Diy’er here. I have always fished with a glow rod, and the steel chain attachment. I like how you put a bend on the fish and shot it out the upper hole. Thanks for the video.
Hi Donald, I am currently waiting for my aptitude test date for an apprenticeship. I just wanted to say thank you. I’ve been following your channel for the last couple of weeks and your videos are wonderful. I really appreciate all of your wisdom and advice. If I lived out in your neck of the woods, I would love to have you as a mentor if the opportunity presented itself because I know I would be in good hands and trained well to be a successful mechanic. Take care and have a great day. I look forward to more videos!
206 Toys Thanks T, Good luck with the test. If it goes south don’t be discouraged, there is a huge demand for competent electricians outside the union.
I've rewired old plaster houses and they are NO fun. I see the fish tape works for you that's great. I personally will use just about anything like glow sticks, fish tape, drop string in the wall with a heavy nut tied on the end. Whatever works!
I use to use the flat fish tape. I now use a round plumbing snake.. I cut the fat part off.. found it to be easier to snake around in the plaster walls...
That was great!! I have knob and tube in my house that I want to remove . How to fish across the plaster ceiling is what I need is it easy to do? And getting the feed up all those walls... What a job!!!
When I restored my house I told the electrician to just cut away. But the house needed for cosmetic restoration anyway. Now I have 400-amp service wonderful.
Great channel Donald I’m wondering is it common electrician’s not wanting to run new wire in the attic for ceiling lights? I’m having a hard time finding electrician for a small 2 bdrm lath n plaster home with 3 circuits that are nob n tube The one guy I found that seems reasonable doesn’t wanna run anything in the attic and instead running fixtures on the walls instead but I think this would kill my resale value? I live in a small town and there’s not many people to choose from and I like everything about this guy except the attic issue Any thoughts would be appreciated
I imagine you need to turn off the power when fishing a piece of metal up an old or new wall, right? I have a house built in 1959 and I want to get the original part, not the addition, rewired. The wires in the oldest part of the house don't have a ground wire, a third wire and the fabric coating over the two wires is rotted on a lot of it. I ran a power drill in one room and the lights dimmed. In the other room the ceiling fixture hasn't worked correctly in over 20 years. I put a ceiling fan in a few years ago and it blew all four bulbs out, one by one. Before that the room was so bright Now all I have are two lamps and my computer monitor. The fan works but the light bulbs blow out. A florescent light fixture was put in long ago in a kitchen remodel and I have to flip the light 20 times to get both bulbs to light up and the light over the sink won't run if the top ceiling light runs. The stove no longer works but the burners do. Could it be the wires? The tree outside got hit by lightning and it jumped over to the cable line and blew out two ceiling fans, a TV, a VCR, a port in my computer, and a Kenwood Stereo receiver was never the same and a Pioneer stand alone cd burner was ruined too. The overhead in the kitchen was probably killed too by the lightning surge. I "worry" about the wiring in the old part of the house. Stuff doesn't work. The light fixture in the kitchen needs to GO. The kitchen and bathrooms should be gutted and remodeled. I want to hire an electrician. I owe less than $10,000 on the house and then I hope to fix some stuff in this house.
Walls are nasty and scoping is so slow. We scope tough ones but usually we fly through fishing a house. 50+ fishes a day per team sometimes. We have WiFi scopes and hardwired scopes.
This makes the most sense to me too I had a company quote me 25k to rewire a small 2 bdrm lathe n plaster home that has 3 nob and tube circuits left Part of the quote is 10k just for the removal of the nob and tube , it seems much smarter to just disconnect it at the box and run new romex and recpitixskes/ fixtures to the areas that have the nob and tube As long as it’s disconnected I don’t see the problem with this, you gotta weigh the value of gutting your entire home just to removal wire that’s isn’t even connected to the box My problem here is electricians are hard to come by and they don’t seem to want jobs like this, I found a guy I like but he doesn’t want to go in the attic at all . Just run fixtures on the walls which I don’t like that the best but I’m not sure what else to do
Easier…yes, but not correct. Plaster is a better quality repair for many reasons. I made a video explaining why, check out my channels home page. The main video explains why plaster repair is a better option
You've already got a hole at the top of the wall. I always use a jack chain with an iron weight to drop through the top hole and retrieve with a magnet. Why fight it - gravity will help you.
Chain is great for drywall, not so good for lath walls. Atleast not consistently. Steel is the best way to go when dealing with plaster. We always have chain but it’s not always the answer.
I wear gloves, have for years. I cut the thumb, index and middle at the first knuckle. I can work faster, and can still feel the wires. My cuticles still get trashed, my callouses are good for protection as well. Metal lath is viscous that’s for sure.
why not use a wire cart , that wire must be a mess , a wire cart would make those pulls so much easier , and i find using a fiber glass fish is much easier also
Fiberglass is too stiff, it limits your ability to maneuver in the wall, wire carts get in the way, especially when multiple people are on site pullin and fishing.
