The secret pros use to hide wires in the wall
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2020
- Alan shows you a trick every pro uses to install those tough cables inside the walls. We use flexible fiberglass cable fishing rods called Glow Rods. The other tools we use are called the "Wet Noodle and Retriever." They can be purchased as a set on Amazon.
Any time you pull wire with a string, add another string to pull along with the wire. That way you still have a string left in place just in case you ever need to pull more wires.
Agreed... just like with network (low-voltage) cabling. I'm a commercial data center engineer... we actually require that in our cabling/cabler contracts. ;) Always pull another string to replace the one you used.
@@csimet Yep. Did that work for years. Always leave an extra pull string.
@@Wibb14 ya but that thing hardly ever works out. It gets twisted around the cables u pulled it in with, making the pull a bigger bitch than its worth
@@trope5105 While it can and does happen, using quality pull cords and not overfilling holes/conduit helps immensely... along with breaking down your runs to reasonable lengths, if possible. Cheers.
Always add a second string, also add cat 5 or 6
Can do anything with that in the future and is not expensive.
Gotta admit, this is the first time I ever heard someone say they are lucky their attic isn't insulated.
It was not insulated because that is the attic space over the garage.
Ya. It's getting to be about time to insulate the whole thing
Finally!!! Finding this exact issue has been ridiculously difficult and frustrating. Thank you SO much for making this video!!
Awesome. Glad to help
Technicians in the Comm world have used this trick for at least 48 years that I know of. First learned it at my first duty station while in the Air Force stationed in Germany back in 1975. After retiring, I worked for AT&T for another 22 years using the came method pulling telephone wiring through walls in homes and office buildings. Great tip that saves alot of time and money.
For sure. I am sure I am not the first, and hopefully I am not the last.
Another great fish tool, especially for automotive use, but very useful in structures too, is to take a giant zip tie, like they use for AC ducts, cut the end off, and drill one or more small holes in the end. They are very stiff in two directions and fairly flexible in the other two directions, but can push through some tuff stuff really effectively. Then once it’s through, put a small piece of wire through the holes in the end and can pull that wire in without even taping it. Then use that single strand of wire to pull whatever it is you really want into place. Sounds complicated when I write it all down but it’s so fast and works so well. Nothing better when pushing through grommets, or following a wall down between the drywall and insulation or similar.
I have never heard of this technique but it sounds like a winner
That's brilliant!
Great video Alan! Informative and funny, loved it. Thanks for showcasing our Wet Noodle Magnetic In-Wall Retrieval System. Looks like you need a new Wet Noodle!
Look who it is! I have a million of your products and I’ve worn out a million more. Thanks for making my life easier.
@@AlanCleggYouDoAV Keep an eye out for an email from: graphics@grisk.com
OMG. Thank you so much. I randomly stumbled across your video this morning, as I'm dreading returning to a jobsite to continue running wire in a finished ceiling. This...this is game changing!
I love it! Hopefully it worked out for you in the end
Thanks Alan! I love doin' this stuff myself and your tips an tricks are wonderful!
I think you're wonderful! Thanks for watching and thanks for the comment
Great video, great idea! Thanks for creating and sharing.
Thank you for watching!
Most helpful. Thank you.
Wished I had seen this video before the last two jobs I did. Luck you, the attic looked fairly new and clean. I was crawling on my stomach in attics in a 30 year old and 60 year old house full of nasty insulation, dust, rat poop, etc., all to run wires near the eaves in the attic. It took me several attempts and several holes drilled to be able to fish my wires. This is a great idea! Thanks!
Thanks for watching. It's an old attic above the garage so it's not insulated. I HATE INSULATION!
@@AlanCleggYouDoAV Ha! You got that right. Nothing worse than an old stinky attic with 1960’s insulation in the heat of summer.
What is the board that sitting vertically on (I guess the sill plate?) that you make a hole through? Is that always the method to get outside?
New subscriber due to your enthusiasm and the tips and tricks!
Sweet! I appreciate the sub!
This was helpful. Will be adding this to my skills!
Awesome! Glad to help
This took way longer for him to do then drilling a hole in the soffit and running the glow rod up over the 2x4 utilizing the roofline to get the rod into the attic while at the same time having the wire attached to the other end. One time up in the attic and that is it not multiple trips. In the attic shot you can clearly see the "air" gap into the roof for venting.
That may have worked. It has been a while since I made that video so k can’t remember the details but if I remember right, the hole in the soffit and the attic would not have lined up and I didn’t want to risk popping a hole into the wall.
You're the man for sharing this.
You're the man for posting this!
For those extremely tight spaces, I use steel tie wire with a loop small enough on the end to push through the hole. In the attic, grab the loop using the fiberglass rods j hook tip.
