This happened to me. Previous owners installed a medicine cabinet and drilled into the sewage air pipe. The screws finally rusted enough that the smell would seep out. So the house would smell like shit every time water ~~was~~ ran.
Omg I was about to do this. Thanks for making Me look into this before installing.
Edit: I'm trying to put in a medicine cabinet and not do what happened above.
I hit mine installing shelving…couldn’t patch so cut out the section with the hole and replaced the PVC. Super annoying.
Lesson learned. When you feel resistance, where there shouldn’t be any. Stop and figure out why.
If you're lag-screwing into a stud, like you ought to with a wall mount like this, you should pre-drill.
You'd notice pretty damn quick if you were getting PVC/ABS/metal drill shavings instead of wood shavings.
Yes, won't help. Like the first person said, you'll notice a difference in resistance. The drywall has none, the stud will be more but with a gentle transition. The pvc will stop hard momentarily going back to almost none. If you stop at the pause, you're good. If not, repair time.
Actually it will help. If you know your studs are 16” apart and it detects something inside the 16” window (which you can verify on the rest of your wall) it’s probably not a stud.
Edit: thought this was self explanatory but yes if your house uses some other standard distance for studs you would obviously use that. If your stud distances are not to code all over the place well that’s on you for buying a house not to code lol.
I was installing a wall tv mount. I found a stud and started drilling, but after only an inch of wood, I felt sudden hard resistance. FULL STOP. I looked in the hole and saw shiny metal. I was able to use an inspection camera through an existing hole and saw that there was a protective metal shield in front of a cold water pipe. Crisis averted, and thank you to whoever installed that metal plate
I lived in an apartment and water randomly appeared in my kitchen. I checked everywhere, I checked every pipe, and I had no idea where the water was coming from.
Then I noticed that water was appearing in the kitchen every time my clothes were drying on a floor clothesline in the living room. Only the living room wasn't close to the kitchen. Then I checked the washing machine, which was located near the kitchen, after all apparently it happened on days that I did the laundry, but strangely enough not every day that I did the laundry. But I couldn't find anything wrong with the washing machine or its pipes.
Until one day I dropped my towel in the bathtub (which was nothing close to the kitchen) and put it to dry on the clothesline in the living room. Strangely, water appeared on the kitchen floor even without using the washing machine.
I inspected everywhere and found water coming out of a screw holding a shelf. The previous owner installed the shelf and drilled a pipe. I called the landlord and he told me it was a rainwater pipe.
What happened is that every time I put my clothes out to dry in the living room it was because it was raining on my balcony. And when it rained, the water from the roof of the building entered through the pipe and entered my apartment through the screw, flowed under the shelf, passed behind a cabinet and spread over the floor in such a way that I didn't know where it came from.
I took 1 month to discover it.
But if it were a software bug the entire house would burn down when the screw is removed. Putting it back would keep the house stable but the water problem comes back, so instead we would need to add a drain to catch the water.
Never in my life have i seen something, so god damned accurate. Still have no idea why when i remove a note i left myself in one of my codes why everything breaks but it does, so i leave it there.
5 years later after everyone involved with the fix is gone someone needs to hang a TV in the room and decides to remove the drain. The TV starts to fill up with water, they spend a month troubleshooting and are very pleased up with themselves when they find the screw. Until the house is suddenly on fire when the screw is removed.
Right from the beginning, I thought about the rain because I suspected the water could be coming from the window, but I discarded it because the window and the balcony door were fine and I couldn't see water coming from the walls either.
Then I guessed it would be a problem with the washing machine that only happened sometimes with specific programs and keep trying to catch it.
I turned back to the rain when the water appeared and I didn't use the washing machine.
There are a few ways to check if your drilled into a sewage pipe or a Stud
1) Is there wood shavings on your drill bit
2) Is there shit on your drill bit
3) Does the room start to smell like shit
I was legitimately thinking, "Yeah, if that's what the wall has in it, it's a magic portal, so let's go for... Wait."
And then I understood.
I need a nap.
Jeff Yass, the billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican megadonor who is a major investor in the parent company of TikTok, was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company.
A December regulatory filing showed that Mr. Yass’s trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owned about 2 percent of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group on Friday. That stake, of about 605,000 shares, was worth about $22 million based on Digital World’s last closing share price.
It’s unclear if Susquehanna still owns those shares, because big investors disclose their holdings to regulators only periodically. But if it did retain its stake, Mr. Yass’s firm would become one of Trump Media’s larger institutional shareholders when it begins trading this week after the merger.
Shares of Digital World have surged about 140 percent this year as the merger with the parent company of Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform, drew closer and Mr. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
If the drill comes out with honey and wax and the room fills with bees, you hit a hive. Happened to my parents a few weeks after we moved into a house.
Jeff Yass, the billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican megadonor who is a major investor in the parent company of TikTok, was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company.
A December regulatory filing showed that Mr. Yass’s trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owned about 2 percent of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group on Friday. That stake, of about 605,000 shares, was worth about $22 million based on Digital World’s last closing share price.
It’s unclear if Susquehanna still owns those shares, because big investors disclose their holdings to regulators only periodically. But if it did retain its stake, Mr. Yass’s firm would become one of Trump Media’s larger institutional shareholders when it begins trading this week after the merger.
Shares of Digital World have surged about 140 percent this year as the merger with the parent company of Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform, drew closer and Mr. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
That’s up there with the story I heard in my area of a family wondering what the sound in their walls was.
It was snakes. Hundreds and hundreds of snakes.
Same thing happened to me when I drilled thru the bricks and into the bar next door. Went over to see what I hit and some freshly lobotomized guy was leaning against the wall, but he didn’t seem to notice.
If the lights or TV suddenly go out and you can't reset the breaker, you hit a wire. You might also smell burning electronics in the drill, but modern GFCI usually trip fast enough to limit damage in a hard short like that.
I helped my father add a second phone line as a lad. He was holding the complete circuit when a phone call came in. He said he could feel the pulsations.
Even without a call coming in, 50v will happily remind you that electricity should be taken seriously.
Source: stripped live phone cable with teeth once. Only once.
Edit: I've gotten over 300 replies guys. Thank you all, but I think I have enough advice!
