The BEST Way To Trace Wires Hidden Inside Your Walls! DIY How To For Beginners!

do you have a bunch of these scattered wires that are coming out of a jbox or electrical box and you just don't know where they're going to where you're in luck on today's video because i'll be showing you how to trace these wires so stay tuned [Music] i'm jay from fix this house if you're new to the channel please consider pressing the subscribe and notification bell so you could 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 always have the current electrical codes in your current area and you have the proper permits make sure you turn off the power from your circuit breaker and if you're unsure and unconfident we're working with any type of electrical work please contact and get a certified qualified electrician to do the job with that being said let's get into this episode so like what i mentioned earlier let's just say you come across this j box where all the wires are just all spider webbed up or maybe you're working on this particular j box and you took out the outlet and the switch or receptacle and you accidentally didn't label it and now you don't know where it's going to well i got a simple solution for your friends and that's why i built this mock-up right here let me just show you what's going on if you've been following my electrical series on this channel i use this mock-up a lot on today's mock-up i set it up where i bunched up all these wires actually there's three cables that are going through this j box and they're pretty much scattered all over behind this drive wall so they're either leading up to this light fixture j box this random wire area right here or they're just going to that other single gang j box over there so our goal for this video is we're going to try to trace out where all these are we're gonna label them and see if we come across to the right one there's two parts in this video first we're gonna test out which of these k or wires lead up to which area the second part we're gonna try to see if we can trace and outline where these wires are coming from by using our tool the tool that we'll be using in today's video is this cable tracer by clean tools it comes with the toner and the probe and it also comes with a cool um carrying case so in case that you want to use this or you want to try this product out for yourself i'll leave this on the description down below i'll leave a link so it'll make it easier for you to find this product now this comes with two alligator clips a red and a black and it also comes with a phone jack we are just going to focus on wires which is these alligator clips but it also comes with all these various selections right here again simple to use all you got to do is turn it on you can change out the tone modes simple as it is all you got to do is turn it on turn both on and it's going to trace out where the cable is simplest way to explain this is that you attach these to whatever cable or wire that you want to trace and the closer you get to the end of it the the volume of the tone gets louder and louder so some of the key features of the probe is that it comes with this replaceable tip it does come with a light so just in case you're working in a very dark area nice speaker it has a earbud jack right there so if you want to use headphones you can uh insert it through this jack and what's cool about this it has a verifier just say that you only you finally found the paired wires that you want to do it by using these two this thing will light up and it will confirm that that is the right one and i'll show you that all later on pretty much you got the alligator clips for this simple as that and it's pretty much different test modes and whatnot but we're gonna go and just use this for toning okay so let's get to it one very important thing before you start tracing and attaching these clips to the cables you must turn off the power from your circuit breaker not only is it so dangerous but it would also mess up your tools they'll probably attaching this to a live cable will pretty much destroy it so make sure that you turn off the power from your circuit breaker you want to just try to do your best to group up all the the wires to other respective cables so by doing that you're just pretty much going to follow each one and see where they all lead to if you can see the sleeve where they're actually going to that's even perfect now you know where they're actually grouped up and that's half of the battle i'm going to go and trace out this two right here we're mostly gonna be working with the we're not gonna be working with the ground we're gonna be working with the hot and the neutral separate that two inches apart minimum and the black or the red it doesn't matter where it goes to all you're gonna do is attach it to the bare wire okay so i'm just gonna attach it right there and then attach it right there do now is just turn on the device so once it says continuity and it's green then you're ready to go and it actually defaults to 800 hertz but you can scroll around there and pick one whichever tone that you want but we're just going to stick with the default you can control the volume levels go and try out that light fixture first and see if that's the one that's that connected to so we do have a faint sound let me turn up the volume let's go test out this miscellaneous spot right here again still raspy to this one gang right there it's solid so if you look at the bottom of the probe there's a positive and a negative red clip always goes to the positive the red is connected to the white so the white has to go to the positive side of the probe black is connected to the black just to make it