STOP Drilling And Nailing Blindly In Drywall And Studs! - Learn A Better And SAFER Way As A DIYer!

on this episode i'm going to be showing you some tips and tricks on how to avoid damaging electrical cables and various types of piping behind your wall if you plan on drilling or nailing through your wall so stay tuned [Music] welcome to fix's house if you're new to the channel please consider pressing the subscribe notification bell so you can always be in tune on diys how-to videos and product reviews that i do within this channel so let's just say you want to hang up a tv on your wall or you just want to hang a picture frame if in the bathroom you probably want to relocate a toilet paper dispenser somewhere there or even a picture frame and you just want to go and hang it up on your wall find a stud you're good to go but friends it's not that easy and probably it's not the safest way as you can see on my mock-up here these are various types of things that you can possibly find behind your wall might not be appropriate or accurate like what this is but this is just a mock-up but i want to show you the various things that are going on so you can be aware before you actually start nailing or drilling through these walls first example let's just say you want to hang a tv on top of your fireplace and you're assuming hey it's just probably studs up there there's no wire i would think again because in this situation like what i'm going to show you right now behind where my tv is located there's actually an outlet back there and also wires you can see that there is a plug for the tv to hook up with so if you're trying to drill or mounting anything back there you already know that there's possibility that there's a wire running vertical or horizontal do a general observation of the wall itself if there are electrical outlets or switches around the area then there's a possibility that there are wires going through there and if you're in the bathroom there's already given there might be pipes exhaust pipes going through different areas so make sure you account to that as well this is actually a live wire as you can see from my voltage detector there is voltage going through this wire if the builder was right and they actually drilled a hole through here let's just say the hole wasn't centered they would put a guard plate like this this is a nail stud guard plate so this plate right here will prevent the person who is trying to drill through here or put a nail from getting that nail through this stud and possibly hitting that electrical cable you don't want to assume that you can't just rely on you know especially on older houses or especially those who are doing their own cable around the home their own di wires you don't want to assume that they actually installed one of these plates so you want to put yourself in a worst case scenario where there is not one of these and there are exposed wires back there so let's go first with the most common one that people use which is a stud finder slash a voltage metal detector i'm gonna put this half inch drywall on top of this piping live electrical wire copper pipe metal pipe pvc pipe so that we can determine if this stud finder with the certain types of detectors can actually detect these things and virtual proof if that's an effective and safe way to actually do this so now we have our half inch drywall installed let's go test out these most common ones that we are going to be using to detect the studs and the electrical and piping in there if they actually are accurate and if they are safe to do before we can actually drill through these studs or put any picture frames onto the wall i made a separate video on comparing these two products right here i'll leave the link on top right here if you want to watch that video but this is not a comparison on how to um which stud finder is the best this is just a way to prove to you that if this is actually the best way to do it okay so let's start off with our regular stud finder which is just for rep finding studs and not anything else this one is only good for obviously detecting the studs it doesn't detect the pvc piping the plumbing no copper no metal just the studs didn't detect the pvc and that's pretty much it this is actually good if you're just trying to hang a piece of drywall on the wall because if you are hanging a half inch or a three quarter inch drywall you are probably going to end up using a inch and a half drywall screw or a inch and a quarter drywall the inch and a half drywall screws let's just assume that there's a wire there and you can see that it is very close to touching the middle and if you go with the inch and a quarter you can see that it doesn't meet the middle let's see if the zircon the special is still a stud finder but there are features in here let me show you that there is a stud scan a deep stud scan so this deep scan is where your let's just say you have a three quarter inch or a double layer of half inch drywall this could probably work there's a metal scan and the ac scan now that is very important right here the metal scan and the ac scan let's go first start with the stud finder and let's see if that works and then we'll move along the line go move to the right okay i found that stud so notice right here even if you have this on stud scan detecting that there's voltage behind there even though it can't pinpoint us where exactly that cable or wire is which is good even though it's on stud scan but we'll get to that later okay let's see how accurate this is and let's go to ac scan see how accurate this thing is so it passed that area so do we already know there was a there's a piece of wire back there okay let's go but really really slow see if it can detect it nope it did not detect it so let's assume that this wire is actually touching straight to the drywall you can see the middle arrow it's trying to determine it okay so there it does work let's try it one more time let's put the wire right against that drywall and it hit it okay i had to make this wire touch the drywall for it to work but for the ones that are located right in the middle where the stud is it didn't quite detect it not that accurate i don't know if you want to rely on this maybe it's just my stud finder that's faulty but you can try for yourself but in my determination that's not gonna work for me if i'm trying to go and drill or nail something behind this wall okay so now we're gonna move it onto the metal scan i know i don't have a galvanized pipe but this is still metal to prove to you that it's metal here's a magnet and there it's it's metal so even that it did not detect to give it the benefit of doubt let's use this metal pipe and i'm gonna have it touch since this pipe is right in the middle and it's floating let's go and have this pipe touch the drywall itself and see if it can still pick it up okay it did and it did pick up that metal it's a 50 50. i still don't think that this is the most reliable on trying to find if anything is behind there and one thing that it didn't detect it didn't detect the plumbing it didn't detect the plastic pvc pipes which is not a good thing because