Gone fishing!

Running and hiding wires and cables can be a time consuming and labour intensive task. What at first looks simple can often become one of those annoyingly fiddly jobs which eats into your time, and ultimately your profit.

Having the correct tools to hand can go some, if not all, of the way to solving these glitches.

Fishing between levels, for example, is one of the most common snagging points for anyone installing a cabled system.

Wires can easily be lost, or all too often meet unexpected obstacles.

Fish tape, although the product of choice for many years, does not always provide a means of overcoming these problems.

Thankfully, the installation market has moved on and alternative tools and systems are available.

The Labour Saving Devices range of wire and cabling tools is one such option. It provides the installer with a number of systems to speed up and simplify even the most challenging of installations.

These products have been developed in response to the real-time, on-site, complex challenges faced by professional installers, with an understanding of the problems associated with cable and wire applications.

The Labour Saving Device alternative to fish tape is a good example.

All too often tape can become lost or snagged inside a wall. The Creep-Zit kit, which consists of five 6ft luminous green fibreglass rods, each with a diameter of 0.159in, overcomes these problems, and makes fish tape obsolete.

Four of the rods have male/female screw-on connectors.

What at first looks simple can often become one of those annoyingly fiddly jobs which eats into your time, and ultimately your profit

One, with a female connector on one end and a bullnose head at the other, is ideal for attaching wire.

A 1ft ballchain attached to the bullnose grabs the wire when inside the wall, while an ‘eggbeater’ shaped head is used as a guide to keep the rods from getting stuck on obstacles and to provide a ‘wheel’ to ‘creep’ from side to side.

Another possible addition to the installer’s workbox is the Wall Eye.

This is a periscope-type unit which incorporates a flashlight and mirror, enabling the user to see inside walls, pipes or ceilings, via a 2in diameter hole.

The Wall Eye eliminates blind ‘hits and misses’ when searching for holes in fire blocks, top or bottom plates, studs or joists.

For identifying loose wires and cables, the Identify-Zit kit is available.

This has a decoder and one to 32 pre-numbered caps (as either alligator clips, RJ45s, RJ11s or CAT5s) which eliminate the time consuming problem created when trying to identify unmarked wire or cable runs.

The decoder not only identifies up to 32 lines at a time, it also signals on the LED display if a specific run is open (OC), shorted (CC) or even if there is a resistance problem (OO).

With some success already in the USA, Labour Saving Device systems are available in the UK from specialist distribution company The Max.

The Max offers a range of ‘kit’ systems which incorporate everything needed to run and conceal wires in pre-wire or retrofit situations for empty walls, insulated walls, attics and crawl spaces, between baseboard and tack-strips, etc.