The Best Stud Finders on the Market for Any Job
stud finder is good for, well, finding studs you can’t see. Knowing where those are is crucial so you can be sure to screw into them instead of just the drywall when you’re hanging something heavy, like a mirror or a mount for, say, a flat-screen TV. But some stud finders have other features, too, like deep scanning and AC wire detection. That doesn’t mean they always do what they’re supposed to. There’s a lot going on in walls, and it can be hard, despite advances in tech, for any device to parse it all and determine what’s a pipe and what’s a wire from outside of the wall. To test all the features, we put a selection of stud finders through their paces on a wall of our own making, as well as walls in existing homes.
How We Tested The Stud Finder
For testing , we built a four-by-eight-foot wall out of common materials: wood and metal studs; drywall; copper, black, pex, and PVC pipe; and nonmetallic sheathed cable. Then we scanned the wall with each of the stud finders. All functioned as expected when it came to detecting the studs, but we quickly found that a number of them designed to pick up the location of live AC wiring simply didn’t. We checked with product engineers and found that steel studs, metal pipe, and ductwork could impair live-wire detection. So we went back to our test wall, removed the steel studs and metal pipes, and built a second four-by-four-foot wall to test only the steel studs. Again, stud detection went as expected, but the devices did only a slightly better job of finding the live wires. A couple did, however, manage better than the others. We also took the stud finders to two homes—one a mid-1800s house with lath and plaster, and the other a 1970s tract house—for real-world testing.
Some Tips About Your Walls
Most studs are spaced at 16-inch intervals—find one, and the next stud should be about that same distance in either direction. Changes in spacing usually happen near the ends of walls or near doors and windows. If your stud finder seems to be picking up things between the studs, it could be detecting metal or plastic plumbing components, electrical boxes or wiring, or metal ductwork. Electrical wires usually run vertically on the side of a stud and sometimes horizontally between outlets. Keep this in mind, and if there are light fixtures, switches, and outlets on a wall, you can make an educated guess as to where the wires might be. And pay attention to where the kitchen and bathrooms are. Water-supply and waste pipes for the second floor are often found in walls on the first floor, below sinks, tubs, or showers. Pro tip: If your basement is unfinished, you can go down there to see on the ceiling where exactly the pipes go up.
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