Thermostat wire advice for future zone addition

Unknown

I would suggest pulling a 3 conductor wire instead of 2 conductor. This way, if anything should ever happen to one of the conductors, you always have a spare. Hope this helps.

Glenn Stanton

Burnham Hydronics

Vermonster

Walls open, pulling thermostat wire now for future zone

I'm a HO slowly making renovations to our newly purchased 1780 farmhouse. Currently completing renovations on bedrooms over an attached garage. Currently these are in the same (single) zone as the rest of the house. In the future I plan to replace the 20yo gas fired burnham boiler with a new condensing boiler and retrofit radiant heat in the 1st floor over the unconditioned crawl space to make the house more comfortable. At that time I would also like to (need to) have the contractor place these two bedrooms on their own zone.

All this is a long way of asking, is there a reason to pull anything other than 2-conductor thermostat wire for the addition of a future thermostat for this over garage bedroom zone? The walls are open and I'm pulling a bunch of other cable (electric, cat5e network, rg6 ) so I figured it would save future headaches to do this now. There is no chance that central AC will ever be added due to construction limitations.

Thanks for the advice

VT

heatboy

I never pull less............

than 18-4. With all of the new thermostats available 4 wire will cover most if not all of them. Some need 24 vac to power them seperately. Worst case, it gives you a couple of spares in case of an oops.

hb

BillW@honeywell

We recommend...

18/4 wire also. 18 gauge, 4 conductor. We also have a wireless thermostat, the T8665. It will work from any location, up to 200 feet from the receiver panel, which is mounted in the boiler room, and wired to your boiler. Available from any Honeywell distributor, or thru your heating/cooling contractor. There is no retail equivalent.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Wiring for the future...

I started wiring this way about 15 years ago when such was nearly unheard of residentially in my area. It has and IS serving VERY well.

Thermostats: 18-6 PLUS a 3-4 twisted pair "phone" wire. "Phone" wire run first to the boiler/furnace/AC location, THEN from there to the central "phone" area.

Phones/Cable: 3 twisted pair MINIMUM (4 pair is better) ALL individually "home run" to a central location. Good quality coax cable in EVERY phone location--with the intention of being used for both/either. Ideally all of the coax runs will be home-run also, but cost can be a factor with lots of it so I often loop the coax to ONE additional outlet in the SAME room. Some cable companies will sell you large boxes of good coax at a good price by the way.

Phone/cable outlets near every possible bed location in bedrooms, baths, halls, basement, etc., etc. I like to use covers that combine a SIX CONDUCTOR "phone" hookup and coax in the same unit. This is great for key phone systems as they generally only use four conductors and you can use the other two (you have to make a custom hookup wire) for "dumb" phones at any location hooked up "ahead" of the phone system. Also good for dial-up modems as many earlier (but perfectly serviceable) key phone systems either won't transmit such info or slow it considerably.

Earlier home renovation customers of mine (I don't do this anymore) have been utterly SHOCKED to find that their home is ready for most fancy new systems when such were either unavailable or extraordinarily expensive at the time the wiring was installed. (They didn't even call it Category-5 phone wire back then but later on identical wiring had a little "Cat5" sticker on the box.)

J. Newell

Would be interested in professional responses to the following thought: I would pull stranded rather than solid conductor where possible (won't work AFAIK for Cat 5 network wiring), since if a solid conductor breaks as a result of a pinch or flex, you will wind up with a flakey open that you'll never find...whereas stranded wire is extremely unlikely to fail in this manner. I am not an electrician and don't play one on TV...

Mike T., Swampeast MO

No crystal ball by the way

Just an uncle in telecommunications.

He kept insisting that commercial/residential distinctions would blur considerably; that "twisted pair" wiring with a couple of "extra" pairs would serve for decades to come; that many things currently in development or just coming on the market were geared to this type of wiring; that "traditional" distinctions of "what comes from where" would blur; and that there were some upcoming mega-battles in telecommunications.

