How To Fish And Pull Electrical Wire From Attic Or Crawlspace To Outlet! DIY Tutorial For Beginners!

on this episode i'm going to be showing you two methods on how to easily feed electrical cable from your attic down through your wall so stay tuned [Music] to fix's house if you're new to the channel please consider pressing the subscribe notification bell so you can always be in tune on diys how-to videos and product reviews that i do within this channel just a quick disclaimer we are going to be working with electrical components on today's episode my electrical codes and your electrical codes might be different so always make sure that you're always current and up to date with your current electrical codes always turn off the power from your circuit breaker whenever working with any type of electrical and if you're unsure and unconfident we're working any type of electrical please hire a certified and qualified professional with that being said my full disclaimer is in the description down below let's get into today's episode so let's just say you want to install a new outlet or maybe a new switch on your wall the first thing you want to do is you want to locate the stud on where to find where those cavities are in between your wall this one i'm using my franklin stud finder again all the tools and materials that i use in this video i'll leave it in the description down below so check out those links if you're interested on any of the tools stud there so i'm going to mark the where that stud is oh and it looks like there might be a double stud right there there you go now i know that these are where the studs are this is the cavity that i'm going to be working on i know for sure that this is where i'm going to be feeding my wire off so i'm going to trace this cavity all the way up to my ceiling so from this cavity i'm going to go trace this up all the way up to my ceiling right there so you can even use your stud finder and mark it up there to make it easier for you so what you can do to mark out this cavity when you go up to your attic you can use a drill bit to go and drill right there and leave it inside the hole and when you go up the attic you can just pull that drill bit out or in this case i'm just going to be using this 12 gauge wire it was just a piece of scrap that was laying around i want to make sure that this is nice and straight so here it is using this wire since that's just dry wall up there it's very easy to penetrate you can even use a piece of toothpick or a wooden skewer stick whichever works you might want to stay away a little bit off the edge because sometimes there is a metal bead right here a metal corner bead that if you try poking it through it might be a little difficult if you have a drill bit you can go penetrate through that easy then you can easily patch this up with spackle later on when you're done so that when you're up there you can pull this up and then yeah you know exactly where it's at so now let's go get access to our attic so now that we know that here's the wire that we just penetrated through from the ceiling so the closest top plate that which that runs i might have to lift up this walking board i'm going to have to drill right through here so i'm just going to find the middle of this and i'm going to drill right through this top plate so i can get access to that cavity down there that being said we're gonna go and simulate all this onto my mock-up from below because i don't want to run an actual wire down there i want to show you from my mock-up so let's get to the mock-up area so now you figure out where you want to drill that hole on top of your top plate stud i'm going to simulate now on this mock-up right here let's just pretend that this is quite the similar one that we located on the wall that we were trying to look for that cavity this is the edge of that stud this is what the cavity is between this edge of the stud and that end of the stud we're gonna feed the wire through here and let's just simulate that i already cut out this cutout for this two gang j box or a single gang j box is totally up to you this is where we're gonna feed out that electrical cable all right so let me show you how to drill from that top plate let's pretend this is the top plate stud that was above my attic i'm gonna be using a three quarter inch spade bit right here now this is the common one we use when we're whenever we're feeding electrical cable down but depending whatever you're using like cat 5 cat6 or whatever cat cable the little thin ones you might just end up using a regular drill bit but for feeding wire electrical cable 14 2 or 12 2 gauge wire i like to use the three quarter uh spade bit locate where the middle of that top plate stud is drill right through that middle okay so you're gonna so there are many great tools that you can use to fish that cable but one of the greatest ones that i like to use to fish on vertical um is the klein tools this is the glow rod set this is divided into three different sizes and it equals up to 15 feet total but each rod is 5 feet in length what's great about this glow rods is it glows in the dark and you can attach them all all three at the same time two at the same time or you can just use one rod at a time it has these hooks and it is you know you can take that out if you don't need it but we're just for this example we're just going to be taking out and using one glow rod right here and it's very flexible and you can use that to fish down through that hole okay so if you're interested on this tool i'll leave it on the description down below so for this glow rod you can go easily feed it through that hole at the top this hole was already here the perfect way to do is make sure you make the hole exactly where that cutout is at the end of this rod i'm just using my 3m super 33 plus electrical tape and i'm just wrapping it and taping it to this cable up to this