Mirror hanging advice

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Vormulac

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Hi folks,

It's a long time since I was on here, life has been very busy and a couple of weeks ago we moved house.

My feet haven't touched the ground since we moved, my diy skills have been in use every day (apart from the last few days when I was hospitalised!) but I have hit a snag. We have several fairly large mirrors that we need to hang and this is causing a problem. I lost my venerable stud/wire finder in the move and so bought a new Stanley one (junk - it went straight back) and then a Bosch one which has very good reviews - the problem is that if this finder is to be believed, there is pipework in almost every square inch of the walls where I want to put these mirrors up! Ok, I can find the odd patch here and there that doesn't raise any alarms, but of course that's no use when there are three other screwholes in the mirror that need to go into a 'clear' patch.

Is anyone aware of anything that would so consistently confound a 'finder' (it is supposedly finding ferrous stuff - presumably pipes)?

Can anyone suggest an alternative method of checking what's really going on in that wall?

Can anyone think of another way of hanging mirrors (frameless type) that doesn't involve drilling into the wall (and penetrating the endless morass of pipework apparently in there...)

Cheers all!

V.
 
Is your bosch detector this one....?

http://www.screwfix.com/p/bosch-digital ... ctor/49160

If so I have this model and found the same with false readings galore rendering the detector virtually un-usable :x and un-trustworthy.

You can glue the mirror to the wall with a gunable mirror adhesive. You will need to support the mirror until the adhesive cures.

If this is not possible then make sure there are no electrical outlets/light fittings either horizontally or vertically in line with the fixing holes on both sides of the wall to be safe as these are the areas cables are supposed to be run in. This is not foolproof however and cables could have been run outside of these cable 'safe zones'. Also the corners of walls out to 150mm are a safe zone for running cables so be careful drilling there.

I'm not sure of the plumbing regs but would think the same applies to water outlets somewhat and perhaps a resident plumber can help ??

If you have to drill and are unsure just take it easy and look often into the hole with a torch then take a little more out and look again until at depth. I have done this often when unsure and have avoided hitting anything important on several occasions.

HTH,

steve.
 
Hi Steve,

My detector isn't *quite* the same as that, but it's definitely from the same stable. I'll probably have to do as you suggest, go gingerly and inspect each hole as it's being drilled.
Simon, the house is a 1936 bungalow that was extended to the side, to the rear and then into the roof, I think the walls I'm working on are part of the original structure, but to be entirely honest there has been so much remodelling on this structure that I really couldn't say for certain. Dealing with stud walls elsewhere in the property has taken some getting used to, my old house was a 1937 semi-detached in Ruislip, not an inch of it wasn't solid brick and plaster, you could have hung a car from the picture hooks in that place!
 
I was wondering if it had been dot and dabbed with foil backed plasterboard. Maybe you could use skinny french cleats glued to the wall say 8mm thick. They could be quite large area.
 
That's a very good thought, there's no danger of damaging the back of a mirror by gluing to it is there (basically hanging it's weight off the coating on the back of it)?
 
Checking for studs in a wall, before electronic stud finders, I always used my hammer in a wheel-tappers manner, that is to say that you can here the difference between open plaster board/lath-plaster, by tapping along the wall gently and listen to the change in note. Studs give a duller sound than P/B and if you go back and forth you soon find it's location, also by using a suitable panel pin you can tap in a row of small, easily filled, holes to establish the centre of the stud which you mark of with a pencil, once you've found and marked at least two that tells you the centres that the studs are set at, - 18" / 24" ~ 400 / 600mm these are the old and new industry standard centres (imperial and metric) Once establish you can easily find a stud by hammer then measure it from an established centre. Are you looking to hang these with mirror plates, secret screws or a hanging rail it would be handy to know and might lead some interesting fixing tips...bosshogg 8)
No man is an island

P.S. I hung a mirror with 3M double sided "cushion" tape, I call it that because it appears to have a giving centre...that was 5 or so years ago.
 
Hi,

I usually poke a screwdriver in where I want to drill the hole, its easy to hear the difference between plaster and cable.

Pete
 
Racers":3atmktop said:
Hi,

I usually poke a screwdriver in where I want to drill the hole, its easy to hear the difference between plaster and cable.

Pete

Yup...cable makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up! :eek:

I second/third the view of the Bosch...it's useless and I took mine back for a refund.

If it's studwork then once you've found one, the rest are usually (but not always) regularly spaced ...16" IIRC for an old house.
 
Vormulac":2guvu6b0 said:
This is the Bosch I got:

http://www.homebase.co.uk/webapp/wcs/st ... xt%3EBOSCH

Annoyingly I think the box and receipt may have gone out with the last recycling load - do any finders work these days? My ancient one always worked fine!

Stuff like this really annoys me. Selling things that don't work as they should for the good money spent on them :x

I though by going for the 'professional' version I would be getting a good product but alas not. Bad form from Bosch who usually do cracking bits of kit and £70 odd quid wasted.


Steve
 
Vormulac":3q2nu3x5 said:
My sentiments exactly, I thought I was being clever going for a Bosch. :(

Not the green ones. I'd be surprised if you could get a Blue Bosch one & its a bit telling that you can't.

Stud finder - can't help, nor with the the pipes unfortunately -other than the vertical\horizontal and tapping advice already given. But electrical cables - I have ones of these,

VF2.jpg


and the voltage detection in solid walls, where cables are unlikely to be more than 1" or so behind the painted surface, is spot on.

It reminds me - I have a couple of stud\etc finders so will have to find them and see how well they work.

Edit: Just found one of them and it's one of these,

38604.jpg


and it had absolutely no problems picking up pipes, etc. to a depth of 2". The thumb wheel adjusts the sensitivity for pipe detection.. The electrical setting successfully squeaked when run over where I know there are 'lecy cables. It's a" Rapitest WPP123 Wire/Pipe and Power Detector" in case the writing is too small in the above picture.


HIH

Dibs
 
That Rapitest looks exactly like the one I had and lost; years old, cheapest I could find at the time and never once failed. Progress, eh?
 
I tried stud/cable detectors years ago, but couldn't find any that worked reliably (if at all). Had a Bosch one, took it back cos it was rubbish. Haven't used one for years, and haven't hit a cable/pipe yet (although I have gone through a wire with the multimaster :oops: ).

You can usually tell where cables/pipes are going to be - ie what's above/below the drilling point. Studs are easy to detect by tapping the wall - the hollow sound disappears when you hit a stud. If you're unsure whether there may be something behind where you're drilling, exploratory hole first - slow drill, and retract the bit regularly. Torch will help you see inside the drill hole. At the end of the day, if you're drilling into a solid wall, all you are looking to do is break through the plasterboard/dry lining compound/bonding coat to get to the brickwork.

Cheers

Karl
 
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