Re: Fiber-optics in homes. When I last checked into this was told by numerous sources that while fiberoptics may SOME DAY become very common for residential hookup to some sort of "super-information source" that every attempt was being made to either cat-5 or decent coax WITHIN any reasonable residence. At that time (about five years ago) there were numerous fiber-optic systems for residences but all seemed proprietary with no real standard.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

I've been told that stranded wire has "problems" [inductance? e-m interference?] when used at extremely high frequencies over any appreciable distance. Remember the telephone wire from the 70s right before the "phone company" breakup? Big cables with 30 or so wires of baby-hair fine stranding. Not used any more.

When I wired my own house I made a custom cable (light gauge stranded wire) for an upcoming centralized "control system". That cable is for the "dumb" part of the system that operates simple (and ALWAYS available) encapsulated mechanical relays. Three loops of this cable with spliced branches feeding individual rooms. MAIN cables are installed in "self-healing" fashion, i.e. powered from BOTH ends. Even completely severing the cable will have no effect. Uncle in telecommunications who helped me make the splices the "phone company way" was quite impressed as phone companies try to install as many of these self-healing loops as possible. (I had no idea of the name [self-healing loop] at the time--it just seemed like a good idea

jim lockard

j.

Unless I am missing your point you are only running thermostat wire in a house. Most posts run a few spares and use 18 gauge or better wire and chose a route that protects the wire. I buy 2 types of T-stat wire 18/5 and 18/8 so you are going to find one or the other on my jobs. I recently ran some T-stat wire in an apartment house there because of the distance +/- 200 feet I ran 14/2 romex and junctioned 18 gauge wire at each end. I suppose you could run conduit and pull #16 stranded conductors but why? Best Wishes

Mike T., Swampeast MO

If you think that t-stat wiring suggestion excessive...

...think of what is already out there...

Call the weekend home to be warm for your arrival; call and get a report of "current conditions"...

Completely automated "trouble calls" from boilers as well as usage information for scheduling maintenance...

Thermostats that communicate MUCH more information that "I want heat or I want cool."

I could go on and on...

Wouldn't it be nice if wiring that is very likely suitable is ALREADY in place? VERY little in the way of cost and remember--those walls are generally only open and accessible every few generations.

Dale

No less than 18/6

And I would buy the sheilded version in case you get near an AC or high freq source. Who knows where things are going, every large office building I see puts in spare duct runs and all fill them in a few years and wish they had twice as many. If I ever build new I will have an accessible basement and at least 2 empty grey pvc tubes to blanked off plates in every room. Because of satilite technology at least 3 runs from the open attic to the basement, I hate wire flopping on outside walls. Some higher mounted plates are good to for future speaker or TV mounts, Think about how a flat screen would look with the connections behind it.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

I'd be highly surprised

if Honeywell wasn't already developing thermostats that transmit temperature vectors to a "new generation" of proportional appliances that do their best to match BTU output with BTU load.

This is the US where it's all about money and when you're talking heating that money is in hot air. It won't be boilers these new thermostats "talk" to! It might well even be for heating AND cooling.

If hydronic engineers continue to design their fathers' Oldsmobile while scorched air continues to refine their designs and reduce traditional objections, hydronic market share will continue to decline.

I REALLY hope that the lower-cost "American" modulating boilers prove their reasonably long and trouble-free service life expectations. They ARE the future--well at least until the fossil fuels run out...

jim_14

run as much

as you can afford. The more the better. The standard today is to run 2 cat 5 4 pair cables for voice and networking. Same with coax, run at least 2 rg6-quad sheild cables- I would run 3- for those dual reciever tivo boxes that allow you to record 2 shows at the same time.

