I was digging through the control panel box of my original system and come to find out, they apparently ran all my sensors in a series where I only have 4 zones. I would have figured they’d have tied them in at the box, but it looks like they went window to window, etc. I’ll be running all new cable so I can zone everything appropriately. I’m hoping the cable isn’t stapled so I can just fish the new cable by taping it to the existing and pulling. I presume the cable I need to use would be what’s described as 22/4 wire? If I’m going to do it from scratch I want to do it right the first time. I’ll be going from 4 zones including the motion sensor to 14.
22 awg cable is what you would want, but pulling will be difficult likely. If you want to pull a new line for each sensor, you’ll want to find which is first in the circuit and start to pull a number of 22/4 cables equal to the number of sensors on that zone, but the window open close sensors would only need 2 conductors so you could use 22/2 for those (motions will need all four conductors, two for power.)
Once you pull to the first spot, the rest will be pulled along from sensor to sensor.
Depending on how they were run this may be extremely difficult if they are wired in series in the wall. You will likely know based on the first pull.
I’ll be heading into the attic this weekend to see if I can determine how they pulled the original lines. I’m hoping this install was after the new build. I don’t want to imagine the nightmare if they are wired in the wall. If they at least drilled the top plate for each sensor, I’ll be good. If not…
Unless you have significant experience running wires, this could end up being way more trouble than it’s worth. I usually advise installing wired sensors only for new builds or renovations when the walls aren’t up yet. Although, I guess if it doesn’t work out you can always punt and use a few wireless sensors if there are any you can’t reach.
I cabled my entire house with Ethernet when I moved in. Pulling cable isn’t something I look forward to, but with wireless sensors costing over $20 a pop with over 20 sensors to run… that’s quite an investment over a spool of cable and and some of my time. I’ll know how deep I’m going to be in it this weekend when I check the top plates. I can assure you I’ll be back to lament if it’s the worst case scenario. 