what liscensing do I need to do home theater, security camera, and network installs?
April 22, 2010 by
Filed under home theatre installation
I am in the State of Colorado. I have a business now that is growing more and more towards this low voltage electrical installations, (right now I offer it for RV’s and do all automotive electrical). Other places say the are “certified” but I have not been able to find out who they are certified by. Do they, or is there any licensing or permit requirements?
I did look on the Colorado state websites but was pretty unsuccessful finding information…
most communications wiring does not require you to be certified to perform the work… however, many businesses, or clients that you acquire may want to know that you are certified to work on certain equiptment… certification programs are either done by the manufacturers of the equiptment that you want to install, or by third parties…
search results for CCTV certification
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cctv+certification&fr=yfp-t-501-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
search results for home theater certification
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=home+theater+certification&fr=yfp-t-501-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
search results for cisco certification
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cisco+certification&fr=yfp-t-501-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
also, for some clients they may wish that the cabling installed is certified, this requires special testing equiptment that will be able to test the cabling installed and provide proof of if the installed cabling passed or failed certification… costs of these meters start around the cost of a used car….
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu602xKlJFiQABxhXNyoA?fr2=sg-gac&sado=1&p=cat%206%20certifiers&fr=yfp-t-501-s&pqstr=cat%206%20certi
Colorado has a Low Voltage Electrical Contractors license. This does not apply to vehicles such as RVs, but does pertain to all Satelite dish, most security camera and a few home theater installs that require work beyond just connecting the wiring supplied by the manufacturer. Anything that requires drilling and attachment to real property requires a contractors license. There is a simple test required to obtain the license that covers appropriate sections of the National Electrical Code (NEC).
In Colorado the professional licensing boards have been centralized in the “Division of Registrations”. Try this URL for more information-
http://dora.state.co.us/registrations
If you are doing low voltage wiring in buildings, in states that adopted the NEC they for the most part now have low voltage electrical licensing requirements that you will have to comply with (if you are going to stick to doing RV’s and Car’s you are fine) but in a building you will get into trouble eventually.