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Just found out my fish tape was causing shorts in this house in Phoenix
Guy from the supply house mentioned it last week. Said the insulation on my old steel tape was worn down and it was grounding out on some aluminum siding. Swapped to a fiberglass one and the intermittent issues stopped. Anyone else run into this with older metal fish tapes?
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wade8716d agoMost Upvoted
That old steel tape is probably fine in most houses, but once you hit a place with modern metal siding or metal studs, it's like asking for trouble. I had a buddy who chased a short for three days in a commercial job before realizing his tape was touching the metal conduit at a junction box every time he fed it through. Swapped to fiberglass and the problem vanished. The thing is, those steel tapes just wear down over time, and the insulation gets nicked from sharp edges in the boxes. You basically have a live wire rubbing against ground every time you push it through.
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jasonallen6d ago
Read somewhere that the insulation on steel tapes can crack from the Phoenix heat alone. Made me paranoid about my own gear.
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spencer7826d ago
@wade871 your buddy is lucky he only spent three days on that lol. I would've been pulling my hair out by day two. Old steel tapes are basically a ticking time bomb once the insulation starts to go. That grounding out on aluminum siding thing is real too. I had a similar issue in a Phoenix house with stucco and metal mesh underneath. The tape would arc every time it touched the lath. Fiberglass is the only way to go now. No more random shorts or chasing ghosts through the walls for me.
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