Re: A puzzle to solve

[Bob La Londe <none@none.com99>]

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 Iâ??ve used for years. It just occurred to me that I donâ??t know if
itâ??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 doesnâ??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 arenâ??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 canâ??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 Iâ??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 canâ??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 Iâ??m working alone on an extension ladder and I donâ??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.