Just realized my old way of running wire in attics was a huge fire risk

I was on a job in a 1970s house in Phoenix last month, and the homeowner asked me to add a motion sensor in the garage attic. I found the old alarm wire from a past system just laying across the blown-in insulation, right on top of the ceiling joists. The installer had just let it sit there, and over the years the insulation had piled up and buried it completely. My boss told me that's a major code violation now (it can overheat), and we had to rerun the whole line in conduit. I've been checking every attic since. Has anyone else run into this and found a good, fast way to secure new wire up there without crushing the insulation?

3 comments

3 Comments

riley_gibson196d ago

Ever see that with old thermostat wire? Found a whole nest of it buried in cellulose last year. We started using those plastic standoff clips, they're cheap and you can just press them onto a joist. Works way better than trying to strap it down tight.

emma_jones6d ago

Oh those clips are a game changer, right? Wonder if they'd work for that old cloth-wrapped stuff too, that stuff is always falling apart.

the_rose6d ago

That point about the insulation piling up over time is exactly it. It's like how clutter in a garage just slowly builds until you can't find anything. @riley_gibson19 has the right idea with those standoff clips, they keep the wire above everything so it doesn't get buried again.