A puzzle to solve

other day I had a problem tracing a wire and I used a method I?ve used for years. It just occurred to me that I don?t know if it?s something that everybody knows or not.

t a hundred fifty cat 6 wires for both network and tel ephone in a 5000 square foot office. The office was or iginally meant to be two individual office spaces and separated by a thick fire wall. A bunch of the network wires ran through the fire wall to the other side. Th ere are ceiling tiles at about 16 feet. One of those w ires was for the purpose of carrying a signal to an 82 inch TV on the other side of the firewall that was mo unted about 10 feet off the floor. The wire was suppos ed to be running from a cable box in a utility closet on the other side of the fire wall via an HDMI extende r.. In back of the wall with the TV are two small room s. One a bathroom and one a storage closet both with o nly 8 foot ceiling tiles. In order to get to the back of the TV the ceiling grid needs to be disassembled an d an extension ladder maneuvered into the small room a nd put up to see over the wall to the back of the TV. Something I had planned to only have to do once when c onnecting the TV to the HDMI extender.

owner decides that he doesn?t want the cable box in the utility closet. He wants it moved to another clos et in another office. Now, ---- I have the TV wire in the utility closet labeled out of the hundred or so ne twork wires but all the wires are bundled, and tied in to a cable and mounted to the network rack and shelves . That is, ---- the wires aren?t just loose and han ging going up through the ceiling from the closet belo w. Above the ceiling above the closet I can see that t here are 20 or so wires coming through the fire wall f rom the direction of the TV. So above the ceiling, I c an?t tell which wire in that bundle is the one from the TV .

r and attach it to the wire end in the utility closet and discover that I?m not getting signal. I can only surmise that when I pulled the wires over to the TV I stripped them all, twisted them together so I could r educed the size of the wires I had to put through the hook in my snake. So now the bare wires are shorted be hind the TV and I can?t get a signal from my wire tr acer up in the ceiling above the utility closet so tha t I know which wire to pull back up from the closet to re-route to the other closet.

can't see where the wires are in the closet from above and I?m working alone on an extension ladder and I don?t have anyone to try and tug on the wire from be low.

Well JIM!!!

You p ose a interesting puzzle.

My first thought was to b urn down the building and start over. But, NO that wo uld not be a good thing...................

So if yo u were using good quality wire and you looked at the f ootage label on the wire and knew the length of the r un, then doing a little algebraic calculation should give you the wire to find.

I could be wrong, but th is is just a test, right??

Let me know how I scored !!

Thanks,

Les

not sure I follow the story completely but I've found different lengths of bundled wires in the past using their "ohm" readings. high resistance = longer run lower resistance = shorter run.. a good digital meter can be very handy.. ;-)

Hi Rocky

Let me know what you don't understand.

Hi Les

Not a test exactly.

I'm just wondering if anybody else knows my little trick.

I'm going to hold off on the answer for a few day until I think that everyone has checked in on it.

So Jim,

Your "trick" is different. But, you did not say my trick won't work?? Meaning that yours will work on cheap no footage label on the sheath.

Looking forward to the solution. Oh, wait!! You ordered up the "Solution Manual" and it explained ALL!! LOL

Have a good week!!

Les

not that i couldn't understand your puzzle. it's just the older I get the harder it is to follow along with lengthy story lines.. ;-) after 40+ years these things all run together...

RTS

eryone has checked in on it.

Maybe in this installation I might have been able to choose one out of the

20 wires going in the direction of the TV was the one I "Thought" it was bu t I don't think I would have felt confident that I had the right one. And, I would have had to wait until I was doing the final hookup on the TV to fi nd out.

Oh come on you old fart!

Get up out of the rocking chair. I'm 81 and still dancing as fast as I can after 51 years.

Use it or lose it!