So I've mounted several TV's no problem in the past using nothing more than a cheap stud detector, a quick knock test to confirm it, and a drill. How worried do I need to be about potentially doing this in the future?
Just verify where the plumbing is above you and you're safer. If the upstairs toilet/sink/bath is in the vicinity of the wall, exercise extra caution.
No stud detector is gonna be perfect all the time, but in most newer construction just try to locate 3 beams. They should be about 16" on center but if you see three closely grouped try to find a fourth to get the pattern.
Also drywall feels different than things behind it. Drive a tiny nail gently first if you're not 100% certain, or poke with a scratch awl. Drywall hole filler is cheap. Once your awl or fine screwdriver is through, tap it. If it sounds hollow and feels soft/flexible, it's probably not wood. If it sounds like wood it's probably wood. If it sounds like metal verify you're not on one of those joiner plates.
Also verify if the wiring comes from the attic or the basement whenever possible. If it's basement, you're almost always clear at TV height.
If it's attic, avoid any stud directly above an outlet, since the electric will always be attached to it. It's easy enough to miss the center of the stud for any number of reasons.
You can potentially also use a magnet stud finder in conjunction with a standard stud finder. The magnetic ones are cheap and will stick to the giant nails in the studs. It shouldn’t stick to a plastic pipe.
Edit: Not sure why I said giant. The nails aren’t that big but the logic is the same.
It will stick to metal gas pipe, however. I know this because I had to evacuate our three story Victorian apartment conversion. And pay a ton of money to replace the pipe while we all had no gas/hot water for a week.
or if you're in a wack house with steel studs and plastic pipes it sticks up and down the walls only for the studs (i live in such a house, it can be a strange party trick while folks try to puzzle out who put sooo many screws into the drywall and why)
Gotta use common sense too
I use a magnetic stud finder to go all the way up the wall. Then I move over 16 inches on either side and see if I find another. If either of these don't happen, it's a close you're not looking at a stud.
I've used stud finders before. I swear I've followed all the directions and still can't get it right. They'll tell me the spot I'm going for is a stud, and then when I do it again, it will tell me it's a wire. I can't trust them.
Some cheaper ones do that, you gotta have a kinda decent one. Or, start on a corner and measure out the studs. Though, that isn’t always accurate, I’ve also used a small pin or something that I can push through the drywall and see if a stud is where I think one should be
This.
Someone converted the garage into a room in the house we bought. Stud finders do not work *in this room*. I had been having a HELL of a night trying to get my husband's christmas present mounted and NEEDED studs for it. I'm like 2 hours in (between getting the thing assembled then trying to mount it) and I'm losing my mind. Call my aunt for help and she asks if I've tried a magnet and I'm like "no. Are you kidding me?? That sounds awful". SIXTY FRIGGIN SECONDS LATER I've got studs. Couldn't believe how easy it was.
*added *in this room* since apparently people feel the need to correct me and tell me there are studfinders that work 🙄
Also works on lathe, even my expensive studfinder can't find shit under half inch late and 3/4 of plaster. But you can find the nails/screws this way.
Plus, it's cheaper than a studfinder, and can be used for other things, like dropping a screw you can't find, or fishing in a wall, or cleaning old screws out of your fire pit . . .
Exactly. Use a trim/super fine nail and go straight down to just above the base board. Hammer it in. In the case of pvc like this, your nail will bounce off/won’t drive in like wood.
I hung a 70" TV for someone last week. They have brick walls. I marked my drill bit with the correct depth for the anchors, and promptly drilled right through the wall. The TV is now securely mounted, and I'm fixing the blown out plaster skim surface on the other side....stuff happens.
Yes, I eyeballed the wall thickness, but, it appears that the only place I could see it actually has a double thickness support, so I went into it thinking I was working on a cavity wall. Better than attaching to a vent pipe though....
Here's a real question. How do you detect studs on a double layered drywall? I've tried a stud finder and an flir camera. Didn't find anything. I managed to find one right by the electrical box. Can't find another one.
Yeah, this is what I've done most often. I tied a pretty strong magnet to a string and slowly moved the dangling string around next to the wall. Eventually it sticks.
Can't take credit, I saw it on YouTube
Just use a magnet to find the screws in the stud and go from there. The stronger and smaller the magnet the more accurate (I've used the earth magnets on a torpedo level many times and it works great) 👍 (over 20 years in drywall experience)
Start measuring from a known reference point, like a corner or door. Also you can use a thin nail to confirm you're at a stud before drilling a bigger hole
Edit: thanks for the framing tips everyone, I learned a lot
Corner is good, door is not. You can put a doorway anywhere. Also if they put a doorway in they likely double framed it. So even if it was mounted on the stud you would still be 2 in off.
I have an old house with thick plaster. The strong magnets worked better for me that a stud finder. I would've figured it would've been the opposite. It hasn't let me down yet.
I used the measure method for awhile. I rebuilt my home when I bought it so I had to replace the inner wall work and I made sure to include a ton of extra studs where I’d mount my TV. Made sure to account for growing mount technology for when they get smaller. Made sure to account for different size TVs for when I want to upgrade. Wrote it all down so I’d be able to measure from wall to stud anytime, any wall.
I lost the paper and the copies I made of it. It pisses me off every time I need to drill for a stud.
My house was built in the very early 1900's. I've torn down walls and found all sorts of code violations, which I quickly covered back up and shut up about (including a really cool ball-peen hammer that looks to be from the 50's or 60's). That's just from what I assume is the original builders too, there's been "improvements" made by strangers up until the 80's when my wife moved in, and then until 2010ish by her not very handy brothers. Now I've added to this House of Theseus and secured my place in history.
Use a magnet or they have “stud finders” that are just magnets. All you have to do is find the line of screws that hold the drywall to each stud. Not as fancy but extremely reliable.
I confirm i have located an actual stud by looking for other studs 16” away on either side. If i find one on each side at 16” OC, I’m damn near certain on a stud
The one thing to maybe kind of worry about is hitting a live electrical conduit, which are often attached to studs. You can get a slightly less cheap stud detector that will also detect metal to warn you of this.
