Telephone, cable television and virtually all low-voltage technicians must frequently thread wiring through walls. Most often the walls are double walls — the wire must first be threaded through an interior wall partition, then a second, exterior partition.
The space between those partitions is generally filled with insulation. That’s a problem, especially with wiring that has little stiffness or tensile strength: it bends inside the wall and can’t be forced through. The same thing happens in floors with insulation below the subflooring, and in ceilings with deep insulation.
How we got startedIn November of 1997, I became an outside installation and maintenance installer. My father-in-law visited us that Christmas, and after the festivities I invited him to take a look at the tools of my new trade.
While going through various communications paraphernalia, I showed him a tool I was using for getting wire through walls. It was a rod with a hole in it. A retired phone employee had rigged it up. I laughed and said it was better than a coat hanger — but not much.
He left that day thinking, “There’s got to be a better way to handle such a simple task.”
A few months later the Thread-iT was born. He gave it to me and I loved it. Naturally, I told my fellow technicians, and before I knew it the company handed me a 600-unit order.
With that kind of response, there was no choice but to set up a company to produce the Thread-iT.
— Laurie Christenson
“I wish I’d had this tool when I was a technician.”Bob Warner — Verizon trainer
“This tool improves my performance and my vocabulary!”Paul Adams — AT&T contractor through Tesinc
“This is the cat’s meow.”Leighton Petersen — Border States Electric Supply
“I should have thought of this.”Daryl Hovis — Citizens Communications
“Why didn’t I think of this?”Dan Woods — Pac Bell
Thread-iT is stocked by electrical and telecom distributors across the country, several with online ordering.