That's a great tip! Thanks!
@AlanCleggYouDoAV and I share your exact sentiment about being in the attic tight spaces. Thank you for sharing your video and keep at it!
Yep. I've got to do the same thing today in a 2:12 pitch roof. There's absolutely no way that I'll be able to crawl over to the eve to do what he did, but I was planning on doing exactly what you suggested. Thanks for confirming that my thought process is correct.
Trained mice work well too. But they’ve formed a union, so I may have to take your advice.
Time to call in the goons to break the union stand-off
Great tip!
Thanks!
You're a ball chain master. Thank you sensei.
Sensei? That’s so cold and unnecessary. Please refer to me as “Grand Master”
Great ive never seen this before and Im deffinately going to puck one up.
Pick me up one too! They're the best
Brilliantly simple!
You're brilliant!
You have a unique ability to make anything look hard.
Handyman goals.
Doctor goals.
Firestop and Insulation: hold my beer.
I love how he doesn’t pretend it’s a fun job. He’s gettin er dun
No pretending here. I HATE ATTICS!
Nice job.. Another route is to drill from the outside with a 3/8” auger to set the angle and follow with a 54” D'VersiBIT. Remove the bit from the drill and tape the wire to the bit. Now, go into the attic and grab the hot end of the bit and pull the wire through 😂
Great tip!
i would use a flexible claw grabber mostly used to grab loose bolts in tight engine bays..
My husband buys almost 200 feat of chain and has like 7 sets of glow rods, even has glow rod fish tape from Klein, says he almost never uses steel fish tape. And yes its a wet noodle kit 😊
*FEET* of chain. SMH
🇬🇧Greetings from an English electrician. I use chain , magnets and rods too on this side of the pond…😅
I bet you call them something else though… like magnets and crumpets.
Brilliant! Thanks for the tip.
You’re brilliant!
Ball chain!! Get in there ballchaaaaiin!!
-Jonathan Davis, Korn
That appears to be accurate.
-Aristotle
BOOM! - and how do you spell that next word? SHAGGALAGGA? (Transcript skipped it…) The ecstasy of success! YES! Attaboy! Thanks for the awesome video!
I'm buying this setup tonight. Been doing cable for 2 years now, and they do not provide us these or even suggest them. They want us to wrap outside the house,BUT, 1 that does not always work,2 can be very time consuming and lastly you find your ass in a crawl space or attic anyways.
Which set up are you referring to? Wrapping homes is not ideal for a lot of reasons. Any time you can avoid it, everyone is happy.
@@AlanCleggYouDoAV The glow rods with the magnet chain.
My companies policy is that we do not fish walls.
I will only get my experience on certain houses I can feel confident will be quicker to fish and I won't mess up.
@@theaceofspades485 Gotcha. Good luck man! You'll do great
Congratulations on not having any attic insulation. Mine is full of it, but I have extremely low utility bills. I worked for the phone company for years and have a lot of experience with wiring existing structures. If your goal was to wire to the eve of the house why did you start in the attic? drill through the soffit and shove the fish sticks into the attic with 20 feet or so and retrieve it without crawling on your belly into a corner and drilling at an impossible angle. Work smarter not harder.
I had to do this exact thing recently. I just bent a wire coathanger straight and pushed it up through the soffit. Electrical taped the wire to the coathanger inside the attic, pulled back through. The method in this video is dumb.
He has to drill a hole on wood first. So like he said, his condition is unique.
I was running a wire up an exterior wall and my glow rods were not quite long enough but the cleaning rods for firearms the same threads. All I needed was about 3 feet and I got it.
I have been fishing wires in walls for 30 years, never used or needed that method. A wire coat hanger or length of metal fish tape, some good measuring and Kentucky windage works just fine.
30 years and never use glow rods? Must be an electrician. Have come across many that didn't even know what they were, and have seen them struggle with metal fish tape. Whether you like the method he used or not, glow rods make a lot of runs easier, especially in exterior walls loaded up with insulation.
I used to love fish tapes and refused to use anything else. Once I got used to glow rods, my fish tape rarely left my toolbox.
@@AlanCleggYouDoAV exactly. Much easier. There are still times you need to go old school but it's rare
There are longer extensions or long bits specifically for this purpose.
Yup. I have a pretty wide selection of long bits, but I don't like using them unless I have to. I just feel like they are too risky.
Are you saying that long bits are risky because you might hit a plumbing pipe or electrical wire, or goes through the wall into the interior? Thanks.
