What is this wire in my wall?

It sounds like a 120V power line. Don't mess with it until you know it is dead.

Just looked at the wire. It is stranded wire. .. Who knows? I suggest you safely terminate the ends, push it back into the wall and then repair the hole. I would consider it as a possible 120V hazard until I was certain otherwise.

Looks like some kind of low voltage cable to me. Can you check outside or in the basement behind / below and trace where it goes, visually?

I'm thinking alarm contact...

Looks like audio feed cable. Any time had an intercom or such in the house? Tony

Since it came near the cable, was there ever a satellite dish, the older big ones? Or a Roto-tenna?

Looks like it could be left over from an antenna rotor. Some of those are 3 wire. In which case, the other end of the wire should be up by your TV antenna.

dickm

RS-232... Can you hook up a projector a alarm some where?

Christian

On 13 Nov 2004 10:39:16 -0800 "Jason L." used 8 lines of text to write in newsgroup: alt.home.repair

Some idiot satellite installer might have used it for a phone line. Does it have any voltage on it?

Thanks for the help folks. If it is indeed a power line, I don't think it's live because I (rather foolishly) fiddled with it hoping that it was a phone line. A couple people mentioned a satellite hookup - ironically enough, that's what I'm dealing with. I'm pretty sure no previous owner ever had a satellite system, but I can't be sure. We've had our DirecTV setup in this house for about 6 years, but we never hooked up the phone line (not completely necessary if you don't order pay-per-view shows). We recently upgraded to a Tivo-equipped receiver and you need the phone line to activate your DVR service. I had always assumed that the wire was a phone line, but when I went to install the jack, I was baffled by the wire internals.

The only other clue I found was this: in the basement I can see two grey wires that look to be the same gauge running parallel. The come from the finished part of the basement (so I can't see where they really terminate) and run towards the family room, but disappear up into the insulation and wall framing. If one of these is the "mystery" wire, I'm not sure what the other one is for.

Just curious: what does Budys mean?

First, that was the best graphic picture I've seen in ages. You are really great with that digicam and whatever program.

Second, it looks like about 18 gage wire, and I have totally no clue what it might be.

Almost looks like the romex I saw in a hotel in Bangkok. Because their voltage is 220, the circuits are fused at lower currents, i.e. for the same wattage. I saw, what appeared to be 18 gauge romex ... could have been 16. I never saw anything like that in the US. I was shocked to see it in a public building. I would have expected conduit.

That said, your cable, to me, looks like some kind of audio cable.

Storm> First, that was the best graphic picture I've seen in ages. You are really

pretty good illustration, slight weirdness around the letters though... likely caused by the jpg encoding.

If you are wanting to do this sort of thing, it is really simple to do in the openoffice (free microsoft office replacement) drawing package.