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Found a trick for buried wire locators that saved me 3 hours today
I had a job in a strip mall parking lot where the customer wanted a new motion sensor at the back door. The old wire was buried under 4 inches of concrete patch from a previous repair. Instead of guessing and digging up the whole area, I used a toner probe on the exposed end and followed the tone through a piece of rebar I stuck in the ground nearby. It pinpointed the wire path in about 10 minutes. I had been fighting with this for over an hour before I thought of it. Anyone else got a cheap trick for finding hidden alarm wires without a fancy locator?
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noah_barnes1mo ago
That "fighting with it for over an hour" part hit close to home. It's funny how the simplest solutions are usually right there but we have to get frustrated first before we see them. I've noticed that same pattern in a lot of trades, we overcomplicate things until we're backed into a corner.
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amy6921mo ago
Oh man, the amount of times I've wrestled with a stuck zipper for 20 minutes, only to realize it was just twisted at the bottom... once I literally threw a jacket across the room and then calmly picked it up and fixed it in 2 seconds flat. My cat just stared at me like I was losing my mind. It's like our brains have to hit the panic wall first before they'll let the easy answer in. Maybe it's a pride thing, too - we want to prove we can handle it the hard way first.
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