Savant Pre-Wire for New Construction in Los Angeles

What changed on January 1, 2026

Two California code cycles took effect on the same day. The 2025 California Electrical Code (Title 24, Part 3) is the state’s adoption of the 2023 National Electrical Code with California amendments. The 2025 Energy Code (Title 24, Part 6) is the efficiency standard, and it applies by permit application date — a project whose application went in during 2025 is still on the old standards; a project applying now is not. Three of the Energy Code changes land squarely on a smart-home scope:

• § 150.0(k)1A — all luminaires and light sources must meet Reference Joint Appendix JA8. In practice that means LED throughout, with a short list of exceptions such as outdoor LEDs, decorative colored SSL and lighting integral to ceiling-fan kits.
• § 150.0(s) — battery energy storage system readiness is now mandatory for newly constructed single-family one- or two-dwelling-unit buildings with electrical service over 125 A. It is not required if a battery is actually installed.
• Heat pumps are prescriptively required for space and water heating, and the future heat-pump-water-heater conductor is specified as a minimum 30 A branch circuit (§ 150.0(n)1Ai).

Read together, those three describe the house Savant Power was designed for: all-LED, wired to accept a battery, and carrying more large 240 V loads than a gas house ever did. They also quietly close the shortcut most electricians still reach for on lighting.

A neutral in every switch box, and why the usual workaround is closed

NEC 404.2(C), carried into the California Electrical Code, requires the grounded (neutral) conductor to be installed at switch locations controlling lighting on a grounded general-purpose branch circuit, so that electronic switches have a line-to-neutral return in standby. The 2017 cycle changed the wording from “provided” to “installed” — it has to be physically in the box. There are exceptions, including a raceway sized to pull one later and a box that stays accessible, and builders lean on them.

Do not lean on them in a Savant house. Savant’s own quick reference guide for its wireless keypads and dimmers is explicit: in a no-neutral configuration only incandescent-type loads are supported, with a 25 W minimum load. Connect a non-incandescent load to a no-neutral device and, in Savant’s words, the LED array blinks rapidly and power is not applied to the keypad. Meanwhile § 150.0(k)1A now requires JA8 sources. The code that forces LED and the device that refuses LED without a neutral are describing the same house. Pull the neutral — to every box, including the ones nobody expects to automate, because the cheapest keypad to add in year three is the one whose wire is already there.

Two more device facts get decided at rough-in and cannot be fixed at trim:

• Back box depth. Savant asks for a standard U.S. electrical back box at a recommended 3.5 in. (8.89 cm) deep, 2.25 in. (5.72 cm) minimum. The shallow nail-on boxes that come by the case are the reason a trim-out turns into a fight.
• Conductor size and travelers. Savant specifies #14 AWG or larger solid copper (80 °C) for the supply, neutral and ground connections, stripped to ⅝ in. Multi-location control uses a traveler to one or more auxiliary controls, so three-way and four-way positions need that conductor pulled like any other.

Ganging, and the derating table nobody reads until trim

When two or more of these devices share a box, the tabs come off and the load rating drops. Look at what happens to LED compared with incandescent on an adaptive dimmer:

LED is capped at 150 W per device regardless of gang count. In a great room with a long run of downlights, that cap — not the breaker — is what decides how many lighting circuits the design needs, and circuit count is a rough-in decision. Work it out with the lighting designer before the electrician prices the panel schedule, not after the fixtures are ordered.

Savant Power Modules take panel spaces. Count them before the panel is set.

The good news first: Savant’s Smart Panel approach does not need a proprietary load center. Power Modules “plug into all standard electrical panels the same way a circuit breaker does,” in QO, Eaton CH and 1-inch styles, in plug-on-neutral or pigtail versions. No rewiring, no expensive branded panel.

The consequence is arithmetic. The module sits in the panel in addition to the breaker it manages, and Savant’s own design instruction is to “validate number of spaces in load center based on breaker count + module space count = total number of spaces needed.”

Put numbers on it. Take a house with twenty-eight 120 V single-pole circuits, four 240 V 30 A circuits and two 240 V 60 A circuits for an EV charger and a condenser. The breakers alone occupy 28 + 8 + 4 = 40 spaces. Full-home control adds fourteen dual-relay modules (28 spaces), four 30 A modules (8) and two 60 A modules (8 on a QO or CH panel): 44 more spaces, 84 in total. A standard 200 A, 40-space load center holds under half of that.

Three honest ways out, all of them cheaper to choose before the panel is set: a much larger load center or a pair of them; a separate power-module panel fed from the main; or partial load control — modules only where they earn their place. Savant’s own guidance for partial control names the right candidates: large inductive loads that could overload an inverter or generator’s surge rating, large continuous loads that drain a battery quickly, and sub-panel feeds such as pool equipment or a casita. That last approach is usually the correct answer for a house that is not going off-grid.

Two footnotes worth knowing early. There is no hard ceiling on circuit size: loads above 60 A and 120/208 V three-phase are handled with a standard 120 V-coil contactor driven from a module channel, with current transformers for monitoring. And a Panel Bridge Controller is required when there are separate load centers, a Smart Host system, or more than 40 controlled circuits — each controller pairs up to 40 modules over Bluetooth Low Energy and wants an Ethernet drop, so put it on the cable schedule.