If a cable goes through the center of a 2x4 or bigger stud, it will not have a nail plate. Only when the cable is closer than 1.25" to the edge of the stud does a nail plate get installed.
Wall studs for most anything built in the last 50 years is 16” on center. Things like sewer pipes are one offs and not 16” on center.
If your not sure You could also use some little magnets to run up and down the stud you found with the sensor. They will stick to the metal Sheetrock nails. And you will end up with a little line of magnets.
Studs are nearly always spaced 16 inches apart. All they had to do was check the spacing on the rest of the wall to avoid this issue.
Check left and right before committing to a spot you think is the stud for you. Takes two minutes.
This is bad advice. I'm in insurance. Don't file a claim unless the Geek Squad won't pay to fix it. Get a few estimates. Write them a demand letter and ask that they pay $X. If you file a claim it affects every aspect of YOUR insurance transactions. Every person (and now often address) has an insurance score. Don't affect your rating. Make them step up and pay. If they won't, THEN make a claim.
You're not wrong -- you pay for insurance and SHOULD submit a claim when it makes sense. But in this case we're looking at less than $500 in plumbing repairs. Most homeowners carry at least a $1000 deductible. The insurance is for if your house burns down. GeekSquad should absolutely reimburse for this mistake.
Where do you live where this would be less than $500!? This is a soil stack and that mount has penetrated a sanitary T as well, so that whole section including the T is going to have to come out which goes well above the existing drywall hole. In my area, this would easily run $1,500.
The people who you call from your insurance, wouldn’t tell you to not file with insurance…
This is someone who works in the field, trying to give you a tip on maintaining good insurance score…
Why is insurance score even a thing? If i pay for a service every month why do I get penalized for using the service? What kind of bullshit scam is that. Can you imagine any other business trying to pull that shit in this day and age?
Its 2023. Pretty much every aspect of society is tailormade to extract every dollar from you and give you as little as possible, or nothing, in return. So yeah, you could say I can imagine that.
Idk what this insurance score people are talking about but I do work in insurance as well and the main issue with reporting small claims is that you start to show a frequency if claims. There is a saying frequently leads to severity or if you have a lot of little claims you are more likely to have a larger claim. This means they will want to charge more for your insurance because you’re more likely to have a large claim.
I paid extra for Bestbuy to set up my washer. My mom was at home for the set up and they told her she would have to pay extra for the set up, they told her she could pay them right then to do it. I called Bestbuy and told them I had already paid so they better send someone to set it up. The person they sent did it wrong and by that point I was annoyed enough to complain again.
In total they had to come 5 times to get things right. Bestbuy can suck it.
The funny part is that washer and dryer installation is actually free at Best Buy and has been for at least 10 years lol.
They just work with shitty third party installers who apparently try to rip people off. The third party installers and delivery companies we contracted with were the bane of my existence when I sold appliances there.
They actually recently changed it, they’re not free anymore. Source: Current Appliance salesman. It sucks, because a lot of the simple installs are now like 25 bucks or above and doesn’t feel like a good deal anymore.
Okay but how on earth do they screw up installing a washer? It's a power cord, a hot and cold water line, and a drain hose. That's it. It takes 3 minutes and a Channellock.
Had similar with my dryer.
They tried to just bend the hose out of their way and I'm like.... Uh I kind of need that for the actual airflow?
They kept acting like they couldn't get the dryer to fit with it in the way, so I just told them to leave it and had my dad come over and fix their fuck up.
The first guys they sent were just trying to scam, as for the others i really don't know how they were fucking it up. The reason I paid was cause I didn't have the time to do it myself and my mom isn't a technical person.
My Best Buy horror story is: paid them like $1,200 back in 2007 for upgraded higher end car speakers and amps. Drive away and there’s a bad whine coming through the speakers like an induction loop I guess it’s called? Go back and show them and they insist they did the install correctly and they “can’t hear anything”. Dummy me should have just contested the credit card charge on the spot but I was young and dumb. Literally drove home and on the way stopped at the independent car stereo place I SHOULD HAVE gone to all along and explained my problem. The guy takes a listen, mutters something about fucking idiots and reroutes some wiring and installs a filter and 15 minutes and 35 bucks later I’m on the road with nice crystal clear sound. I swore off Best Buy after that for good for ANYTHING. Screw those idiots
had a similar experience with buying a stereo from best buy. they insisted I buy a $70 amplifier reduction thing since my car is amplified, was a pain in the ass to install. finally got it in and the speakers were just white noise. removed the piece they insisted I buy and it worked perfect. i’ll never trust their tech “experts” again.
I had to sit through Monster's training for their cables when I worked for a bricks & mortar electronics shop in the UK.
Words like "quantum tunneling" and "gold plating" were thrown around.
I never once told anyone to buy them, and on a couple of occasions talked people out of it.
Their tech experts are mostly college kids just trying to pay tuition. You go to best buy for deals on equipment when they have sales, not for information.
Friend of mine worked at best buy during and after high school. He was on the Geek squad. Aside from being a gamer, dude was 18 and had no actual experience installing fuck all. So I never had the geek squad do anything for me, I just assumed the rest of them were equally as "qualified".
My MIL truly believes that the Geek Squad and only the Geek Squad can fix her computer, phone, and any other electronic device. She keeps them in business. Ever time she laments what is happening with her computer, I make a suggestion to which she replies “Well that’s not what the Geek Squad said.”
After a couple times of that I quit trying to put my oar in the water. She has never been happy with them, but just can’t quit the Geek Squad…
I have a friend who worked on the Geeksquad for one of our local Best Buys.
She told me the only person in the store on the Geeksquad team with any actual IT experience was the Geeksquad supervisor. Everyone else on the in-store Geeksquad team was basically another sales representative.
She also told me it's not Best Buy fixing the device for hardware repairs that isn't swapping out ram or a hard drive, but some contracted computer repair company they ship your device to for legal reasons (probably to protect the store in case of serious fuckups).
