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Heard a guy at the supply house say he never uses a toner on old apartment lines
I was picking up some RG6 in Cleveland last week and overheard another installer telling the counter guy he just 'taps and hopes' when hooking up old coax in those big apartment buildings. He said toners are a waste of time on crusty, shared-wall wiring. That made my stomach drop, honestly. In my experience, that's how you fry a modem or backfeed signal into a live line. I had a call back six months ago where someone did that exact thing and I spent three hours finding the cross. It wasn't pretty. A simple probe and toner might add five minutes to your job, but it saves a world of pain. Has anyone else run into a mess caused by someone skipping that basic step?
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the_daniel2mo ago
That approach is a great way to create a service call for the next guy. Got stuck tracing out a short once that took all afternoon to fix. A toner is just cheap insurance.
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finleyk871mo ago
@the_daniel you're right that it's cheap insurance, but I push back on it being mandatory every time. Some of those old apartment runs are so corroded a toner gives you a weak or false reading anyway, and a careful tap with a known good modem tells you what you need in half the time. It's not lazy, it's reading the situation.
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