I'm worried about hammering nails into wires when I'm hanging paintings. I'm gonna get a stud detector/wire finder, but I've seen some people say these are unreliable. Should I be worried? I really don't want to hurt myself or need to have electrical repairs done in my house.
Don't worry, you can still hit a wire even if you're nowhere near a stud.
Get one that can detect wires in the wall, but yeah as the other anon said it's not really foolproof, other things you should look out for are things like furnace exhaust vents that run through the wall and pipes.
>some people say these are unreliable
yes I have tried several I have a wall I wanted to put some stuff on and all my electrical detecting ones said there were wires behind, but there was no consensus on where. when I poked some small holes in the wall and used a bore scope there were NO wires in the wall.
It was probably detecting drywall nails. Btw if you have metal studs it'll pretty much be useless
I have wood studs.
>It was probably detecting drywall nails.
Is that how they work? I thought they detected the electromagnetic field. I had one a few years ago and it mostly worked except when it didn't.
This.
I have yet to try a studfinder that doesn’t leave me more confused half the time. The magnetic guys are the most reliable, and the “deep scan AC voltage metal stud!” do whatever they want, although I have never really read the directions on those.
Try not to drill directly above, below, or perpendicular to an outlet and you will be fine most of the time.
I see. My place is small so I was worried that I simply may not have too many options. Would it not be worth even trying to scan in those spots? If not, then there's probably little chance of me hitting a wire then.
You can get the stud finder and give it a shot. I wouldn’t get the most expensive one because they’re still not that accurate, but a $20-$30 will help give you an idea of where stuff is. Main thing is not to be 100% relying on the stud finder, go slow and double check if you think there’s a chance you have wires back there.
hook up the wires in your house directly to the main lugs then put a 24000w load on each circuit and use a thermal gun to see the hot wires in the walls. thats the only for sure way to see the wires in your walls.
I did this. The cool thing is it left brown lines on the drywall right above the wires so I didn’t even need the thermal camera.
Unfortunately, when I tried to hook up my home security system wires to the circuit breaker panel, I had to call ADT for help.
Shitposting aside a proper thermal camera is to date the only actual reliable stud finder I’ve actually seen irl. Didn’t work reliably on all walls though and was way too expensive to use for such a dumb purpose. Also only worked really once I upgraded to a proper thermal cam. For a year or two I used one of those cheap $100 chinese ones for finding pcb shorts and it couldn’t really do it, didn’t have the resolution I guess. But I finally upgraded to an actually flir and it can (in addition to being much much better at identifying spots/components on pcbs that are heating up, the chinese one more just showed you the general area)
I picked up a $500 SEEK brand one for $200, thinking I could finally have a good stud detector. Was disappointed. It’s helpful for finding the occasional vertical stud, but mostly it just works on the ceiling. On some external walls the insulation behind the dry walls isn’t so great, so there is a larger temp difference, but yeah I was bummed.
On the flip side, it’s rad as frick for when I’m out camping, or doing astronomy alone at night. I get kind of creeped out, and it does an awesome job detecting animals and people. I have a black dog that basically vanishes into the darkness, and could finally see where he would be, and not worry about coyotes and shit.
It’s good for pcb, but reflections make it harder. Reflections In general suck, like looking for leaks in a plastic tarp greenhouse. I thought I’d be able to see like het in the air escaping. But stead I just see reflected heat off the plastic.
Pipes and electrical are pretty easy to detect visually. Where are the outlets and switches, where is water running? What's on the other side of this wall I want to drill into, a bathroom or kitchen? Is this an exterior wall on the other side and what is it made of?
I keep an electrical stud finder in my bag incase I of exterior stucco, otherwise picrel is all you need for studs.
Eat kryptonite
See through walls
Profit!
I don't know about other countries but German building codes dictate where wires are allowed to be.
This is all fine and dandy until the prior owner Mr. Boomer and his cousin who once worked a summer in high school as an electrician’s helper decide to add a couple more outlets and a cieling fan.
There are variances just in different parts of the US on build techniques and regulations. You do run into schlock jobs, not just previous DIYers but build crews too.
I replaced a shower liner once on a house built in the 70s. The two bathrooms were back to back as were the showers, just bare studs behind them when I got the liner out, the studs were about 15 degrees off. I didn't need a bubble to tell. It was like the build crew was drunk that day and thought 'the showers go here so we can frick up the framing.'
16" and 24" are standard spacing of studs in the US and you may run into 18" now and then. Simply find an outlet in the middle of the wall, it's going to be anchored to a stud on one side or the other. Start from there, measure 16" on either side. If nothing then try 24".
A magnet finder is your best bet.
Magnet Black folk are useless with plaster and wood lathe.
Any device is almost useless with plaster, especially the exterior chicken wire types. But you can find the stud spacing inside, guesstimate the wall thickness, then just trial and error with test drilling. Until someone invents an affordable handheld Superman Vision device, that's my advice, and I've mounted 65" TVs on exterior stucco walls.
Sucks, but it is what it is.
>he didn't use 3/4" black iron pipe as conduit to wire his house
ngmi
This is why I use cobalt drill bits. Multi-material screws going through a layer of drywall, the corner of a stud, some cast iron pipe, and a bunch of wires gives you the best hold ever for those gay ass floating shelves!
I found out I have drywall that's about half an inch thick, so I figure nails are probably a no go. Have you all heard of monkey hooks? What about drywall anchors? What do you think would be best?
Those monkey hooks are good for hamging pictures and stuff. And there’s half a dozen different types of commonly used drywall anchors depending what you want to do.
For heavy stuff on drywall like hanging mirrors these are the best.
I've run into 6 of them being used to mount a full motion 55" TV to drywall. I obviously don't recommend that, the guy was an idiot and couldn't locate a stud. It held on the drywall, the problem I was called for was the weight of the TV and mount was pulling the whole sheet of drywall off the studs, like a huge bubble.
But picrel are awesome and great if you need to mount something on a hollow cinderblock wall.
These
are good for heavier stuff. The regular plugs/anchors like the left of picrel are good for lighter duty applications. The pop toggles on the right of picrel (sold under a different brand at Lowe”s) have been my favorite recently for medium to heavier stuff, like this towel rack where the regular plugs weren’t holding up, especially in spots where regular toggle bolts don’t work.