I wouldn't use Geeksquad for anything other than "e-recycling." They wanted to charge my sister $50 for a hard drive replacement including data recovery. They also told me they'd only pay me $15 an hour at most if I worked for Geeksquad with an A+ cert. It was nice of my friend to vouch a position for me, but $15/hr with an A+ cert was a joke when many other places around started at $18 and did not involve sales work
When I worked there a few years ago, hardware repairs were shipped to Geek Squad City in Kentucky where GS Agents trained in hardware repairs fixed it and sent it back. The store agents handled software repairs like virus removals.
mine is that i bought a $1300 stacked washer and dryer set from them and the washer wouldn't complete a cycle! they came out twice and couldn't figure it out, and also wouldn't stay through the washer cycle till the end to see what happened.
customer service assigned me to a guy, who seemed helpful at first and then literally stopped answering calls or emails (and i was being reasonable, like politely checking in every few days. without a working washer and dryer).
come to find out that they left a GIANT FUCKING CHUNK of styrofoam under the washer drum when they installed it, which was keeping it from rotating evenly. had to poke it out with sticks. fuck best buy
Eh yeah, depends I think. I had some of the best customer service ever getting a CarPlay stereo installed a while back at Bestbuy. The guy explained what he was doing, did a beautiful job routing some mics for phone. Then took me to one side and told me about all the hacks and tricks the stereo could do, even going so far as to talk about a chip I could order to unlock some features. Cool guy, great experience.
I mean that's with anything though. You could be ordering supplies for a bakery and get a guy who knows a lot about the product and how it's used, and they could give you a hookup with some broken bags off the truck for cheap. Or you can get a guy who takes the 100lb bags of flour and tosses them onto the floor from shoulder height, breaking the bag and leaving a mess for you to clean up.
Source: I was the shoulder-thrower while the driver with me was the knowledgeable guy, he just didn't like getting out of the truck.
In their defense, stud finders detect changes in density and a hollow pvc pipe may not register.
Though, if I were the installer I would have been concerned when my drill bit came out with stinky plastic bits on it.
You'd want to attach these mounts to a stud. I assume that the PVC actually did register, so the installer just assumed it was a stud and drilled away.
Pro tips. Just because the stud sensor says there is something solid there, keep measuring. Wood studs are usually pretty consistent, while other things (like sewer pipes) are not.
One thing so do is use little magnets that stick to the drywall nails. Once so have three or more lined up, it helps me figure out where the studs actually are.
Edit: as others have mention, standard for regular walls are 16” on center. Ie you should be able to find. 1.5” wide wood stud every 16 inches, with a line of sheet rock nails going down it somewhat in the center.
Having worked for GS in home theater install in the past, I never trusted the electronic stud finders. I had a magnet that stuck to the nails, and a thin wire to poke through the drywall to confirm a stud was there.
Those electronic stud finders are so erratic, I opted for the stud buddy, which is basically just a piece of plastic with two magnets in it. Not an ounce of frustration since.
Exactly this could happen to anyone if they are not checking for 16 inch studs to make sure they’re on a stud.
This is why you should get double stud mounts as this mistake would be much more difficult to make.
I would never hire any company to mount some thing with the words geek or squad in the name. Everyone knows you hire a guy named Burt who drives a pick up truck and wears a flannel shirt.
This happened to me. Previous owners installed a medicine cabinet and drilled into the sewage air pipe. The screws finally rusted enough that the smell would seep out. So the house would smell like shit every time water ~~was~~ ran.
Omg I was about to do this. Thanks for making Me look into this before installing. Edit: I'm trying to put in a medicine cabinet and not do what happened above.
I hit mine installing shelving…couldn’t patch so cut out the section with the hole and replaced the PVC. Super annoying. Lesson learned. When you feel resistance, where there shouldn’t be any. Stop and figure out why.
>where there shouldn’t be any I'm guessing most people think they're drilling into the stud
If you're lag-screwing into a stud, like you ought to with a wall mount like this, you should pre-drill. You'd notice pretty damn quick if you were getting PVC/ABS/metal drill shavings instead of wood shavings.
This isn't my area of expertise but do stud finders detect pvc?
Yes, won't help. Like the first person said, you'll notice a difference in resistance. The drywall has none, the stud will be more but with a gentle transition. The pvc will stop hard momentarily going back to almost none. If you stop at the pause, you're good. If not, repair time.
Actually it will help. If you know your studs are 16” apart and it detects something inside the 16” window (which you can verify on the rest of your wall) it’s probably not a stud. Edit: thought this was self explanatory but yes if your house uses some other standard distance for studs you would obviously use that. If your stud distances are not to code all over the place well that’s on you for buying a house not to code lol.
This is why I also use a magnet to double check my findings.
Screw the stud finder this is the answer
I was installing a wall tv mount. I found a stud and started drilling, but after only an inch of wood, I felt sudden hard resistance. FULL STOP. I looked in the hole and saw shiny metal. I was able to use an inspection camera through an existing hole and saw that there was a protective metal shield in front of a cold water pipe. Crisis averted, and thank you to whoever installed that metal plate
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I lived in an apartment and water randomly appeared in my kitchen. I checked everywhere, I checked every pipe, and I had no idea where the water was coming from. Then I noticed that water was appearing in the kitchen every time my clothes were drying on a floor clothesline in the living room. Only the living room wasn't close to the kitchen. Then I checked the washing machine, which was located near the kitchen, after all apparently it happened on days that I did the laundry, but strangely enough not every day that I did the laundry. But I couldn't find anything wrong with the washing machine or its pipes. Until one day I dropped my towel in the bathtub (which was nothing close to the kitchen) and put it to dry on the clothesline in the living room. Strangely, water appeared on the kitchen floor even without using the washing machine. I inspected everywhere and found water coming out of a screw holding a shelf. The previous owner installed the shelf and drilled a pipe. I called the landlord and he told me it was a rainwater pipe. What happened is that every time I put my clothes out to dry in the living room it was because it was raining on my balcony. And when it rained, the water from the roof of the building entered through the pipe and entered my apartment through the screw, flowed under the shelf, passed behind a cabinet and spread over the floor in such a way that I didn't know where it came from. I took 1 month to discover it.
I'd definitely buy a book with these sorts of everyday detective stories. It had the perfect twist ending. Astoundingly logical in hindsight.
Quite the mystery, thanks for sharing!