And stay away from that stranded wire for voice/data as it does not meet FCC standards

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Yes, I ran off on a tangent.

jim_14

if you can afford to run fiber optics

then do it, it cant hurt, Verizon annouced recently they are going to bring fiber to the home..so it cant hurt to have a fiber optic backbone in place inside your house.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

I was in the Marines in D.C. when the new Executive Office building BEGAN construction in the early 1980s. I THINK it's done now but I'm not certain.

At the time I was there they talked about how utterly wonderful the data/information wiring was for ANYTHING coming up. Probably two decades later I recall reading in the local paper that the data/information wiring was an absolute mess and terribly "antiquated."

Joe_13

18/5

I just put in for a future zone addition. 2 for the zone. 2 for 24VAC, in case it's clock setback, no need for double AA bats. and one spare or earth ground.

Vermonster

Thanks all. Looks like we will run 18/5 just to be safe. Little $ difference with 18/4.
Already running to **each** bedroom:
20amp AC for outlets
Lighting on separate circuit (to avoid stumbling around in the dark if breaker trips)
2 cat5e
2 RG6 coax
1 22/4 station wire (for phone, was already in place)
empty 1" pvc conduit with string in place for future expansion (from basement, terminating in attic above)

Nope, no fiber right now.

Thanks again.

VT

Mark J Strawcutter

repeat performance

Verizon already claimed that once over 10 years ago when they convinced the PA legislature to give them billions in concessions in return. Still no fiber to the home.

And they're at it again. Looks like the legislature will pass yet another concession bill based on similar "promises"

"announcing" and "doing" are very different :-)

Mark

Tim Gardner

cat 6 not 5e for networking.

I don't know about the thermostats, but I would run cat 6 for networking, and that's only because I don't know enough about fiber to make the right choices yet. Cat 6 is economical if you shop around and is more fun to work with in my opinion.

Vermonster

Just couldn't justify the added cost for Cat6 for a residential network in a 1800sf home. Already had Cat5e left over from a previous job, so it was a no brainer. ENT in place in case we need future upgrade.

VT

jim_14

cat 5 and 6

are a pain to work with in my opinion..Besides most of the time its not installed properly

jim_14

that is true

they have made a lot of promises..that whole PA thing has been mis construed and blown out of proportion..they made promises but not fiber to the home..

But this time they have selected vendors for the equipment and from what Im hearing its a go

Mark J Strawcutter

cat 5/5e/6

I'd run cat5/5e/6 to the thermostat in addition to classic 18-n cable. Shouldn't be too long before thermostats have a built-in ethernet interface and run embedded Linux. I can't wait :-)

Use RG6 for video runs. Good dual-shield is under $100 for a 1,000 foot spool. I find quad-shield cumbersome to work with and don't see any signal improvement.

Terminate all cat/5e/6 runs with RJ45 8-conductor jacks (at both ends). Don't distinguish between "data" jacks and "voice" jacks. A jack is a jack is a jack. With a patch panel at the central location you have maximum flexability.

I prefer discrete components on a 4x4 sheet of 3/4 plywood at the central location instead of one of those ready-made structured wiring panels with proprietary components.

Mark

Mark J Strawcutter

FTTH

I may be mistaken about FTTH but they shure as heck didn't deliver what they promised - and pocketed major profits to boot.

Mark

jim_14

are you getting that information

from that new networks guy/website??

Tim Gardner

I bought 1000 ' for $75 on ebay. It doesn't take much rewiring to save that much. After stringing one line of cat 6 I decided I like it so much better I just threw away all my 5e and bought 2000' more. It really looks great to me. I think they will figure out how to get at least 100 times the bandwidth of 5e out of it before we have to go to fiber.

Mark J Strawcutter

here's a start

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/31968

Mark

jim_14

ah yes good ole dslreports.com

I check that site out from time to time.. alot of arguements there on the PA issue among others. Saw a good rebuttal to the effect that in 1994 most people didnt know about the internet and those that did had 14.4 or 28.8 modems and used that basis to defend Bell Atlantic's position on the broadband issue- they said would do it for anyone that asked, if they could afford it!