linda_kelly17•1mo agoProlific Poster

Had a job in a 1920s apartment building that made me rethink every wire run

I was installing a new system in a unit on the third floor last month. The place had those old plaster walls, so I was fishing wire down from the attic like normal. I found a perfect chase next to a chimney and dropped my lines. When I went to pull them through the wall plate below, nothing came out. I spent two hours cutting small holes, trying to find where the wire went. Turns out, the chimney had a hidden brick offset about six inches from the attic floor that my fish tape slid right behind. The wire was stuck in a void I couldn't reach. I had to re-run everything, and the job took twice as long. Now I use a borescope to check any old chase before I commit a wire run. Anyone else have a trick for spotting hidden voids in old construction?

2 comments

2 Comments

jason5621mo ago

Sounds like a lot of fuss over one bad wire pull.

dakota_burns961mo ago

Yeah but that's the thing @jason562, one bad pull can mess up a whole run. You get a nick in the insulation you don't see, it passes testing, and then fails six months later. Now you're tearing out drywall to find it. It's never just one wire, it's the hours of extra work later.