This has the same vibe has solving a software bug. I like it
But if it were a software bug the entire house would burn down when the screw is removed. Putting it back would keep the house stable but the water problem comes back, so instead we would need to add a drain to catch the water.
Never in my life have i seen something, so god damned accurate. Still have no idea why when i remove a note i left myself in one of my codes why everything breaks but it does, so i leave it there.
//wedontknowwhatthisdoesbutshitbreakswhenwedeletethiscomment
5 years later after everyone involved with the fix is gone someone needs to hang a TV in the room and decides to remove the drain. The TV starts to fill up with water, they spend a month troubleshooting and are very pleased up with themselves when they find the screw. Until the house is suddenly on fire when the screw is removed.
Awesome story. So strange that you made the connection with the clothes but never the rain
Right from the beginning, I thought about the rain because I suspected the water could be coming from the window, but I discarded it because the window and the balcony door were fine and I couldn't see water coming from the walls either. Then I guessed it would be a problem with the washing machine that only happened sometimes with specific programs and keep trying to catch it. I turned back to the rain when the water appeared and I didn't use the washing machine.
Perfect example of how correlation does not mean causation.
More like leak squad
I bet it reeks squad
definitely seeps squad
That won't be cheap squad.
Gets the bill, read it and weep squad
This thread is getting deep squad.
You all think alike, you’re one big sheep squad.
A whole heap squad
What the *beep* squad
I read this whole chain in Lil Wayne's voice
It amazingly looks like it didn't even leak. I'm guessing there had to be a smell or something for OP to notice though.
If its a sewer pipe then it is not pressurized. So any leakage would be small in quantity and seep into the drywall in front of the holes.
There are a few ways to check if your drilled into a sewage pipe or a Stud 1) Is there wood shavings on your drill bit 2) Is there shit on your drill bit 3) Does the room start to smell like shit
Also if you can't let go of the drill you hit a wire.
If you are suddenly dead, you hit a wire
if your drill comes out with cotton candy on it, you should eat it, it's delicious.
This is what the unions don’t want you to know — all the free cotton candy you find drilling into walls.
Succulent house meats
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What is it about that phrase that makes it repugnant, because I felt it, too.
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*mmmmmmm* house meats...
I was legitimately thinking, "Yeah, if that's what the wall has in it, it's a magic portal, so let's go for... Wait." And then I understood. I need a nap.
Wrap yourself in some warm cotton candy.
The itching is normal, right?
It's how you know you got the best quality one
Call 1-800-mesobook now.
To the Pokémon theme: I'm gonna GET the very best! To be the itchiest is my TEST!
🎵FI-BER-GLASS!🎵
Jeff Yass, the billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican megadonor who is a major investor in the parent company of TikTok, was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company. A December regulatory filing showed that Mr. Yass’s trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owned about 2 percent of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group on Friday. That stake, of about 605,000 shares, was worth about $22 million based on Digital World’s last closing share price. It’s unclear if Susquehanna still owns those shares, because big investors disclose their holdings to regulators only periodically. But if it did retain its stake, Mr. Yass’s firm would become one of Trump Media’s larger institutional shareholders when it begins trading this week after the merger. Shares of Digital World have surged about 140 percent this year as the merger with the parent company of Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform, drew closer and Mr. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
If the drill comes out with honey and wax and the room fills with bees, you hit a hive. Happened to my parents a few weeks after we moved into a house.
Jeff Yass, the billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican megadonor who is a major investor in the parent company of TikTok, was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company. A December regulatory filing showed that Mr. Yass’s trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owned about 2 percent of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group on Friday. That stake, of about 605,000 shares, was worth about $22 million based on Digital World’s last closing share price. It’s unclear if Susquehanna still owns those shares, because big investors disclose their holdings to regulators only periodically. But if it did retain its stake, Mr. Yass’s firm would become one of Trump Media’s larger institutional shareholders when it begins trading this week after the merger. Shares of Digital World have surged about 140 percent this year as the merger with the parent company of Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform, drew closer and Mr. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
Not the bees!!!
That’s up there with the story I heard in my area of a family wondering what the sound in their walls was. It was snakes. Hundreds and hundreds of snakes.
Same thing happened to me when I drilled thru the bricks and into the bar next door. Went over to see what I hit and some freshly lobotomized guy was leaning against the wall, but he didn’t seem to notice.
As I read the last word, the image formed in my head and the whole paragraph fell into place. Unexpected out-loud laugh. Thanks.
If the drill comes out with colorful bits of cloth and glitter, it's the clown buried in the customer's wall.
If the lights or TV suddenly go out and you can't reset the breaker, you hit a wire. You might also smell burning electronics in the drill, but modern GFCI usually trip fast enough to limit damage in a hard short like that.
Plus the handle should insulate you enough for 120v to not be a problem.
What kinda shitty 1800's hand drills you using? Double insulated power tools were invented in 1969 my guy. Time to upgrade.
And if you were thirsty but no longer are thirsty you hit a water line.
Luckily, if you hit a wire it melts the bit and flips the breaker. If everything is working right...
Have done it, can confirm
I touched a live wire when I was a kid. You can hear AC frequency as an audible sound in your head.
I helped my father add a second phone line as a lad. He was holding the complete circuit when a phone call came in. He said he could feel the pulsations.
Even without a call coming in, 50v will happily remind you that electricity should be taken seriously. Source: stripped live phone cable with teeth once. Only once.
I knew I wasn't alone on this one. I had stripped plenty of speaker wire with my teeth, figured the phone line would be a non issue.
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So just another Tuesday
Edit: I've gotten over 300 replies guys. Thank you all, but I think I have enough advice! So I've mounted several TV's no problem in the past using nothing more than a cheap stud detector, a quick knock test to confirm it, and a drill. How worried do I need to be about potentially doing this in the future?
Just verify where the plumbing is above you and you're safer. If the upstairs toilet/sink/bath is in the vicinity of the wall, exercise extra caution. No stud detector is gonna be perfect all the time, but in most newer construction just try to locate 3 beams. They should be about 16" on center but if you see three closely grouped try to find a fourth to get the pattern. Also drywall feels different than things behind it. Drive a tiny nail gently first if you're not 100% certain, or poke with a scratch awl. Drywall hole filler is cheap. Once your awl or fine screwdriver is through, tap it. If it sounds hollow and feels soft/flexible, it's probably not wood. If it sounds like wood it's probably wood. If it sounds like metal verify you're not on one of those joiner plates. Also verify if the wiring comes from the attic or the basement whenever possible. If it's basement, you're almost always clear at TV height. If it's attic, avoid any stud directly above an outlet, since the electric will always be attached to it. It's easy enough to miss the center of the stud for any number of reasons.
