I just installed a bunch of network cable in an office building as they are remodeling. I ran all my cable in bare walls a few weeks back. Telephone and data together. I tested each data line before I finished and left each wall outlet just shoved into the wall box to finish after the rest of the renovation was done.
Fast forward to last weekend when I go back to finalize the wall plates. I don’t have a phone line tester and the phones aren’t hooked up yet, so I am crossing my fingers on those… but one of my data lines now has a broken connection in it. I am going to assume it was tagged by a drywall screw or something. But I have re-done each end 5 times and it still has no connection.
What tools could I use to trace this wire back to the point it’s broken? Does anyone have such tools that I could borrow/rent?
It would be nice to trace it back and find a screw through it. The drywall guy (owners brother no less) blatantly blamed me saying it was like that before he started doing his work. :stick: But the owner saw me meticulously testing each cable as it was finished. So from now on I am going to provide some written form of proof that the cables worked and were tested upon completion from now on. CYOA.
I have a tester that should find it. I use it for finding shorts in wall or underground in A/C lines. I never used it on cat5 but I assume it would work. There is a few different company that make them. They start out at around $600 and go up depending in the attachments.
Sorry I dont lend out my meters I use them on a daily basis. But if your interested I can work something out to come and try to find it. It would have to be on a hourly basis with no guarante to find it!
Well what is the equipment called? I am not familiar with this kind of testing/tracing. I might be able to pull some strings at school if I know what to ask for…
I just refer to it as a wire tracer. I am sure there is a real name for it I would have to look. The one I have is made by Amprobe. Its something like this.
could you try a regular toner and hope that you pick the signal up somewhere in the wall by running the wand down the run? I’m not sure that the want will pick up through drywall though.
Most fox and hound’s aren’t strong enough to go through much more than the sleeving of Cat5, let alone drywall. Wire tracer is your best bet, but they’re money, make friends with someone quick.
Well in theory… BUT, this particular run is routed against a brick wall. It’s hard to explain, but the drywall only goes up about 3 ft of the wall. All of the data, phone, and electric is run along the top of this short wall and dropped down between the furring strips accordingly (they’re vertical). Along the top of the wall is a fancy sill that makes a box around all of the cabling. Not to mention that the entire place is freshly drywalled and painted. If I have to tear out new walls, I want to make the repair job as small as possible and repair the cable.
The owner doesn’t seem to care too much. These will be under a desk that will be built into the wall. I mentioned as an alternative to just use the next jack over (about 10 ft) and permanently mount a switch/hub under the desk and give him a few more ports right there.
why dont you just attach a new cable to the old cable with tape or something and pull the old cable back through … unless its still snagged somewhere on a nail or something youll kill two birds with one stone and pull the bad cable out of the wall while pullinga new one through.
If it was that easy I would have done it. The wire goes through and around a few steel beams that are the main supports for the building. It makes a few zig zags along the way which would be a PITA to route through. Not to mention the dozens of zip ties I used to keep my cables seperate from the power lines in the wall. On top of that they are all stapled (big staples you put in with a hammer…). It just ain’t gonna happen without tearing out drywall.
did you try changing the pairs… you only use 1,2,3,6… if your using “B”… you’re only using or/wh, or, gr/wh, gr… try using blue/brown incase the screw just grazed one pair… did you use a cat-5 tester to see what wires are still connected… if you have 4,5,7,8 connectivity just use those pairs
I think what he is saying is that data is only going over the middle 2 pair, whichever color they are (I forget right now, haven’t done it for a while), so you could just substitute the brown pair for the green pair.
