Accidentally found a better way to wire motion sensors in drop ceilings

I've been installing alarms for about 4 years now, mostly residential but some commercial. Last week I was running wires for a motion sensor in a warehouse with those T-bar drop ceilings. Normally I just fish the wire through the tiles and call it good. But this one spot had a beam in the way, so I clipped a small zip tie to the wire and used a magnetic pickup tool to guide it over the beam from above. It worked way better than I expected, took me like 10 minutes instead of the usual 30. The sensor mounted clean and the wire didn't snag on anything. I'm thinking about buying a longer magnetic pickup tool for jobs with tricky ceiling runs. Any of you guys use magnets for stuff like this or is there a better trick I'm missing?

2 comments

2 Comments

avery6296d agoMost Upvoted

Try using a telescoping magnet from Harbor Freight?

lucas_johnson6d ago

Did you hear about people using those to fish dropped screws out of engine bays, @avery629?