My uncle the retired electrician told me to always use a toner before fishing through walls

I ignored him on a job in Denver last Tuesday and spent 3 hours chasing a dead line that turned out to be a coax I should have traced first, so has anyone else learned that lesson the hard way?

3 comments

3 Comments

cooper.viola17d ago

Oh man, that brings me back to my first big wiring job at my folks' old farmhouse. My dad kept telling me to label everything before I started pulling wires, but I thought I'd remember it all. Three days later I had to crawl back into the attic twice because I mixed up the living room and bedroom lines. Now I keep a stack of colored tape and a sharpie in my tool bag at all times. Even for simple stuff, I tag every single wire before I touch anything.

tara_palmer17d ago

Used to roll my eyes at people who labeled everything like that, honestly thought it was overkill lol. Then I spent a whole weekend tracing back a single wire I forgot to mark and suddenly I was the one buying the colored tape. Cooper's dad was right, that attic crawl is a hard lesson nobody forgets.

troy_sanchez817d ago

Funny you mention that, I had a buddy who learned that same lesson the hard way. He was helping his uncle rewire a workshop and thought he'd save time by just running the cables without marking anything. Two weeks later he was up on a ladder tracing wires with a multimeter and cussing up a storm because he couldn't tell which switch went to which light. His uncle just stood there sipping coffee and watching him struggle for an hour before handing him a roll of tape. He still tells that story every time someone mentions labeling now.