@@DontHaveTime523 Whatever floats your boat, I found after rewiring over 200 homes what works best for me. If you find using different methods works for you then rock on, no one is telling you there is only one way.
unless maybe your in an open attic and drop the wire straight as an arrow while simultaneously shaking the wire a little as you drop it to clear the lathe using gravity to help kind of keep it straight
In this day of wide screen video on displays and phones, the video would be so much better if you would just turn your phone sideways, let the camera re-orient, then start the video. We would then have a full screen of video instead of the small narrow portion of the screen.
The reason people need help is due to crappy contractors. People want good work done but there aren't nearly enough skilled tradesmen to do the amout of work demand out there. I'd guess 50% of contractors have no business existing. They're either outright scammers or dudes that worked a few days on a jobsite and have gained a couple insights here and there. The other 50% know how to do a job properly but maybe half of those guys are either too lazy or have substandard quality expectations. So only 25% will do a truly satisfactory job from a technical perspective. Overall only 5-10% will actually do a job the exact way it is meant to be done, as if they were working on their own home, and taking the appropriate steps without skipping stuff such as cleanup and proper prep. Most homeowners are settling for cleaning up dirty floors themselves afterward or paying ridiculous prices from super corporate franchises with slimy multipage contracts and carsalesman tactics - the latter will make stuff look good but they don't have the truly master level guys on the job doing the actual work or even actively supervising. They hire day laborers to do it all. Or at least that's been my experience - I've had all types and now try and do everything myself, which is pretty impossible if you think about it as people spend years perfecting some of these skills.
Do you remove any accessible knobs and tubes when you're in the walls? How do you abandon old wiring? I'm rewiring my own house and we have partial knob and tube. I'm removing all the easily accessible stuff in the attic, but I'm curious if you use anything like long nail pullers to get knobs out of the wall. I want to try using the existing wiring for fishing if I can, but I doubt it will work in most cases. This video is extremely helpful so thank you for posting it.
Wow Don....I wish that my arms were long enough to have the overhead reach that you do! You make it look so easy! Of course I'm a newbie to fishing; got into this by buying a hundred year old house; fortunately it was rewired sometime in the late 40's to mid 50's w/ some early type 2 wire Romex style wiring?; so I figured that I could follow suit by upgrading w/ modern 12 gauge Romex; but man! what a PITA!
What sort of money might it cost to rewire a house of three bedrooms, 1 and 1/2 bathroom, a living room, dining room and kitchen, plus the washing machine room which also houses the water heater. What are we talking, 5 thousand, 10? I just have no idea. And how long would such a project typically last? I live alone. I'm 58 and this is an expense I feel is necessary, like a good roof. I replaced the roof in 2014.
So you had to cut a hole at the top of the wall and ceiling. That's a bummer. Maybe such a small hole won't be too hard to fix, a piece of drywall and some sort of something, maybe lattice to hold in in place.
@@DonaldMillerElectric Agree with Matthew Wong. Computer screens and TVs are landscape not portrait, so shoot video horizontally. Other than that, good video and good tips. I admit it made me wince a little when you cut your fish, but I get why now. :-)
if your making holes to fish wires, why not just make them alittle bigger so your hand can fit in there to grab the fish? The hole are going to have to be patched regardless. Just curious.
Get Good Son The bigger the hole the more patching required, the more lath you cut the worse the cracking. The trick is to keep the holes small so you can patch the plaster with a brown coat. One more note- the bigger the hole the bigger the mess, plaster dust is ridiculously messy.
@@DonaldMillerElectric It’s completely criminal and we haven’t been able to find anybody to fix the job. I’ve interviewed at least three different electrical companies
@@DrAlexVasquezICHNFM We are based outside of Philadelphia. We travel from time to time. The pipe work would have to be removed, plaster cut in small areas, then patched. Wood would be filled with wood putty and sanded.
I know the old wires would be stapled to the studs. I guess it is OK for a licensed electrician, say in my state of Florida, to not have to fasten the new wires to studs in the wall. Also, what about blown in paper insulation? It's soft and it might even keep a fish tape off of the walls and plaster humps on the lattice. And one could always vacuum a hole down the wall, I suppose they could.
If your working on a finished wall and fishing the wire, its consider to be fished, at least here in Canada. All the staples do is to keep the wire from getting stuck between a stud and the wall, as that is a fire hazard. Now if you opened that wall up for any reason you would have to staple that fished conduit as per the code in your state.
The stapling also keeps the cable 1.25 inches from the wall where a nail or screw may come from, although if it's fished enough slack will allow the cable to push out of the way.
