Spent 6 hours chasing a bad ground in a new build

I was out at a new subdivision in Phoenix last Tuesday, running RG6 for a four unit quad. All the signal tests were passing fine at the tap, but every single unit had random tiling on the higher channels. I checked the connectors, the splitters, even swapped out the drop line once. After about four hours I finally thought to look at the grounding block. Whoever installed it had the ground wire pinched under a screw and it was barely making contact. It took me another two hours to verify and redo it right. That little mistake cost me a whole day of work. Has anyone else had a ground issue drive them crazy like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

hill.jade29d ago

That 4 hour mark is brutal, man. I notice this sort of thing happens way more often than it should in almost every trade. It's like people rush the small stuff because they think it's not important, but that little mistake turns into a huge headache later. Same thing with a loose screw on a light switch or a valve that's only hand tight. Everyone wants to finish fast, but nobody wants to take the extra 30 seconds to make sure the foundation is solid. Glad you found it before you had to go back a third time lol.

sarah_hart29d ago

Oh man, the "loose screw on a light switch" thing hits home. I literally had a call back once because a guy said his light switch plate was "wiggly," which turned out to be a single screw that wasn't started right, maybe a 20 second fix if I'd just paid attention the first time. It's always the tiny stuff that bites you, like how I've seen people skip checking a gasket because it "looks fine," then you're tearing apart a whole assembly an hour later. You're dead right that nobody budgets that extra 30 seconds for the foundation, but that's exactly where the problems hide.