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I'm stupid...how do I avoid wires when mounting things to the wall? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/homeimprovement@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    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.

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