What does "wall fishing" mean? Question

Usually I hear it as just fishing. This is the process of getting a wire or cable from one place to another through inaccessible (or less accessible than desired) areas. That includes hollow walls (e.g., drywall over studs), space between the ceiling and the floor above, attics, crawl spaces, etc. There are three general varieties that I have dealt with:

• Low-voltage wiring through open spaces

This includes telephone, computer network, coaxial cable (for TV or internet), alarms, doorbells, etc. Basically anything that is below 50V and relatively low power. In most jurisdictions this is largely unregulated.

• Electrical wires in conduit

Actually, anything in conduit, but most often conduit is used because it is required, which is for mains voltage electrical - typically 120V - 240V.

• Electrical cables

This is typically non-metallic cable, commonly referred to by the brand name Romex.

Fishing can be done using a fish tape:

(Image from Amazon)

or a number of other tools. Basically the idea is to maneuver the end of the fish tape to one location (e.g., a junction box or a hole in a wall or the top of a wall) and then connect (tape a cable or tie a string or wire) one end of the fish tape or pole or other device to either the cable or wire that you are trying to pull through. You then pull the fish tape out. If you connected the fish tape directly to a wire or cable, you are done. If you connected a pull string then you can connect the other end of the pull string to the wire or cable and use the string to pull it through.

There are a lot of tricks you learn by doing this many times. For example, if you have several wires to pull through, it often makes sense to pull them one at a time with a pull string but keep adding each cable to another spot on the pull string (pull string is inexpensive) instead of pulling the same string back and forth.

posted 11 months ago

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manassehkatz‭ staff

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