Wiring the Doorbell

[compuguru]

I am building a house and the drywall is soon to go up. I bought another 1000 ft. of Cat5e (Double runs eats up 1000 ft. really fast). Since I am done with the wiring for our netwok, I was wondering what to do with all the extra Cat5e cable I have. I was wondering if I could strip some of the Cat5e and use two of its wires to wire into my doorbell, instead of buying more wire. That way it could trigger someting in my HA software. I also plan to wire some sensors for my garage doors.

Could I do this with Cat5e?

 

[smee]

Two comments:

1) Stripping the cover off of long lengths of cat5 can be a pain. It's not too bad if it's got that piece of string inside, but otherwise...

2) I'd go ahead and run the entire cat5 to the door (and maybe even double it up). You can use one pair of wires for the doorbell and leave the rest unconnected. You never know what you might want to put near the door: keypads, displays, alarm stuff, motion sensors, touchscreens, cameras, ... Might as well put it there now while it's easy.