Drilling into stud wall - wires everywhere?!

[JP_]

There shouldn't be any cables there then. It's much more likely you are finding the screws which hold the plasterboard to the stud.

Do you have a strong magnet you can use to find the screw heads? Go up and down the wall to find several and take a sort of 'average' of where they all are, this will be the centre of the stud.

excellent idea, I never thought of that one!

 

[JP_]

Thanks for all the help so far. Based on what people have said, I'm thinking that my best bet is trying to just make a hole in the plasterboard manually with a small screwdriver where I think the stud is - and that should be safe enough even if the detector is suggesting there may be wires there, because I'll see any wires where I'm digging into it and be able to stop before I go through them?

Sounds like a plan. If you wanted to be extra safe you could turn the power off first.

 

[WabbitPoo]

These safe zones only tell you where NOT to drill.....they are no help whatsoever, IMHO, as people often ignore them and run cables anywhere they please, making the rules redundant.

 

[ozzy_man]

Hi all, finally getting back round to this. So I poked through with a screwdriver as suggested in one of the spots where the detector seemed to indicate there was a stud and came up against resistance I couldn't push through manually about 25mm in, so that must be the stud? (guess it could be the pipe but the detector isn't picking anything up on the "metal" setting. And it doesn't seem like I've dug through any electrical cabling to get to it, so do people reckon I should be good to start drilling above and below that point??

 

[ban-all-sheds]

About the only thing left you can do, that I can think of right now, is to carefully remove small squares of PB (which will be covered by the bracket when fitted) and look to see what's there.

 

[ozzy_man]

About the only thing left you can do, that I can think of right now, is to carefully remove small squares of PB (which will be covered by the bracket when fitted) and look to see what's there.

Yeah I can't actually see all the way through the hole (it's only 3.5mm) to make out what's behind it and would be good to be able to know for sure. How would I best go about removing squares of PB?