One trick that saved me on a nasty attic run today

I was digging through a 150-degree attic in Phoenix last month trying to fish a line from the far side to the panel when my tape kept snagging on blown-in insulation. I grabbed a piece of romex sheath, slid it over the fish tape for the first 10 feet, and it glided right through without catching a single time. Have any of you found a weird temporary fix like that for your worst pulls?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan.nancy29d ago

My last attic pull I spent ten minutes trying to thread a fish tape through a roll of R-30 that had settled like concrete. Ended up using a wire coat hanger taped to the end of the tape to guide it, bent at a 45 degree angle like a tiny fishing hook. Worked way better than it should have and I felt like a genius until I snagged it on a truss and had to cut the hanger off. You'd think after twenty years I'd have real tools for this stuff, but nah, just more trashcan engineering.

umamurphy28d ago

Pulled a half-baked move myself last week that barely counts as engineering. I took a plastic straw from a gas station coffee lid and jammed it over the tip of my fish tape to push through some old cellulose that had packed down like cement. It worked for about three feet before the straw got crushed and I ended up digging it out with a bent coat hanger anyway. Tbh my whole toolbag is just a graveyard of failed field experiments like that. Ngl sometimes I wonder if I'm actually saving time or just adding more steps to the pain.