To verify your stud detector works you must point it to your self, make a beeping sound, turn to your significant other and tell them “I’m a stud”
Standard dad calibration technique.
I do that on my husband. He’s never too amused.
I don’t have the willpower to not make this joke to my wife.
I do miss doing that to my ex-wife. There were those small things that I can’t enjoy being single. Well. For now.
Just think of all the things you can do without ever consulting someone else. Single has its perks!
It’s actually not bad. I have motivation to work out for me and not anyone else, I can spend money on things she called silly, I don’t even have to cook without flavor.
See? That’s the spirit! I’m glad you seem to be finding your groove without too much suffering.
I bought one, put up to my dads back, let it beep, and said to him “i think its defective” 🤪
Dad v2.0
I taught my toddler to scan her mom (my wife) and say “look, I found a stud!”
I always thought of a stud as a male horse whose main job is supplying baby horse juice. I’m guessing that’s not what you mean?
Well that definitely makes it less …uh… cute.
This is some environmental storytelling right here. I see a story of an electrician, all out of appropriate lengths of wood, working past five on the night before the drywallers show up.
That can’t possibly be an actual electrician’s work, can it? That’s got to be the work of a homeowner who didn’t know the correct way to locate an outlet in the middle of a stud bay.
Nah, it’s been awhile, but I’ve been an electrician. When you get a foreman who has made it to that special level of asshole, your give a fuck starts to run out incredibly fast. Even if you’re not the kind of guy who would do this yourself, someone working with you probably is.
With that said, I don’t think this would pass code, but I’m honestly curious as to which part it violates specifically. The wire doesn’t look like it’s secured properly at least, but this might be one of those things where this is where they learn that they need to write some new passages.
Welp, I can’t tell if my faith in professionals has dwindled or my confidence in my DIY skills being up to code has increased upon reading that. Probably both.
Honestly, the requirements to become a professional in most of the trades are pretty minimal because there’s a massive shortage of trained workers in basically every trade. The bar is probably the highest for electricians. I’m a refrigeration mechanic and the bar for us is basically subterranean. I’ve come across “professional” repairs all over the place that are just wild.
Honestly, if you’re a DIYer and you’re consulting building codes at all then you’re probably doing better work than many (but not most) pros. That’s why you should never just go with the cheapest contractor you can find for anything. They’re cheap for a reason. You really need to ask around and see who is good in your area. One thing that can help is if you can find a contractor that does commercial as well as residential work. It’s not 100% but generally they’re going to do better work because it’s a bit harder to get away with shoddy work with many commercial customers than it is with most residential customers.
Aw man, now you’re just enabling my bad DIY habit, where I get too ambitious and/or too skeptical of hiring somebody and end up taking way too long to get the project done. I’m this close ->| |<- to committing to a DIY central HVAC system replacement (complete with new 240V circuit for a conversion from gas furnace to heat pump), which is obviously gonna end up with me relying on “temporary” window AC units all summer, and you’re just shoving me right over the edge!
Haha. I’m the same way. It’s fun to tinker with that stuff. It’s actually probably a good thing it’s so expensive otherwise I’d have twice as many half finished renovations.
Just be sure you’re aware of local laws. At least where I live home owners can do all of their own electrical work as long as they get it inspected but that isn’t the case everywhere. As far as the minisplit goes you should be legal to DIY it as long as you use precharged units and linesets. You just can’t buy refrigerants or legally tap into the system in any way unless you have an EPA 608 certification. But if you’re using precharged linesets and the equipment works then you won’t need to do either of those things unless you somehow lose the refrigerant charge. As far as the rest goes just do your research on system sizing, placement, and all that jazz. But as far as DIY goes, a minisplit is probably about the same difficulty level as installing a new gas furnace so if you would be comfortable doing that they you should be fine.
Also if you’re going with a heat pump minisplit, I’d go with mitsubishi, not a samsung. The Samsung units are more technically advanced and have more flashy options but they aren’t very reliable. I’ve worked on several that had major issues less than a year after install. They’re also more “proprietary” when it comes to working on them. On the other hand I have never come across a dead mitsubishi with less than 5 years of hard use and they’re dead simple to work on as far as minisplits go.
It’s up to code until the inspector finds it. And if there’s drywall, they’re not finding it
This is the explanation for why we can’t have nice things
Supply side economics until we all die.
What a Lemmy moment.
“Shoddy work? This is the fault of capitalism!”
