Bought a cheap wire tracer from a tool truck and it cost me a whole afternoon

It was one of those impulse buys, you know, a $75 unit that promised to find breaks in alarm loops. The first time I used it on a job in a big old house, it kept giving false positives on every wire near a power line. I spent about four hours opening up walls and checking panels for faults that weren't there. Has anyone found a decent tracer that actually works in older buildings with messy wiring?

3 comments

3 Comments

west.anna15d ago

Learned that lesson the hard way myself. I switched to a tone and probe set from a real electrical supplier, not a tool truck special. It ignores AC hum and only picks up the signal you put on the wire. Last week I found a break in a buried doorbell line in a 1950s house in about twenty minutes. The key is putting a good, clean signal on the conductor you're trying to trace.

taylor_hayes254d ago

My buddy swears by those proper tone generators too. He said the cheap ones just pick up every bit of noise in the wall and drive you crazy. Getting a clean signal on the wire makes all the difference.

campbell.elliot15d ago

Honestly, that sounds like a normal Tuesday. Messy old wiring is just a guessing game sometimes, no matter what tool you bring. Maybe the real trick is just expecting to lose half a day when you poke around in those walls.