Retrofitting an old estate

[hgupta1]

I am moving into a "new" house in a few months.  New to me at least.  It was built in 1920, and has  had a bajillion alarm systems over the past several decades, resulting in wires running everywhere.  Some of them look very unprofessional and will have to be removed.   
 
This 3 story monster with basement is our dream house/ money pit for life.   We're still working on getting it fixed up, and running HVAC throughout.
 
Right now it has a newer ADT system that I think only uses wiring from the doors, but I am thinking of getting an Elk M1 for it.  I don't even know where to start to figure out the window and other sensor wiring.  Should I just pull out the old sensors and put in wireless?  Is wireless better than old shoddy wires?   Or should I try to trace each wire back to the old panel?
 
 
Also, any recommendations on thermostats for new HVAC installs?  I like the energy conservation and features of  newer thermostats (such as nest compared to my Leviton Omnistat2.)  
 
This is going to be quite the project! 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[RAL]

If the wiring is sound, I prefer wired contacts to wireless. But I would say wireless is definitely better than using shoddy old wiring. I guess it depends on your definition of shoddy wire, though.
 
If the wire shows signs of dried, cracking insulation, I would not try to use it.  On the other hand, if the insulation seems pliable and intact, it may be fine to re-use.   If the wires are routed haphazardly, that's something you can fix.

If you think that the old wiring is too crappy to use, you might be able to use the old wires to pull a new wire through if they aren't stapled within the walls.
 
Tracing out which wire is which can be a PITA, but will be a lot easier if you get yourself a good tone generator and probe kit.
 
Depending on what the sensors are, you may want to replace them, too.  Magnetic contacts tend to have good long term reliability and you might just leave them alone unless they present problems.  Smoke detectors should be replaced if they are more than 10 years old.  And if they are 2-wire smokes, they may not be compatible with the Elk.  You might want to replace PIRs, depending on what is currently there.  Some models are better than others.  

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Get a meter and check the resistance of the wiring for continuity and leakage.  My security How-To describes the methodology.  If you need help, let us know.

 

[Neurorad]

If you are retrofitting AC, you're probably painting many rooms.  That's the perfect time to cut drywall, and run new cables where needed.

 

[Del91574]

As alluded to,
 
While it may be a spider's web, the best is to get the cabling back to where it basically comes through from the device, most likely the house was a retrofit install anyways. Cut all the cable back, get a bunch of boxes of cable and pull new home runs to each device. Easiest is to set up at your terminal/panel point, tape a bundle of 10-20 cables together and pull to an area.
 
Material cost is minimal, labor is more involved, but overall, not that difficult to pull the cables back up to contacts or devices.

 

[tmbrown97]

For the t-stat, I definitely prefer something hard-wired which only AprilAire, RCS or HAI OmniStat will do.  For anything else, plan to skip any integration with the Elk and run a separate app.  You can do the z-wave ones but I don't think they're any smarter and they open up integration hassles.  The savings depend on how you use it; if the Nest works as advertised for you, you should never have to really control it as it learns your behavior.   In my house we don't even try to automate the HVAC much; we just use the single-app interface to control it from the M1.

 

[hgupta1]

Anyone know what this is?
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/2016-11-26%2014.47.08.jpg
 
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/20161126_145400.jpg
 
 
 
Also, is this just an old glass break sensor?
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/20161126_144705.jpg
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/20161126_145154.jpg
 
 
I couldn't figure out how to upload these pics without them being ridiculously huge.

 

[pete_c]

For picture manipulation / resize here use Polyview made by Polybytes.  I purchased it in the 1990's and today the original author has retired and posted it for free.  For adding text / arrows to a picture I clip and paste picture to Visio, then copy the Visio drawing back to Polyview.
 
With Polyview I keep the image size the same and then save it with an 80% reduction in size.
 
 

 

[Del91574]

Anyone know what this is?
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/2016-11-26%2014.47.08.jpg
 
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/20161126_145400.jpg
 
 
 
Also, is this just an old glass break sensor?
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/20161126_144705.jpg
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028575/20161126_145154.jpg
 
 
I couldn't figure out how to upload these pics without them being ridiculously huge.

Old heat detector. Garbage now.....been painted and has non-fire rated cabling run to it.
 
Other is old Caddx GBD. Again, garbage. About 25 years old at least, closer to 30.

 

[hgupta1]

Thanks so much for identifying them!   Decades of old sensors and wirings in this beast.   But its nice to know we can remove them and make the walls have clean lines again.
 
I also was finally able to find a conduit that goes from the front gates all the way to the basement.   At some point, a Door King call box was used to dial into the home phone lines to allow a visitor to announce themselves or to enter a code to open the gates.  Anyone know is there is a master code to this thing?
 
A couple of bundles of wires from the call box and the gate opener travel down the conduit all the way to the basement (probably about 200 feet). These wires are pretty hefty  , but my cheapo toner tracer wasn't able to pick up a signal back at the house.  What's the best way to figure out if these wires are still good and which ones correspond to the other end?  Ideally I would like to connect them as an output to my Elk so that I can open the gates from my smartphone, or open them automatically if the fire department is dispatched following a fire alarm.

 

[Del91574]

Probably no master code to the gate box.
 
I'd download the manual and go that route, even default the thing if needed.
 
As far as checking the cables and pairs, the best way for a novice would be to twist a pair together and find the short to identify the pairs or use resistors to identify (if you really want to make only a trip or two). I've done this using the short, 1K, 2k, 3K method. Once you ID the pairs, you need to check for issues on the copper, both to itself, other conductors and earth ground (you want to read Megohms to ground).
 
At minimum, depending on the panel, you need to trip the gate to open and stay open for an extended period on fire alarm. Same would be recommended on panic or duress. How that is done varies by the host panel.

 

[hgupta1]

Thanks, Del!  That is very helpful.  I like the resistors idea.   I decided to put the gate on the back burner because I found a bigger problem.   We pulled up the carpet on the third floor to put down hardwood flooring and discovered that the previous alarm installer ran a lot of wires under the carpet.under the lip of the stair treads.   Without the carpet there, it looks terrible.   I am going to have to figure out how to hide or reroute them.   Of course, many of them may be tied to old useless sensors.    I tried to trace them, but when I connected my toner probe, it seemed that all the wires seemed to carry the signal.   It looks like this house had a Caddx system with an input expander in the attic and a ton of sensors (there's at least one glass break sensor in every room.    The house currently has ADT, and it looks like they pulled out the Caddx board to stick in their ADT pulse board, and then added a 3G radio.    I think ADT used the wired sensors where it was easy, and then wireless on others.   
 
It looks like ADT pulse can do home automation, but I am so used to my Elk, that I think I will miss all the control I had.

 

[Del91574]

Pulse is inherently limited and a locked product. Requires a tie to ADT.
 
As far as cabling under the lip of the stair treads, you'd have to determine what still exists or could be reused, but a good carpenter and some trim boards can cover a lot of cabling. The space between a trim board and the quarter round that is used to cover the expansion gap is a common place to run cables.
 
The tone is going to bleed, but if any are powered or share a common power connection, then bleed in inevitable.