LOL if it wasn't for the "address card" around my neck I wouldn't be home half the time.. (forbid I ever loose a finger, be hell making chance at the store) LOL ;-)

RTS

On 2/9/2020 4:59 PM, Jim Davis wrote: > Hey guys, the other day I had a problem tracing a wire and I used a method I?ve used for years. It just occurred to me that I don?t know if it?s something that everybody knows or not. > > This was the problem. I ran about a hundred fifty cat 6 wires for both network and telephone in a 5000 square foot office. The office was originally meant to be two individual office spaces and separated by a thick fire wall. A bunch of the network wires ran through the fire wall to the other side. There are ceiling tiles at about 16 feet. One of those wires was for the purpose of carrying a signal to an 82 inch TV on the other side of the firewall that was mounted about 10 feet off the floor. The wire was supposed to be running from a cable box in a utility closet on the other side of the fire wall via an HDMI extender.. In back of the wall with the TV are two small rooms. One a bathroom and one a storage closet both with only 8 foot ceiling tiles. In order to get to the back of the TV the ceiling grid needs to be disassembled and an extension ladder maneuvered into the small room and put up to see over the wall to the back of the TV. Something I had planned to only have to do once when connecting the TV to the HDMI extender. > > Well the owner decides that he doesn?t want the cable box in the utility closet. He wants it moved to another closet in another office. Now, ---- I have the TV wire in the utility closet labeled out of the hundred or so network wires but all the wires are bundled, and tied into a cable and mounted to the network rack and shelves. That is, ---- the wires aren?t just loose and hanging going up through the ceiling from the closet below. Above the ceiling above the closet I can see that there are 20 or so wires coming through the fire wall from the direction of the TV. So above the ceiling, I can?t tell which wire in that bundle is the one from the TV . > > OK, so I take out my wire signal tracer and attach it to the wire end in the utility closet and discover that I?m not getting signal. I can only surmise that when I pulled the wires over to the TV I stripped them all, twisted them together so I could reduced the size of the wires I had to put through the hook in my snake. So now the bare wires are shorted behind the TV and I can?t get a signal from my wire tracer up in the ceiling above the utility closet so that I know which wire to pull back up from the closet to re-route to the other closet. > > And remember, I can't see where the wires are in the closet from above and I?m working alone on an extension ladder and I don?t have anyone to try and tug on the wire from below. > > I found the wire in less than 5 minutes. > > How would you do it? >

Use your tone generator with one lead on that wire, and one lead on another wire, ceiling grid, or other parallel conductor.

Yeaaaaayyyy!

Yep, that's what I did.

I connected one lead of the tone generator to one of the wires in the shorted cable and the other lead of the tone generator to the common/ground pin of a AC wall outlet.

I figured that somebody should know how to do it.

Another thing I do to trace a wire is:

Sometimes you want to trace a wire behind a wall but the signal is too weak from your tone generator.

I have and old Moose ( I think ) 30 watt siren driver board. Make sure there isn't a short on the wire. Attach the output of the siren driver to the wire you want to trace and you can follow the wire anywhere from one to two feet away from the probe.

Sometimes it's so loud you can't tell exactly where the wire is. I have a rheostat on the output of the siren driver to cut down on the volume of the output.

Doesn't always work out but often enough to make it worth a try.

I guess I could use a less powerful siren driver too.

Congrats Bob!

Yes!! Congrats Bob!! You win!!

And yes, Jim that will work as well as the footage calculation. :-)

Actually I have used the tone generator that way as well, sometimes not very successful. Don't know why??

I also have a rigged siren driver hanging in the van for some of those lost wire things. As a matter of fact I got it out last weekend to help trace a drain pipe in my basement. I was going to push a wire down the pipe with a flex rod to determine which way the pipe ran under the concrete floor. Turns out some plumber had stuck about 8" of caulk down the pipe to seal it off from sewer gas about 40 years ago.

Ended up cutting the pipe off about 10" from the floor and was able to dig about 90% of it out. What a PITA!! Could then see down the pipe to the 90 and see the direction it was going. Didn't need the siren driver rig, so it back in the van waiting for it's next job.

It seems to me that I built the rig after reading about the usage possibilities either here on ASA or some other forum. After reading I think it was assembled the next day and officially used about a week later.

Really can't say if it was a previous (years ago...) typing by you Jim!!

Either way, always good reading and input!!

Les