you might assume hey it's clear back there but in reality there's a lot of things back here that this thing did not catch so this still is not a reliable way to figure out before you start drilling or nailing so you're probably saying okay jay so since the stud finder the ac the metal finder doesn't work how am i supposed to drill or nail through my wall without being paranoid of hitting a live wire plumbing a gas pipe or anything like that i have a perfect solution and the safest way for you it might require a little bit of patchwork after but it's the most safest and i think the most effective way to do this before doing any type of drilling or nailing and that is by using this endoscope it's wi-fi it is powered you can see it through your smartphone and it has a light at the end so when you turn it on insert this through your wall there is a camera right there and it's a light and this is actually a very stiff this is not a string or anything it's actually a wire where you can bend it and form it in different types of angles that you can find and it is about an inch and a half by let's just say a quarter inch diameter hole i actually downloaded the app right here all i got to do is click that and it will open up and you have to sign up for it and it's very easy to do right when you press it notice how you can see everything with this thing so let's just say we want to drill put our lag bolt through here so we can hang our tv like what i said the franklin stud finder is the best for finding the stud so what i'm gonna do so that i can maneuver this from side to side is i'm gonna go about three inches away from my actual place that i wanna do i'm not gonna worry about the hole to begin with because this is going to get covered up with the tv anyways and i'm going to show you how to patch up the hole later on take your 5 16 drill bit that should be enough and wide enough for this thing to go through this is very important you don't want to go and drill right through this you just wanna drill through the drywall itself now this will require steady hands okay so you're just gonna drill really really soft and very slow okay don't put too much pressure because if you do if you go too fast and you finally go through the drywall you're gonna boom hit that wire or hit that pipe and that will pretty much defeat the purpose of why we are using this i'm gonna try to make this a little bit bigger okay so what i did was i just put the drill and wiggled it around like that a tip to do this is actually make this into a shape like this it's kind of like a s and it goes back down again the reason for this so when we entered it we can actually turn it like this easily you're gonna go insert it and you're gonna turn it like that so it's facing the stud okay and then you're gonna go observe the stud itself so you're gonna move it around you can kind of tell which where is this the wall is at so right there and i would take my time and go look around what's going on okay so you're gonna go move around that's at the top area see right here this is the top you can see my hand we came across this yellow so we already know there's a piece of cable what you can do now is try to trace where that cable is running from so you're gonna go try to spot where that cable is running through see that it goes down so this this piece of cable is running through that stud and let's determine where it stops okay right there so we already know that it's up here somewhere you might say hey you know jay this is probably you know it's not as accurate as it is you don't even know where the hole is at least we know for a fact that there is a cable running through this stud if this was clear and if there was nothing behind there then we wouldn't we would be okay because we would know that there is no cable behind there now you can actually turn this around the other way and there that you can see that there is a piece of pipe back there as well and other pieces of pipe which is the which is the copper pipe and the metal pipe and there's actually another piece of wire going through that stud on the other side you can see that there's a copper pipe a metal pipe and there's actually another um penetration through there with the cable if you're interested on this product and all the tools that i use on this video i'll leave this on the link down below you can click on that quick link if you're interested on getting one of these i definitely love using this when i'm drilling through my wall and making sure there's multiple ways of using this there's many uses for this you can use this for automotive you can use this for going down the piping if there's any clogs there's actually an attachment hook that you can attach on the end of this so that when you're trying to go through a hole you can pull that item out while you can see it with the camera there's also a magnet end where if you drop something in the hole you can grab it and pull it out with this thing so this is there's so many uses with this endoscope and it's it's not that expensive and it's very very useful you're probably wondering okay now i have this half inch hole what am i gonna do this is actually okay to have because this is going to get covered with your tv or your uh picture frame anyways but you still want to cover the hole now what you're going to do is you're going to use this dry dex this is actually great spackling right here it's actually pink but when it dries it turns white okay little putty knife you're gonna go and clean out the surface real well a piece of this and you're gonna just go patch that area right there this endoscope right here is the most safest and the best way to find out if what's ever behind your wall if you're trying to do some drilling or nailing i think this is the best way in my opinion to figure out if you have plumbing wiring gas pipes or anything behind there before you start even drilling or nailing through any type of drywall or any type of wall that you have this is a very handy tool i'll leave the link on how to get this on the description down below go check it out try it out for yourself and if you don't like it you can always return it but i highly suggest and that you have this on your toolbox hopefully you found this video helpful and found value and makes you want to think twice before actually drilling or nailing to your wall if you did find value to it and you found it very helpful please support the channel hit that big thumbs up press the subscribe notification bell and i'll see your friends on the next video thanks so much have a good day [Music] you

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 1,469,547

Keywords: STOP Drilling And Nailing Blindly In Drywall And Studs! - Learn A Better And SAFER Way As A DIYer!, Drywall DIY, Home renovation, home improvement, stud Finder, endoscope camera, endoscope, how to drill on drywall, Stud plate, Prevent drilling onto piping, Home reno, Nailing on studs, electrical cable, cable damage, electrical wiring, Electrical DIY, home DIY, Fix This house, Pvc piping, galvanized piping

Id: Q6gNf6QaRrU

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 14 2022