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Rant: the old head who said skip the toner and probe every drop nearly cost me a whole day
Tbh I get why people push the "just trace it by hand" way, but I think that advice is flat wrong for most jobs now. Six months ago a guy I trained under in Fort Worth said fancy tone generators were for rookies who don't know their stuff, and that a real installer labels and traces every line by feel. So I did it his way on a 12 unit apartment building off Rosedale, and I burned 5 hours crawling through a hot attic trying to match drops to units, and I still got two of them crossed. The next morning I clipped my $40 toner on and had the whole thing sorted in about 20 minutes. I'm not saying skip the basics, but telling new guys to skip the tools is bad advice and it wastes their day. How many of y'all still trace by hand when you got a tester sitting in the van?
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felixw9910d ago
Sounds like the toner fixed a problem your method created. You crossed two drops because you were rushing through a hot attic after five hours, not because hand tracing is bad. The old head's point was that a guy who knows the building can trace by feel and spot things a toner misses, like a wire stapled too tight or a run that doesn't match the print. I still trace by hand on most jobs because it forces me to actually learn the layout, and the next time I'm in that building I know it cold. A toner finds the wire but it won't tell you why it's there or if it's about to fail. Tools are great when you're stuck, but leaning on them first keeps you from ever getting good at the basics.
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