Thanks. Gave me a useful idea. As a sailor I used all my pulling wire tricks and mojo, I'll share my sailboat fix. Northern Pacific Ocean, nothing for hundreds of miles in any direction. We 'd just been through a storm where our 3rd reef line parted. This was the line that holds the sail down so it's as small as possible - what you need in a storm. The night before I was up on the dodger at the end of the boom tying an emergency knot. Exciting, some risk but not all that dangerous. I was clipped in and leaning into the boom to keep it from swatting me.
The next day I had to get the 12mm line back through the boom and around the outside of two sheaves (pulleys) one at each end, about 30' apart. No fish snake.
Sewed a messenger line (para cord) to the #2 reef. Pulled this all the way through. This was in the same tube (the boom) but only tiny gaps to get in there and around the metal casting separating the sheaves. Using an aluminum coat hanger wire with a jagged cut end on a small bend I had to fish around to grab the messenger line without grabbing the 12mm #2 reef line. I didn't hook it, I snagged it (which is why I left the cut end jagged.) The second one of these at the other end was even more difficult. These are one of those grabs that you can never get good at, can't count on being able to do it again. Next I had to get the messenger line around the other side of the sheaves. Using double stick tape I stuck the messenger to the sheave then carefully rotated it. Finally sewed on the #3 reef line and pulled it through.
What I've learned from you here is that I could have stuck a piece of wire, a nail, anything magnetic into the messenger line several inches back from where it was sewn to reef #2. Then I could've fished with a magnet. Pulled the bend through. I'm highly confident this would work. Good tip.
?????
Well, for this I would have drilled upward from outside and just stuck a wire up the hole, then grabbed it from the other side : ) But this is a good technique for walls.
The ball chain is the way.
An ultraviolet flashlight (365 nm to preference rather than 395) will make anything glow in the dark really shine.
0:10. In my state we call ‘em “fish sticks.” They don’t glow, but we “fish” for them.
sounds delicious
I always fish from the soffit into the attic and not the other way around
How do you seal that afterward?
These holes will be sealed by the camera itself.
@@AlanCleggYouDoAV The camera? You mean like, the "mounting hardware"?
@@sekritskworl-sekrit_studios the camera itself will cover the hole, in my case at least.
Years ago I was installing a Dish Network system for a customer where I had to run the coax down an inside wall on the center of his house in Florida in the Summer and it gets hot in attics in Florida in the Summer. The location where he wanted the receiver was where his cable converter box had been so he wanted the satellite receiver located there. We used to connect to the coax that the cable company ran from the outside of the house to the TV to run the satellite signal to the receiver in the early days of DSS system you could get away with this because the satellite signal on the cable back then was only 950 to 1450 Mhz. The cable company started pulling the cable out of the interior walls or cutting it off flush the outside walls so we could not use it and that is what they did on this house. But they left the wall plate covering the hole in the interior wall. So I ran a new run of RG-6 from the Dish through the attic to the top of the wall I shoved the coax through the hole that the cable installer had drilled in the top plate of the wall with the intention of pushing enough cable in the wall cavity to hook it from the hole in the wall where the wall plate was. As I was pushing the cable down the wall he home owner yelled I got it, the cable went straight down the wall and came out the opening on the first try. The home owner thought I had planed it and I let him believe it.
Hahahaha! Great story
Where applicable you can use small jack chain instead. Then you could skip the string part. Or you can drop a piece of the soffit and push in 50 feet of 1/2" pvc conduit as a giant glow rod all the way to the attic access on the other side of the house and never get dirty. 😂
Having a conduit would be fantastic
What's good Glow Rod for the price? Some are $20 for 20ft, others are $80 for 20ft.
I have no idea. I only use glow rods made by Labor Saving Devices. That’s not an advertisement. That is the truth.
Get a longer drill bit. I got one from HD that's over 36" 1/2 " diameter with a small shaft.
I do not love long drill bits. They make me nervous to make a bad hole but I do have several.
Boom Shack-a-lacka!
Preach!
Always heard it called beaded chain.
That also sounds like a good way to describe it.
I trained a squirrel to do that kind of stuff for me.
Can I borrow it?
How about drilling the soffit first and then put the sticks in?
Possible but risky. It can be confusing looking into a wall even with a scope. You run the risk of drilling through a wall or through the roof.
@@AlanCleggYouDoAV i’ve done it 1000 times, just match the angle plane of the roof and you won’t go through the roof… you won’t go through the ceiling because you’re drilling up
trade training, apprenticeship, skill and experience?
Those cannot be beat
so your soffit vents do nothing lol? is that what im seeing
well, they look pretty.
I just did this... but did a completely different way. The back of my house really only had 1 access point for 3 cams I wanted to run from attic... so i took part of my soffit off, its not hard u can find a vid for it. Then got 3 strings to that point. taped on to the end of the soffit that was exposed. Then drove an RC car... yes and RC car... with the strings across my entire soffit to another hole, dropped a string there, then drove the RC car all the way down to last drop point lol. I used a wyze cam with a USB battery bank on top of the RC car to see lol... I'm weird but prob no one will read this anyways.