The keypads run on 2.4 GHz. Design the network for that.

Savant’s wireless configurable keypads and dimmers are 802.11 b/g/n, 2.4 GHz only. That is a sentence worth reading twice in a house whose network is being specified as a Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 mesh where the 2.4 GHz radio is an afterthought. Every keypad is a coverage requirement at the far end of a metal box, behind a faceplate, often in a hallway or a stair core the access-point plan skipped.

Three practical consequences. Put access points where the keypads are, not only where the people are. Run a Cat6A drop to every access-point location during rough-in so the APs are wired and powered over Ethernet instead of meshed — a mesh backhaul that dips is a light switch that hesitates. And keep a 2.4 GHz SSID that is not aggressively band-steered away. If the house is large or the walls are lath and plaster, price wired keypads and panelized lighting instead; they take the radio out of the question entirely. Our network and Wi-Fi page covers the radio design side.

What to run at rough-in

One more thing that is not a cable: pick the rack room before the framer does. It wants to be central, conditioned, reachable without walking through a bedroom, and big enough that a technician can stand in front of the rack with the door shut.

Who is legally allowed to do which half

Two contractor classifications meet in this scope, and the boundary is a number. California’s C-7 Low Voltage Systems classification covers communication and low-voltage systems “which are energy limited and do not exceed 91 volts” — telephone, sound, cable television, closed-circuit video, satellite, instrumentation and temperature controls, low-voltage landscape lighting. A C-10 Electrical contractor’s scope has no voltage ceiling and encompasses that low-voltage work as well.

Savant draws the same line in its own documentation: “A licensed electrician is required to install any Savant wireless lighting devices.” The same is true of Power Modules, which land inside an energized load center — Savant sells them through electrical distributors and describes the install as electrician-friendly, not integrator-friendly.

So a Savant new build has at least three roles on it: the electrician who owns everything at 120/240 V, the low-voltage contractor who owns data, audio, shades and control wiring, and — if there are cameras or an alarm — a BSIS-licensed Alarm Company Operator. Innov8av holds the C-10 (CSLB #1043428) and ACO 7755 and is an authorized Savant dealer, which is why one contract can cover all three instead of three trades pointing at each other when a keypad does not come up. If you are hiring separately, ask each bidder which of the three they hold, and check both licences on the CSLB and California DCA licence search yourself.

The schedule: four moments you cannot miss

LADBS is blunt about why timing decides this. Construction is divided into stages — excavation, foundation, framing, masonry, electrical, plumbing, roofing and the rest — and once each stage is completed, “the work will need to be inspected and approved before covering up the work.” Cable that is not in the wall before that inspection is not going in the wall.

1. Design, before the electrical plan is drawn. Keypad locations and button counts, switch-box schedule, the panel-space arithmetic above, rack room, access-point plan. Everything expensive is decided here and costs nothing to change.
2. Pre-rough walkthrough, before a single wire is pulled. Mark boxes on the studs with the electrician standing there. Disagreements at this stage are free.
3. Rough-in, before the inspection and before drywall. Everything on the run list goes in. Photograph every wall before it closes — those photos will be worth more than the as-built when somebody drives a screw through a run in year two.
4. Trim and commissioning, after paint. Devices in, engraving on, provisioning to the network, programming, scene design, and a walkthrough where the people who live there actually press the buttons.

What to budget

Innov8av’s published planning ranges for automation work are $5,000–$15,000+ for a single-zone or room-focused project, $15,000–$40,000+ for partial-home automation, and $40,000+ for whole-home or estate scale. Those are directional budgeting aids rather than quotes — the automation cost guide explains what moves them. Structured cabling on its own runs $3,000–$30,000+ depending on drop count and finish.

The useful thing to notice is the proportion. Wire, boxes, conduit and panel spaces are a small fraction of a Savant budget, and they are the only part that becomes dramatically more expensive after the walls close. Every assessment is free and on site, and every proposal is line-item with model numbers on it; we do not give flat prices sight unseen.

Four things to get in writing before you sign

1. Dealer of record. Savant systems are configured by an authorized dealer, and that dealer relationship is what lets anyone service the system afterwards. Ask, in writing, that dealer of record can be transferred at your request.
2. Credentials and documentation. Administrator credentials for the host, the network and every subsystem — handed to you, in writing, at completion. Not “we keep those.”
3. An as-built. Panel schedule with module assignments, cable schedule with drop labels, keypad button map and engraving list, rack elevation.
4. A named response window for service calls, and what one costs once the warranty ends.

This is not paranoia. The most common Savant call we take is from an owner whose original dealer has disappeared and who has none of those four — our system takeover page covers the recovery. The list above is how you avoid needing it.

Why Innov8av

California C-10 Electrical contractor, CSLB #1043428, and BSIS Alarm Company Operator ACO 7755 — the two licences this scope actually needs. Authorized Savant dealer. Operating since 2016, insured and bonded, bilingual English and Spanish, 5.0/5 across 22 verified Reviews.io reviews, BBB A+. Free on-site assessment, a written line-item proposal with model numbers, a 1-year parts-and-labor warranty on every install, and our own technicians rather than subcontractors. We work across Los Angeles County, Orange County and Ventura County. Call or text (805) 517-4668.