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.
The stud finder sucks, those give false positives for electrical all the time. You're probably fine if the wall isn't riddled with outlets, switches, or has a breaker panel.
If you're really concerned, drill through only until you're past the drywall. It's only about a half to five eighths of an inch thick. Wrap a little piece of tape around your drill bit as a depth gauge. Alternatively, there are drywall anchors that look like fat plastic white screws that don't require a pilot hole. You can get those and avoid drilling entirely.
I sont know is you've ever used those "screwing" plugs, but you absolutely need to drill a hole first. It's impossible to screw the in elsewise. The amount of torque needed to actually screw them in would strip the inside otherwise.
I never have, never needed to, never will. I've stripped a couple over the years but they come in boxes of like 100 and I just take it out with a bigger phillips head and use a different one.
Maybe sheetrock is different where we're both located. I'm in the Netherlands.