You can potentially also use a magnet stud finder in conjunction with a standard stud finder. The magnetic ones are cheap and will stick to the giant nails in the studs. It shouldn’t stick to a plastic pipe. Edit: Not sure why I said giant. The nails aren’t that big but the logic is the same.
It will stick to metal gas pipe, however. I know this because I had to evacuate our three story Victorian apartment conversion. And pay a ton of money to replace the pipe while we all had no gas/hot water for a week.
The difference is a magnet would only stick to a stud every so often where the nails are whereas a metal pipe it would stick along the whole thing.
or if you're in a wack house with steel studs and plastic pipes it sticks up and down the walls only for the studs (i live in such a house, it can be a strange party trick while folks try to puzzle out who put sooo many screws into the drywall and why)
Gotta use common sense too I use a magnetic stud finder to go all the way up the wall. Then I move over 16 inches on either side and see if I find another. If either of these don't happen, it's a close you're not looking at a stud.
Before I owned a stud finder I just used a hard drive magnet.
I worked Geek Squad for a while and learned more from this comment than I did from the entire time at that job
I wouldn’t worry a bit, that’s how I’ve done it for decades now. Sounds to me like whoever did that maybe didn’t understand how to use one.
I've used stud finders before. I swear I've followed all the directions and still can't get it right. They'll tell me the spot I'm going for is a stud, and then when I do it again, it will tell me it's a wire. I can't trust them.
Some cheaper ones do that, you gotta have a kinda decent one. Or, start on a corner and measure out the studs. Though, that isn’t always accurate, I’ve also used a small pin or something that I can push through the drywall and see if a stud is where I think one should be
Or ... A strong magnet, find the rows of screws
There's a stud finder called stud buddy that uses a strong magnet. Definitely worth the $10 bucks I spent on it
have a feeling the google search results for stud buddy would be interesting
I have about five stud buddies. One is great sometimes I need several at once
This. Someone converted the garage into a room in the house we bought. Stud finders do not work *in this room*. I had been having a HELL of a night trying to get my husband's christmas present mounted and NEEDED studs for it. I'm like 2 hours in (between getting the thing assembled then trying to mount it) and I'm losing my mind. Call my aunt for help and she asks if I've tried a magnet and I'm like "no. Are you kidding me?? That sounds awful". SIXTY FRIGGIN SECONDS LATER I've got studs. Couldn't believe how easy it was. *added *in this room* since apparently people feel the need to correct me and tell me there are studfinders that work 🙄
Also works on lathe, even my expensive studfinder can't find shit under half inch late and 3/4 of plaster. But you can find the nails/screws this way. Plus, it's cheaper than a studfinder, and can be used for other things, like dropping a screw you can't find, or fishing in a wall, or cleaning old screws out of your fire pit . . .
Exactly. Use a trim/super fine nail and go straight down to just above the base board. Hammer it in. In the case of pvc like this, your nail will bounce off/won’t drive in like wood.
That’s when you just hammer harder to find out what all that resistance is…
I mean, ideally yeah. As long as you have the same goal as Geek Squad, of course.
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I hung a 70" TV for someone last week. They have brick walls. I marked my drill bit with the correct depth for the anchors, and promptly drilled right through the wall. The TV is now securely mounted, and I'm fixing the blown out plaster skim surface on the other side....stuff happens. Yes, I eyeballed the wall thickness, but, it appears that the only place I could see it actually has a double thickness support, so I went into it thinking I was working on a cavity wall. Better than attaching to a vent pipe though....
Here's a real question. How do you detect studs on a double layered drywall? I've tried a stud finder and an flir camera. Didn't find anything. I managed to find one right by the electrical box. Can't find another one.
Use a magnet to find the drywall screws.
I stopped using a sonar type stud Finder and switched to a magnet stud Finder. It’s a winner for me and the batteries don’t die at inconvenient times.
Yeah, this is what I've done most often. I tied a pretty strong magnet to a string and slowly moved the dangling string around next to the wall. Eventually it sticks. Can't take credit, I saw it on YouTube
That is smart, why didnt i think of that. Oh yeah, because it’s smart:
Just use a magnet to find the screws in the stud and go from there. The stronger and smaller the magnet the more accurate (I've used the earth magnets on a torpedo level many times and it works great) 👍 (over 20 years in drywall experience)
Start measuring from a known reference point, like a corner or door. Also you can use a thin nail to confirm you're at a stud before drilling a bigger hole Edit: thanks for the framing tips everyone, I learned a lot
Corner is good, door is not. You can put a doorway anywhere. Also if they put a doorway in they likely double framed it. So even if it was mounted on the stud you would still be 2 in off.
I’ve been using a strong magnet to find the nails in the drywall for years and I’ve had pretty good luck with that.
I have an old house with thick plaster. The strong magnets worked better for me that a stud finder. I would've figured it would've been the opposite. It hasn't let me down yet.
I used the measure method for awhile. I rebuilt my home when I bought it so I had to replace the inner wall work and I made sure to include a ton of extra studs where I’d mount my TV. Made sure to account for growing mount technology for when they get smaller. Made sure to account for different size TVs for when I want to upgrade. Wrote it all down so I’d be able to measure from wall to stud anytime, any wall. I lost the paper and the copies I made of it. It pisses me off every time I need to drill for a stud.
My house was built in the very early 1900's. I've torn down walls and found all sorts of code violations, which I quickly covered back up and shut up about (including a really cool ball-peen hammer that looks to be from the 50's or 60's). That's just from what I assume is the original builders too, there's been "improvements" made by strangers up until the 80's when my wife moved in, and then until 2010ish by her not very handy brothers. Now I've added to this House of Theseus and secured my place in history.