Thoughts and prayers
I had a semi related, IRL, Bethesda style enviornmental story telling ‘event’ involving a wall happen once.
Back in college… I wasn’t actually in this one fraternity, but was friends with almost all the guys in it, was good friends with the core group that restarted its local chapter that had been dormant for like a decade or two.
So one day, its video games and beer, and … well, this one room needed to be renovated, so we didn’t give a fuck. One guy loses at Smash Bros, fucking fist through the wall.
… After he walks back a bit, we notice… wait wtf there’s something… on the frame…?
We tear out more of the wall, and no shit, there is a miniature time capsule in the form of a note saying basically 'Cheers to any future (fraternity name)‘s, from the class of 1982!’ … and there is also a fucking can of Rainier … from 1982.
So the dude who initially Donkey Kong’d the wall gets dibs on the 30+ year old stale beer of course, downs it immediately.
… The funny part is that this was always supposed to have been a dry fraternity, no alcohol allowed.
I hope you put a can of beer back in there with a note before you sealed it back up.
If I remember right, that is exactly what happened.
Though I wasn’t there on the last day of renovsting that room, I think it was the guy who uh, did the initial demo work on the wall, who did exactly as you describe, along with the original piece of paper, which was now preserved in … either a ziploc bag, or vacuum sealed as you’d do with some meat you’d want to preserve for freezing.
How does it end?
They probably couldn’t watch Netflix that time 😔
The house rolled over
The stupider part is that it would be easier to stack out from the other direction.
There are 8 pieces of wood @ 1.5" each = 12" Studs are 16" on center.
So to stack from the right would be 2 pieces to be in the same place.
You can even see the gray box that opens to the wall behind it. That is attached to the stud on the right…its that close. But here I go applying logic to crazy.
My house is over 30 years old, and the studs are 24" apart. Frustrating when I need to hang things built for 16". 😭
Your house is incorrect. 16" on-center wall studs have been a thing for way more than 30 years.
24" on-center wall studs aren’t uncommon in building practices today
Most residential interior walls are 16"
If their house is single-story, then 24" would fit in a lot of local building codes.
If any of you find a house on the market with 24" centered 2x4 walls–run. That won’t be the only thing they went cheap on.
Engineered roof trusses have made most interior walls non-load-bearing. 24" on center is fine for such walls. Exterior walls are still 16" OC, though.
I spoke with a firefighter I know about those trusses. He said they were the worst thing in modern fire safety and that he refuses to buy a house with them, because once they start getting hot, you’ve maybe got two minutes before that stupid staple plate pops off. Two or three trusses get their stupid little plates popped off and the whole house is coming down. Makes house fires way more dangerous and time sensitive than they already were, apparently.
My great grandfather built a punch of apartment complexes back in the 70s, if their house is anything like those well… standardly annoying is the words that come to mind.
Non-load bearing interior walls less than 8’ tall are often 24” studs.
It hurts to even read that. I can’t even imagine your frustration.
Or just put the box 4" to the right, directly on the stud. Why on earth they thought it had to be exactly where it is is beyond me.
perhaps it is centered between some further away objects and they cared about aesthetics.
But the gray box is in the way of that solution.
Ah yes. Load bearing connector box.
That’s not the worst cludge I’ve ever seen, but it’s good and stupid alright.
But imagine, won’t you, an electrical outlet box attached with directly to the oven’s gas line. The outlet was for the microwave. My friend no longer lives in that condo lol
My friend no longer lives in that condo lol
By choice? Or by being forcibly evicted by the rapid expansion of heated gas?
Just gonna sister in another stud. And another. Juuust a few more.
another one
If it works, is it really broken? Just add more screws.
I know the adage “if it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid” is a thing, but this might be the exception to the rule
It doesn’t apply to safety items at all. Your car will function fine without seat belts.
Maxim 43: If it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid and you’re lucky.
I’m sure from a code perspective there’s something wrong here, but there must have been an issue with securing it from the right, and someone saw a bunch of scrap lumber pieces and said, got an idea. It’s not structural and needing to hold weight, so I’m really curious why, other than aesthetics, this is bad. Once covered by drywall, will this be some problem in the future?
The OP describes the specific problem this causes. It’s expected that these types of boxes are attached to studs and have void space next to them on the other side. Deviation from that pattern can cause issues with later installations expecting studs in some places and voids in others.