rod make sure that you try to tape it at the very end you don't have you don't leave any hook points that's the reason also why we do a three quarter inch hole because once you tape the rod and the cable together it gets pretty thick along with the tape and with that you can easily slide it through that penetration hole so you can pull that glow rod from this hole and from then on you can just pull the cable right out and then on tape this and there you have it you just easily fished it down through that wall cavity okay so that is the easiest way to do it method number one all right so with that being said if you have any questions on this and if you like this one leave it in the comment section down below before we get into method number two for method number two sometimes you're gonna come across a situation where you're gonna take your glow rod and you're gonna stick it down the hole that you just drilled and you're gonna come into this stop right here there's just something blocking in the way to get to that newly cut cut out on the drywall for your receptacle these are called fire stops or fire blocks fire stops or fire blocks are put in between the cavities these usually run through the whole span of the wall i'm usually staggered um these are put on so that it can help slow down the spread of fire in case there's a flame or fire that's going on and also may prevent the flames from going up to the second or to the second floor or to the attic if you come across this example you're pushing down the rod and you do have a stop like this you have no choice but to drill right through it now the first method of drilling right through this is going from the top plate all the way down for this instance i like to use this three quarter inch flex bit by klein tools this is 54 inches in length so it's pretty pretty long so if you're interested on this tool as well i'll leave it in the description down below i'll leave a quick link in case you need it all you got is three quarters already so you don't need to use the three-quarter spade bit but if you want to use that and then this it's totally up to you aside from using the flex bit the other tool that i like to use with this is this endoscope now i made a video on this and i like to use this tool a lot because it's so useful it has so many uses it has a camera and some light on the end of it and you can stick this on any hole um in case that you want to know what's inside there while you're drilling sometimes you don't know what you're drilling down there and you just want to know um you want to focus on where you're going to hit that drill bit again this is optional you don't have to use this but in case you do what i like to do if i do drill onto the top plate i drill another hole this end scope is lengthy it has a lot of run to it and you can flex this and make this straight you can easily just shove this inside the hole and you can inspect that fire stop or fire block right there just like what you see now you got the flex bit right through you're trying to figure out where the middle of that fire block is with your endoscope you can go and look around where that drill bit is now we can figure out where the middle of that fire stop is and place our drill drill bit right in the middle so you can use this hand in hand with both of them and it's very useful so you have two options as well you can either use your glow rod or you can just use this simply you know since this bends anyways tape your cable at the end of this and then you can just pull this out through that hole that is method number two strategy number one another strategy that you can do is this you don't actually have to go all the way to the top and drill through that top plate right there you can go through this right if you don't have access up to the attic and you do have a fire stop right here you can use your stud finder and actually try to find where that fire stop is you just have to instead of going um horizontal like this just go vertical like so and there you can find where that stud is located when you make a cutout like this you can expose the stud on each side and you can go and get your spade bit and drill right through that fire block through here the only problem with this method is you will have to go and do some patch up work with drywall and if you want to learn how to patch up drywall i made videos on how to patch six ways to patch up drywall like this i'll leave the link on the top right here if you want to watch that video i like to give options hopefully you find this one helpful so friends those are two methods that i got for you if you want to run cable or wire from your attic through your wall through that new outlet or through that new switch that you're trying to install so let me know in the comment section below what's your method and which one you prefer again remember on method two option two if you don't have attic access you can go through the option two route from method two so if you have any questions or concerns make sure you comment down below and let me know what you think of the video if you found this video helpful friends and you found a big help please hit that big thumbs up press the subscribe and notification bell and i'll see your friends on the next video [Music]

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 113,931

Keywords: electrical wire, fishing wire through wall, electrical outlet, electrical switch, electrical how to, electrical DIY, do it yourself, home DIY, home renovation, running electrical wire, electrical receptacle, home wiring, house wiring, wooden stud, stud wiring, home improvement, house reno, home reno, fix this house, home outlet, home switch, electrical tutorial, home electrical, How to fix and pull electrical wire from attic or crawlspace to outlet, fire stops

Id: mM7LfOb9otc

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Mon May 16 2022