sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Security, Alarms and Paging Alarm installation : Cat5e vs JKT

Hi there everyone

I am in the process of buying a DSC alarm system.. probably a Power series 832 or 864.. anyway

I'm building a house and I want to wire everything

normaly everyone use JKT witch is guage 20 or 18 but I want to know if I can use cat5e witch is 24AWG

any advice ?
thanks

I would recommend you shy away from using Cat5. The 24awg would probably work but If it were my home, I would prefer the 22awg quad wire being used for powered devices like the motion detectors, keypads and glass breaks. You also may run into some trouble with the physical size of the Cat 5 itself. If you prewire the home to use the 3/8 press to fit switches, you will have a hard time getting the Cat 5, and the switch back into the 3/8 hole you have drilled in the window sill after you make your connections. It's quite often a challenge with the Quad 22awg cable, I would hate to try and feed a cat 5 back down through the hole. If you do manage to get it all crammed in there, when you have to replace that switch, more than likely when you go to pull it out, the wire will break leaving you with option of forgetting that window or tearing up the drywall to get it back out. Just my .02.

And to add to that....the knock-out holes in most devices (PIR's, glassbreaks, etc.) are designed to accept the diameter of quad.

Cat5 would just be a PITA to work with. As Johnyreb mentioned, it tends to break too easy, doesn't take the kinking we tend to need in installations.