I can understand that, it’s why we have standardization. But the fault also lays on assuming everything is exactly as expected. Otherwise we wouldn’t need stud finders at all, we’d be sure where every last 2x4 is. A depth measuring stud finder would tell you there’s an unusual mass and give you warning that all isn’t like you’d expect.
It’s okay, they’re using that special load-bearing drywall.
NEC 314.23(B) An enclosure supported from a structural member … shall be rigidly supported either directly or by using a … or wood brace
NEC 314.23(B)(2) … Wood braces shall have a cross section not less than 1"x2"
This is fine. I’m not an electrician and don’t know what that is securing the romex but I assume that’s approved.
I mean I guess if the inspector wants they could deny it for not being “neat and workmanlike” but they’d have to really be an asshole. Like it’s weird but it’s not going anywhere, not like a switch is a heavy piece of equipment. This would probably even be fine for a light.
Since you seem to be comfortable citing the codes, what about the space between those studs? I thought it had to be a little less than the 2 feet we seem to see here.
I am not familiar with the removing a section of drywall in order to hang a TV technique
They probably wanted to figure out what the hell was up with that wall.
Use stud finder (beep) move it two inches (still beep) move it further (still beep) move it again (still beep). “Stud finder must be broken” Get another stud finder (still beep but the whole section again) “I need to know what’s behind this wall before I just bolt this TV to this fucking thing” (cut away the drywall) “I better make this look like something stupid for fake Internet points…”
Thewhole “story” seems dumb. They only checkt at that exact same height and decided to open up the wall.
Oops all studs
Don’t take off the panels on your electric and light switches. You’ll find that they’re all like this.
It’s like when I first looked into the gap in the sheetrock around my breaker panel and discovered that my basement has at least 1 (and likely many more) fully wired outlets that were just sheetrocked over at some point. I definitely would have been happier if I hadn’t known that.
America…land of the lawless.
I mean all builders/electricians/plumbers are cowboys. If the task could be standardized they’d not be making bank so consistently. The job is always ad-hoc, custom, and temporary-permanent
So is true that in the US, the walls are so weak? they can’t even hold a TV?
I don’t think so. Modern homes are usually standard drywall. I live in an older home that has wood panneling as was common in the '70s. It’s a bitch to hang anything with it.
The popular wood panels from the 70s and 80s is typically wainscoting and that shit is hella thin
Yes it is, and you can hear everything going on in the room next to yours.
drywall is how you guys call that plaster infused cardboard construction material, right?
Yes, but it’s more than that. I am by no means an expert though. The Wikipedia article can explain it better than me. What are your walls made of?
Note: not a professional, I’ve just helped a few people with renovations.
In Europe, usually brick, concrete, or in newer homes interior walls use “fast build bricks”, which are larger and lighter. In not sure, but pretty confident that these are largely gypsum.
Sometimes larger rooms are partitioned with plates made of cardboard and gypsum - I suspect these are very similar to your drywall. But these are not part of the permanent structure, and new owners will often change or remove them (but honestly they sometimes remove brick walls too, which is fine as long as it’s not a structural wall).
In my own house, one wall (between kitchen and dining room) is entirely wood. All the rest is brick, finished with plaster. This house was built in the early 80s.
Correct, gypsum infused cardboard, usually screwed into 2x4 wood studs. It can support a significant amount of weight if it is distributed evenly which is why we have drywall anchors to add stability, but it will never be as solid as a bolt sunk into a stud, weather and other conditions render it into wet chalk and your tv will swan dive into the carpet at some point
Doesn’t feel safe to me, like the pig in the wooden house
“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll hurricane your house down”
In the EU (or atleast my part of it), studwalls are commonly used for the inner walls of office buildings. If you want to hang anything heavy on them (like a large TV), then you need to anchor it into the studs. Studwalls are not a bad solution, but if they are build as cheap as possible, then they can indeed be very flimsy.
I wouldn’t mind having a studwall in my own home, but I would use OSB+gypsum instead of 2*gypsum to give it some additional strength. And I’d never use it for outer walls.
Unless you’re hanging a CRT you really don’t need to bother screwing into the studs. Get the right type of plug and you can hang some pretty absurd weights from drywall, especially if most of the force is straight down like it would be with a tv mount. I really like the screw-in type plug. Easy to install, no possibility of the toggle not toggling or whatever.
If you want to mount one of those extendo-mounts I’d probably bother to screw it into the studs though, to be fair.
