Connecting Elk WSV via CAT5?

[fresnoboy]

I am thinking about adding the new elk water safety valve to an existing elk m1G system, but the panel is located in a storage room upstairs, and the WSV would be located in a crawlspace under the 1st floor. The M1G panel has a ton of CAT5 running to it, and I can patch it to the WSV pretty easily if I use my cat5 wiring system. The specs say it's a 12V 1 amp power requirement, which is 12 watts, and should be able to be handled by the cat5 system (my voip phones use POE that my switch delivers about 15 watts to).

Has anyone tried this or can think of a reason why this won't work?

thx
mike

 

[Sokoloff]

Amps is what matters when sizing conductors, not watts. Your PoE phones are likely using 48V, meaning they only need .25A to get 12 watts.

Spec for 24 guage wiring (conservative) is just over .5 A max, so you'd need to double up the pairs. If I were you, I'd dedicate an entire cat5 to the WSV and use 4 conductors for + and 4 for -. That should work just fine, especially since the WSV will be an intermittent load.

 

[fresnoboy]

Amps is what matters when sizing conductors, not watts. Your PoE phones are likely using 48V, meaning they only need .25A to get 12 watts.

Spec for 24 guage wiring (conservative) is just over .5 A max, so you'd need to double up the pairs. If I were you, I'd dedicate an entire cat5 to the WSV and use 4 conductors for + and 4 for -. That should work just fine, especially since the WSV will be an intermittent load.

Thanks. You are of course correct watts vs amps. What a goofup.

I had thought about ganging up on the connectors. There is a ton of free cat5 from near the controller to down into the garage and the crawlspace area. So I could use 2 CAT5's, use 4 wires for NO and NC and GND, and still have enough left to drive a status line back to the controller as well.

Thanks