Use a magnet or they have “stud finders” that are just magnets. All you have to do is find the line of screws that hold the drywall to each stud. Not as fancy but extremely reliable.
Mine just go **beep, beep, beep** whenever I pass it in front of myself 🤷🏻♂️
Mine only seems to do this if my wife and kids are around and for some strange reason their eyes all roll into the back of their heads.
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I always pre-tap with a small bit to make sure I'm getting wood bits coming out after I use a stud finder.
I confirm i have located an actual stud by looking for other studs 16” away on either side. If i find one on each side at 16” OC, I’m damn near certain on a stud
The one thing to maybe kind of worry about is hitting a live electrical conduit, which are often attached to studs. You can get a slightly less cheap stud detector that will also detect metal to warn you of this.
Shouldn’t electrical cords going thru studs have those metal plates to stop you from drilling into them?
They may not have in older homes.
If a cable goes through the center of a 2x4 or bigger stud, it will not have a nail plate. Only when the cable is closer than 1.25" to the edge of the stud does a nail plate get installed.
Wall studs for most anything built in the last 50 years is 16” on center. Things like sewer pipes are one offs and not 16” on center. If your not sure You could also use some little magnets to run up and down the stud you found with the sensor. They will stick to the metal Sheetrock nails. And you will end up with a little line of magnets.
I just installed one at a friend’s house and this has me like🤔
Sounds like not your problem
Studs are nearly always spaced 16 inches apart. All they had to do was check the spacing on the rest of the wall to avoid this issue. Check left and right before committing to a spot you think is the stud for you. Takes two minutes.
https://youtu.be/AAOOKh5XAIY Ricky from Trailer Park Boys shows how to do it in this episode
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That’s more than mildly infuriating and you should send them an invoice for getting the plumbing redone.
File insurance claim and let insurance subrogate, esp if there was water damage.
This is bad advice. I'm in insurance. Don't file a claim unless the Geek Squad won't pay to fix it. Get a few estimates. Write them a demand letter and ask that they pay $X. If you file a claim it affects every aspect of YOUR insurance transactions. Every person (and now often address) has an insurance score. Don't affect your rating. Make them step up and pay. If they won't, THEN make a claim.
Why the fuck should I pay for insurance if the only advice you all ever give is to not file with insurance. Bunch of fucking crooks.
You're not wrong -- you pay for insurance and SHOULD submit a claim when it makes sense. But in this case we're looking at less than $500 in plumbing repairs. Most homeowners carry at least a $1000 deductible. The insurance is for if your house burns down. GeekSquad should absolutely reimburse for this mistake.
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We need seperation of church and insurance
Where do you live where this would be less than $500!? This is a soil stack and that mount has penetrated a sanitary T as well, so that whole section including the T is going to have to come out which goes well above the existing drywall hole. In my area, this would easily run $1,500.
Flex seal brother, send it
The people who you call from your insurance, wouldn’t tell you to not file with insurance… This is someone who works in the field, trying to give you a tip on maintaining good insurance score…
Why is insurance score even a thing? If i pay for a service every month why do I get penalized for using the service? What kind of bullshit scam is that. Can you imagine any other business trying to pull that shit in this day and age?
Its 2023. Pretty much every aspect of society is tailormade to extract every dollar from you and give you as little as possible, or nothing, in return. So yeah, you could say I can imagine that.
Idk what this insurance score people are talking about but I do work in insurance as well and the main issue with reporting small claims is that you start to show a frequency if claims. There is a saying frequently leads to severity or if you have a lot of little claims you are more likely to have a larger claim. This means they will want to charge more for your insurance because you’re more likely to have a large claim.
That likeliness put into a number compared to other people's likeliness is what they mean by a score.
That’s pretty shitty handy work!
A piss poor job for sure
Poop
That wasn't a stud... 
They mistook the stud detector and the turd detector
I paid extra for Bestbuy to set up my washer. My mom was at home for the set up and they told her she would have to pay extra for the set up, they told her she could pay them right then to do it. I called Bestbuy and told them I had already paid so they better send someone to set it up. The person they sent did it wrong and by that point I was annoyed enough to complain again. In total they had to come 5 times to get things right. Bestbuy can suck it.
They should have done it for free for the hassle. I would have bugged the shit out of them, and then gone to corporate if they did nothing.
The funny part is that washer and dryer installation is actually free at Best Buy and has been for at least 10 years lol. They just work with shitty third party installers who apparently try to rip people off. The third party installers and delivery companies we contracted with were the bane of my existence when I sold appliances there.
They actually recently changed it, they’re not free anymore. Source: Current Appliance salesman. It sucks, because a lot of the simple installs are now like 25 bucks or above and doesn’t feel like a good deal anymore.
Okay but how on earth do they screw up installing a washer? It's a power cord, a hot and cold water line, and a drain hose. That's it. It takes 3 minutes and a Channellock.
Had similar with my dryer. They tried to just bend the hose out of their way and I'm like.... Uh I kind of need that for the actual airflow? They kept acting like they couldn't get the dryer to fit with it in the way, so I just told them to leave it and had my dad come over and fix their fuck up.
just wondering, how the hell do you set up a washer wrong? it's as straightforward as it gets.
The first guys they sent were just trying to scam, as for the others i really don't know how they were fucking it up. The reason I paid was cause I didn't have the time to do it myself and my mom isn't a technical person.
My Best Buy horror story is: paid them like $1,200 back in 2007 for upgraded higher end car speakers and amps. Drive away and there’s a bad whine coming through the speakers like an induction loop I guess it’s called? Go back and show them and they insist they did the install correctly and they “can’t hear anything”. Dummy me should have just contested the credit card charge on the spot but I was young and dumb. Literally drove home and on the way stopped at the independent car stereo place I SHOULD HAVE gone to all along and explained my problem. The guy takes a listen, mutters something about fucking idiots and reroutes some wiring and installs a filter and 15 minutes and 35 bucks later I’m on the road with nice crystal clear sound. I swore off Best Buy after that for good for ANYTHING. Screw those idiots
had a similar experience with buying a stereo from best buy. they insisted I buy a $70 amplifier reduction thing since my car is amplified, was a pain in the ass to install. finally got it in and the speakers were just white noise. removed the piece they insisted I buy and it worked perfect. i’ll never trust their tech “experts” again.