Bro! Genius! So cool. I wish I was there to see it.
what about removing a piece of a soffit?
Use the crap out of this tool? where else do you use it? Nice video.
I used it to rescue 50 children from a burning orphanage then used it again to feed a village for a month.
The secret pros use to hide wirss in the wall: HOLES
Sadly, that is true too often.
The only issue I see is wading through the 2+ feet of insulation in the attic! Nice trick tho.
Electricians should partner with dwarves (little people) who can get into tight spaces.
Or they can just train kindergarteners
@@AlanCleggYouDoAVin the right state, child labor laws might allow for that
@@maxwellgriffith Looks like I need to move then!
The title says in the wall???
Try this one too. It's all about running wires through the walls.
th-cam.com/video/8S0BstmyUSw/w-d-xo.html
I have a foam attic :(
Without insulation is easy.
100% agree
From florida here. Im very jealous you can wear a long sleeve shirt in an attic. Id kill for that temp all the time
I'm in Ft. Lauderdale. If I'm spending a lot of time in the attic (for any number of jobs), I'll pull an ac duct hood off the ceiling and aim it at me. Now, I'm at the point where I'll take a portable, rolling ac up there with me and drop the exhaust down the hatch. (I've also considered tying a safety rope to my waist and legs, a triple bowline with three loops, and dropping the other end down the attic hatch...if I pass out. Lol. )
Tips...
1) don't let other people use your chain. You'll give them a 10 foot chain and get back a six foot chain, a 3 foot chain and two six inch chains.
2) don't use your chain for pulling and don't use sticks for a pull like this. a) tie/tape your chain to pull string then tie/tape to your wire. Use the chain for retrieving and the string for pulling.
3) most ball-chain isn't magnetic/not magnetic enough to use for retrieval. Remember to check with a suitable magnet before buying off the bulk reel at the hardware store.
4) Not every magnet is suitable. Generally speaking- random magnet off your fridge won't cut it. Neither really the cheap magnet-on-a-radio-antenna. Maybe in a pinch, but...
5) the price might seem kinda dumb for what it is, but it's worth it. Pay the money, take care of it and it'll pay for itself 1000x just in frustration savings. Another 1000x in time spent doing it any other way.
Ha! Yes this is true
The biggest question here is why you didn't insulate your attic.
It's over the garage, but I will be insulating soon.
Ummmm..... wouldn't it have been much faster to take off a piece of the vinyl soffit? I'm mean that shit comes apart like quick. Would have easier too actually. Not that I would know. I've only been fishing walls for 23 years.
Nice, but I believe my technique is superior. It’s also cheaper in the long run for you. It’s a technique that I came up with in order to wire some speakers in my previous house. (a corner of an attic like that is a bitch) My technique also doesn’t require you to climb into the corner of the attic like that. Drill your hole outside so that you have attic access. Tie and tape 0.080 router trimmer string to your glow rod. Push the glow rod tip with the trimmer string into the attic space. Pull back HARD (if necessary) to bow the glow rod tip down so that it will clear the rafters and bracing of the roof and keep pushing the glow rod into the space. Get it in there as far as masks sense. Then, take your Klein fishing rod with hook on the end into the attic space. (tape the hook on so that it won’t unscrew) Besides being able to hand the pull and bowing of the glow rod, the trimmer string bunches up, rather than laying down. Use a flashlight/headlight and reach into the space with the hook, snag the trimmer string and pull it to you. Voila.
Great tip!
@@AlanCleggYouDoAV Glad you saw it. As I couldn’t DM you I had to catch your eye somehow with the “superior” statement. I didn’t want to sound arrogant, but I wanted you to see it. “router” should read “round” and “hand” should read “handle”. Editing comments always fails on my iPad for some reason and it’s all I have today.
@@kevingray8616 I try to respond to all the comments on my videos, especially when people are giving out good free advice. I appreciate you taking the time to do that!
Thank you for this. Now to motivate myself to crawl to that filthy corner of the attic.
You can do it! Then come over and do mine too.
My wife is the ball and chain
Won't have to worry bout A.I. Taking over your job at least.
Robots aren't dumb enough to do this terrible work in hot cramped attics
That's dumb. You should have the string attached to the glow rod and at the end of the string you should have the magnetic metal crap so that when you pull through you can just pull the wire and then connected and you're good to go instead of going back into the home and all that whoopty-doos
First and foremost, this is too easy. Try this in a low-pitched roofing system
Shhhh...it's not a secret...don't tell anyone...
*i'd rather work hard not smarter*