Hi all. I've mounted a couple of things to studs before without an issue.
But I have a little bit more of an elaborate setup. I have a bunch of shelves for my cat that I want to put on the wall. I have a stud/wire detector, but one of the walls I wish to use has voltage detected across a very large area for some reason. And when I put my hand on the wall, it stops ever detecting any wires at all!!
Could there really be that much electrical wiring within this one wall??? There is a singular outlet in this area, but the detector goes off all over the wall, not just above the outlet.
My studs are very far apart at around 24 inches. So only small portions of the shelves will be drilled into the wall and the rest will be seated in the drywall with drywall anchors unfortunately.
How can I work on this project...drilling into both studs and drywall while avoiding the 10,000 wires that are evidently inside of my wall??? And also why do the "wires" all disappear when I touch the wall??
Thanks all lol.
Unfortunately, there's not enough info to help without risk of mistake. Do you live in a single home structure or shared(condo, apartment, duplex, etc.)? What's the age of the structure? Is your breaker panel on either side of the wall you're working on? Is it an exterior or interior wall?
When you say stud/wire detector, what do you actually own? There's no device I know of that combines voltage detection with a stud finder, so I'm guessing your device is a stud finder marketed to also find other buried elements.
If you're working with a traditional stud finder, a lot of things can give off a false positive, like insulation, lath and plaster construction, pipes, a second skin of drywall and even an exceptionally thick coat of compound.
To have the best chance at not messing this up, I would suggest making an inspection hole. You can either purchase a cheap boroscope cam that you connect to your phone or laptop and make small, easily patched holes or a larger hole to insert your phone. If you can remove your baseboard and replace it, you can hide the holes behind the baseboard without having to patch them when you're done.
Depending on the age of the structure, you can often make assumptions on how the wires are run in the cavities but you don't want to risk hitting something important.
Auto(in)correct strikes again, presumably. Guessing that's intended as "borescope" unless you're using star signs to find studs (though many charlatans assure me this method works just fine).
That definitely would be a more amusing way to find studs.
You will find true love on flag day.
I live in a townhouse build in 1998, so many shared walls. The breaker panel is an entirely different area of the home. These are interior walls.
I have this model. Sorry. It detects AC wires, not voltage, per se. It is a Zircon HD55.
https://www.zircon.com/tools/studsensor-hd55/
In most cases, the 'party wall' between two townhouse units is not allowed to carry any services - no wires, pipes, or ducts. The ones I've seen being built lately often have a couple extra sheets of drywall just sitting in the wall between units, presumably as a fire/noise retardant, and that might confuse stud detectors.
You're also not supposed to do stuff to those party walls, at least not without consent from the neighbor, because they are essentially co-owned.
I'm confused. How could there possibly be no wires or pipes in between the shared walls?
I guess I could see how you could get away with it in terms of pipes, but wires? If you couldn't put wires in shared walls, then like 80% of the wall space on your average townhome couldn't have an outlet. I have plenty of outlets on my shared walls. Pretty sure one of my shared walls has plumbing too because that's where I had a water leak. Quite frankly there is hardly any additional wall space left for an outlet if the shared walls couldn't be used for outlets and switches.
For example, in my 1980s townhouse, all the plumbing goes through one interior wall. There's void space in the bathroom that carries chimney and ductwork. Wiring goes variously through that one interior wall and the exterior walls. The kitchen has a fake wall built in front of the party wall to give space for extra outlets.
This might be the general 'best practice' today for plumbing, but even as recent as 1998 I wouldn't count on it. It was technically not against code in Canada around 5 years ago as long as the piping was done in fire-rated materials. Also it's pretty much impossible to not have at least some wiring in party walls.
Isn't there usually a concrete wall or something between townhouses? (I've never owned one, so I don't have firsthand experience.)
The really nice ones :) Concrete is a lot quieter. They've put up several new complexes in my area, and even for $600k, you get just framed party walls. Some of the builders go so far as to build little brick extensions on the exterior facade, so it looks like masonry wall extends between the units. My unit has a daylight basement, and the below-grade party wall is cinderblock, like the below-grade exterior wall, but that ends at grade.
Huh. Thanks. I thought it was necessary to meet fire code.
From the manual:
Seems like a good place to start.
It gives very inconsistent readings around the wiring in this wall so it's difficult for me to determine this sort of thing. I get the manual is just like "try again from further away", but it still doesn't make it any easier to figure out where the wires actually are because of the inconsistency.