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Talked to a retired installer at the supply house about old school wiring
I was grabbing some 22/4 at the supply house last week and got talking to a guy who used to install in the 80s. He said they'd run a single 4-conductor wire for everything, even for a multi-zone keypad, and just tap off it at each point. He told me, 'We made one spool do the work of three.' It made me think about how we just pull a new wire for every single thing now. Has anyone else run into old systems wired like that and had to figure out the taps?
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the_anthony2mo ago
Found a system like that last month and spent half a day just finding all the taps. They hid them in the wall like buried treasure. My helper asked why I was groaning so much, and I told him I was just feeling my age. That old school stuff makes our 'one wire, one run' method look a little wasteful, but at least my troubleshooting doesn't feel like an archeology dig.
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kaih362mo ago
Tbh I'd need a map and a snack for that.
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christopher9432mo ago
But what if all those hidden taps were actually genius? They kept the walls clean and forced you to really learn the system instead of just swapping parts.
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