and if you are over, tell us on the phone and we book the larger visit instead.
Reconnects on its own
Does not count toward your limit, as long as we can keep your existing network name.
- Televisions and streaming boxes
- Laptops, tablets, and phones
- Game consoles
- A printer already working on your wifi
- Speakers and smart displays already set up
Has to be set up by hand
Each one is opened in its own app and rejoined. Ten are included at $249, twenty at $399, thirty at $549 and fifty at $749.
- Thermostats
- Smart plugs, switches, and dimmers
- Smart bulbs and the hub they talk to
- Robot vacuums
- Irrigation controllers
- Pool pumps and heaters with an app
- Garage door openers
- A printer being set up from scratch, or one that lost its settings
- Anything whose app password nobody remembers
- Anything at all, if you want a brand new network name instead of your old one
This is the smallest job we do and the easiest way to find out whether you want to work with us on anything larger.
It is also the only visit where you get a number for your own house without paying for an engineering deliverable. Most people have never seen one. They know the back bedroom is bad; they have never been told it reads 78 while the living room reads 45, or what either of those means.
- -30 to -50 You are standing next to it.
- -50 to -60 Everything works. This is what a good room reads.
- -60 to -67 Video calls still hold up.
- -67 to -75 Web and email fine. Calls start breaking up.
- below -75 It says connected and nothing loads.
Questions people actually ask
What do I actually have at the end of the visit?
Working equipment, and one piece of paper. The paper has a signal number for every room in your house, taken with a meter while we were standing in that room, and a plain sentence beside each one saying whether a video call will hold up in there. Nobody has handed you that before. It is yours to keep whether or not you ever call us again, and if you sell the house you can hand it to the next owner.
Why would I pay someone to set up equipment designed to be simple?
The setup app is simple. Placement is not. Most consumer mesh kits underperform because the satellite units end up wherever there was a free outlet, which is usually too far from the base or on the wrong side of a block wall. Moving two units ten feet is frequently the entire fix, and the only way to know which ten feet is to measure.
Will I have to set up all my devices again?
Usually not, and this is the part people dread most. Where the new equipment allows it we keep your existing network name and password, which means your thermostat, your printer, your television and everything else simply reconnect on their own without anybody opening an app. Some equipment will not let us do that, and when it will not we tell you before the visit so you know what the afternoon looks like.
Can you set up my smart home devices too?
The network side of them, yes, and that is where the trouble almost always is. Thermostats, plugs, switches, lighting, televisions and streaming boxes, robot vacuums, irrigation and pool equipment all get joined to the network and put on their own segment, so the cheap ones cannot reach your computers. Most smart home trouble has one cause: those devices need 2.4 GHz and a mesh kit keeps steering them onto 5 GHz, where they fall off and stay off.
Is the survey included in that price?
It is a separate visit and a separate price, currently $75 rather than the usual $125, and its fee does not come off this one. That credit applies to a designed installation, where we choose the equipment, rather than to a flat price visit for equipment you already bought. The survey is where somebody walks the whole house with a meter and works out what equipment it actually needs, before anything is ordered. This visit is where that equipment gets put in. Plenty of people skip the survey and book this straight off, which is a perfectly reasonable choice on a smaller house, and we will take a reading in each room while we are here either way.
Will you try to sell me something different once you are here?
If the equipment you bought can do the job, we set it up and leave. If it genuinely cannot cover your house, the reading on that piece of paper is what says so, and you can decide what to do next with no pressure from us.
Start with the free consult
Up to thirty minutes, by phone or video, and it costs nothing. We go through what equipment you have now, what the house is doing, and which of the services here actually fits. Often the answer is that you do not need me yet.