easier we're going to connect that to the negative port to the positive and then we're going to hook up the black to the negative you don't even have to turn on the probe this probe is actually off right when you connect those two this thing will light up if that lights up that means you have the right connection let's just say that you took this out okay and we put the ground wire in here let's see if it's still light up see notice how it doesn't light up let's go and test something out let's move the black clip to that ground wire and see if that lights up see that since i moved that to the black clip it lit up so i'm gonna label this group number one okay that's group that's group cable number one let's go ahead and attach it to this one now and see where it goes okay the sound the sound gets loud here but if you go d if you go deviate and go elsewhere let's just say we're going to the one gang right here the sound is still there but it's very faint we go to this miscellaneous wire it's faint but as we get closer here there it is solid but notice it lit up that looks like it's the right pair so we're gonna label that number two the last part connect the red to the white the black with the black so the tone is coming here the tone is coming out from here [Applause] not here it's a little faint right here but it's super loud right there lit up that's the right pair we'll pair that number three we're gonna go see if we can actually trace these wires by where they're actually going to by following their trails let's go back to the third one that we did let's just attach that to the white attach this to the black looks like it's loud here [Music] [Applause] so here here so here this would be so we got so we have run number three two so black to black let me point this out to you see that these are connected that's number two line and this is number two if we put this together as those are touching there's no continuity okay even though that these are separate but the other end at the top is connected there's no continuity continuity it has to be that they are the black and the white are not touching so faint tone faint tone looks like it's loud right here faint but it's a little higher so it's actually up here i changed my mind so actually up here neutral black loud there from here to here i'm seeing here looks like right here yeah it's pretty weird it's following the tone so it looks like it's coming from down here i'm out of tape there's a sound there but definitely right here so i think it's a little more down on this area here so let me let me move down here to here and then it goes up there this is not meant for this but we're gonna go try it anyways now let's go remove this drywall and let's see how accurate we come across and we actually label that out [Music] all right you guys ready for the results let's go and this one came actually pretty close so let me know in the comment section down below what you guys think for the moment of truth let's go and go with start with number one moving i'm gonna move this see where it's moving right there it's the bottom one one trace it and that's correct good that's one point number two right here removing it it's this way it's this cable right here right there it's one middle and number two perfect third it's this one let's move that around so it's this one following here here three all right so that's three out of three you can't trace single wires for this it doesn't have to be paired all you have to do is take the red alligator clip and let's just say we want to trace the hot wire right here the black attach it to the one you want to trace and then for the black alligator clip it's preferred to attach it to a different uh cable but you have to attach most preferably to the ground wire everything is nice and spread apart from end to end along with here then you make sure on the on the toner that it's on continuity okay and that when you're tracing this if you go right here so notice how it's a little faint there but it gets loud here it's a little faint loud faint really loud again you can use this tool with any type of wiring not just um for 12 gauge or 14 gauge wire you can use these in different cat level wiring as well and you can use this for automotive as well again this is just the basic of wire tracing this is just to make it nice and simple i didn't go through all the details using the phone check but again this is just for the beginning part for the beginner diy-ers if you just want to know how to trace each wire i think this is the best tool to use again if you're interested on this product again it's the clean tool wire tracer i'll leave this on the description down below on the link make sure you check that out again friends if you found this video super helpful and if you like the way i did the mock-up on the back and the way i presented the video please hit that big thumbs up it will greatly help the channel out and again leave in the comment section down below what you think and what you use to trace those wires behind your wall i'll see you friends on the next video [Music]

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 536,125

Keywords: the best way to trace wire hidden inside your walls DIY how to for beginners, wire trace, wire tracing, electrical cable, wire trace diy, hidden wires, hidden cable, electrical outlet, electrical receptacle, electrical switch, Klein Tools, wire tracer, volt meter, continuity test, polarity test, electrical DIY, electrical how to, how to, do it yourself, how to find hidden cable, wire finder, cable finder, automotive wiring, how to trace electrical wires

Id: k90ejXHl52I

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022