I recently discovered that many of the rooms in my house were pre-wired with CAT5E. Only two of the rooms were terminated with wall plates. How can I locate the cable in the rest of the rooms? I don’t want to randomly punch holes into the wall. Is there a tracker of some kind?

Thanks

There are two possibilities I’d look at:

1)  Most builders use CAT5E for phone lines, so there is a better than average chance that that some of the cables are terminated on a phone jack wall plate.  Any extra non terminated lines are going to be a pain in the butt to locate.

2)  If the wires are unconnected, you can use a tone and probe (you can buy them at Home Depot) and take the probe unit all over the house to trace where the wire is going.  This is tedious and time consuming, but it works fairly well.

3)  If the contractor that ran the wires had their stuff together, the bundles will be behind the drywall and secured with a locator bundle.  I don’t remember if it’s a powerful magnet, or some sort of RF unit, but that is what they used on my home.  I nearly had a hissy fit when the drywallers covered up all of my wiring, and then the AV contractor came in with a probe/meter, and marked the locations of the wire bundles within a 1/2 inch!  Pretty cool stuff!

Good luck

I guess I need to proofread…. I guess that’s 3 options…

Paul

Thanks. Found them all by just taking off the phone and cable wall plates!!!

To locate a hidden Wire-

Option-1
Oh the joys of finding wires hidden by drywaller or installer. You can use a standard toner to locate the wire thru the drywall surface. This is only possible if you connect one lead of the toner to the white/blue wire. Take the other lead from the toner and connect to a known ground. This will amplify the toner signal and allow you to hear the tone thru the drywall.

Option-2

If accessible, climb into the attic and find where the wire goes down the wall, in most cases the wires will be stubbed either by an existing switch or outlet. Once you have located them, get yourself a retro box/ or ring and cut in a new box for the devices being added