Ah, yeah, stucco. That has wire mesh in it, and that's both a better ground than your good-looking accomplice, it's also got holes small enough that very little will leak through it.

Then, stucco can absorb just the tiniest amount of moisture and be conductive. That's a pretty good shield against a toner. And if there's foil-backed insulation in the wall, you are completely screwed.

Try this -- you can get to the back of where you need to be, right? Drill a hole into the wall using a 1/8" x 12" drill bit, and once you clear the drywall, push the bit toward the stucco. Take the bit out of the drill but not out of the wall and hang the toner clip on it, the other end to ground. Measure where you think you are on the outside, and go over the surface with the wand. That's all I can think of for stucco.

Thanks for the help Ernie. I actually can't get to the backside of where i need to go, there is just a short section where I know the where is ran that I used as a test to see if the toner would work at all through the stucco.

Anyone else have any ideas?

I like the testum one. Very high volume little guy!

Cory, I have a good friend I call when these situations come up. He is an irrigation guy and uses a toner that costs about 3 grand and will pinpiont a wire break 6' deep under a driveway. Stucco is a cake walk. If you have any friends in the business it's a good place to start.

Great idea!

I'm tempted to buy this Greenlee [Link: mygreenlee.com] for $300, I'm only trying to get through about 3 inches of stucco and the wire should be right about that unless they moved it. I'll call around on Monday to see if I could even sub somebody to come out and tone it for me.

I have use the Tempo Progressive 508S Wire Finder by Greenlee.
I can tell you that this toner is an exceptional device for locating live (120VAC) or dead electrical, coax, metal pipes and telephone wires. It can find a conductor underground up to 3 feet and even tell you the depth. Very simple to use and is better than some $700 units I have used. You can not go wrong getting this tool. If you need more depth then get ready to spend over $2000.00 for a tester. Best place to get the Tempo 508S is at Provantage.com it's current
price is $228. Once you get one you will be amazed.

awww this thread is two years old....if the OP is still trying to tone these he would have been out of business, but seeing he is still here I guess he got it.......

it baffles me that some new members dig up these dead threads on their first post and act like they are current......am I missing something or when you join are you forced to start from the end of the line??????

I once searched for something in google and one of the first responses was a four-year old thread here. Kudos to Daniel for having the site so visible to google; Normal as in SNAFU to the new member who doesn't realize that old discussions rarely don't benefit from comment. Heck, I was on the site for at least a month before I even noticed that all posts had dates. Duh.

Daniel improved things when he modified the software so that antique threads show their date in the thread listing, while recent ones don't. Recent are also in bold lettering.

I'd love to hear about what eventually happened - how the problem was solved.

Note that the new member also suggested a great place to buy this great piece of equipment so my guess would be he works there. As Ernie noted you can routinely find RC threads through Google searches so I bet he was simply googling the name of the product looking for people asking about it.