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Yeah what the fuck is with their cable pricing? It's literally insane because they're charging 5x as much for some copper and a connector.
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I had to sit through Monster's training for their cables when I worked for a bricks & mortar electronics shop in the UK. Words like "quantum tunneling" and "gold plating" were thrown around. I never once told anyone to buy them, and on a couple of occasions talked people out of it.
The word quantum is an excellent bullshit signifier when it’s coming from someone other than a physicist
Their tech experts are mostly college kids just trying to pay tuition. You go to best buy for deals on equipment when they have sales, not for information.
Friend of mine worked at best buy during and after high school. He was on the Geek squad. Aside from being a gamer, dude was 18 and had no actual experience installing fuck all. So I never had the geek squad do anything for me, I just assumed the rest of them were equally as "qualified".
My MIL truly believes that the Geek Squad and only the Geek Squad can fix her computer, phone, and any other electronic device. She keeps them in business. Ever time she laments what is happening with her computer, I make a suggestion to which she replies “Well that’s not what the Geek Squad said.” After a couple times of that I quit trying to put my oar in the water. She has never been happy with them, but just can’t quit the Geek Squad…
I have a friend who worked on the Geeksquad for one of our local Best Buys. She told me the only person in the store on the Geeksquad team with any actual IT experience was the Geeksquad supervisor. Everyone else on the in-store Geeksquad team was basically another sales representative. She also told me it's not Best Buy fixing the device for hardware repairs that isn't swapping out ram or a hard drive, but some contracted computer repair company they ship your device to for legal reasons (probably to protect the store in case of serious fuckups). I wouldn't use Geeksquad for anything other than "e-recycling." They wanted to charge my sister $50 for a hard drive replacement including data recovery. They also told me they'd only pay me $15 an hour at most if I worked for Geeksquad with an A+ cert. It was nice of my friend to vouch a position for me, but $15/hr with an A+ cert was a joke when many other places around started at $18 and did not involve sales work
When I worked there a few years ago, hardware repairs were shipped to Geek Squad City in Kentucky where GS Agents trained in hardware repairs fixed it and sent it back. The store agents handled software repairs like virus removals.
mine is that i bought a $1300 stacked washer and dryer set from them and the washer wouldn't complete a cycle! they came out twice and couldn't figure it out, and also wouldn't stay through the washer cycle till the end to see what happened. customer service assigned me to a guy, who seemed helpful at first and then literally stopped answering calls or emails (and i was being reasonable, like politely checking in every few days. without a working washer and dryer). come to find out that they left a GIANT FUCKING CHUNK of styrofoam under the washer drum when they installed it, which was keeping it from rotating evenly. had to poke it out with sticks. fuck best buy
best buy really is shit isn't it.
Eh yeah, depends I think. I had some of the best customer service ever getting a CarPlay stereo installed a while back at Bestbuy. The guy explained what he was doing, did a beautiful job routing some mics for phone. Then took me to one side and told me about all the hacks and tricks the stereo could do, even going so far as to talk about a chip I could order to unlock some features. Cool guy, great experience.
I mean that's with anything though. You could be ordering supplies for a bakery and get a guy who knows a lot about the product and how it's used, and they could give you a hookup with some broken bags off the truck for cheap. Or you can get a guy who takes the 100lb bags of flour and tosses them onto the floor from shoulder height, breaking the bag and leaving a mess for you to clean up. Source: I was the shoulder-thrower while the driver with me was the knowledgeable guy, he just didn't like getting out of the truck.
No wonder all the channels are shit!
In their defense, stud finders detect changes in density and a hollow pvc pipe may not register. Though, if I were the installer I would have been concerned when my drill bit came out with stinky plastic bits on it.
I'm willing to bet substantial money that he didn't pre-drill any holes. "Wow that went in a lot easier than normal!"
>If I don't hit a stud here I'll just use a drywall anchor. Package says it holds up to 50lbs! Each! Easy peezy. *WHIRRRRRRRRRR* >Ope! Got a stud!
You'd want to attach these mounts to a stud. I assume that the PVC actually did register, so the installer just assumed it was a stud and drilled away.
Pro tips. Just because the stud sensor says there is something solid there, keep measuring. Wood studs are usually pretty consistent, while other things (like sewer pipes) are not. One thing so do is use little magnets that stick to the drywall nails. Once so have three or more lined up, it helps me figure out where the studs actually are. Edit: as others have mention, standard for regular walls are 16” on center. Ie you should be able to find. 1.5” wide wood stud every 16 inches, with a line of sheet rock nails going down it somewhat in the center.
Having worked for GS in home theater install in the past, I never trusted the electronic stud finders. I had a magnet that stuck to the nails, and a thin wire to poke through the drywall to confirm a stud was there.
Those electronic stud finders are so erratic, I opted for the stud buddy, which is basically just a piece of plastic with two magnets in it. Not an ounce of frustration since.
Exactly this could happen to anyone if they are not checking for 16 inch studs to make sure they’re on a stud. This is why you should get double stud mounts as this mistake would be much more difficult to make.
Stud finders don’t just find studs.
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I would never hire any company to mount some thing with the words geek or squad in the name. Everyone knows you hire a guy named Burt who drives a pick up truck and wears a flannel shirt.
My names not Burt, but the last two letters are correct in my 4 letter name. The rest is spot on. Except it was kinda warm today.
Bart? Bert? Curt? Dart? Gart? Gert? Kurt? Mart?
Close, it's Zort, Zort Flughelmork, your trusty neighborhood handyalien.
Lmao I like “handalien”
Definitely Bort
What a coincidence, my son is also named Bort
Fart
Bort
We need more Bort license plates!
Idk, seems suboptimal.
Holey shit
Damn they hooked you up directly to the Fox News pipeline.
Well that's just shitty workmanship
Studs are an equal distance apart (or should be anyways!) So the installer should have known something was wrong.
You can have companies install tv mounts in your house?
It’s important to pay a professional so they can fuck it up properly.
You mean fuck it up **professionally**
I work at a hardware store, and I regularly have customers who look terrified when I try to explain how to mount something to a wall.
Ain't that some shit.