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Rant: dropped $340 on a wall scanner and it still pinged a live wire in a Sacramento reno
I was opening up a kitchen wall for a client and the scanner swore the whole stud bay was clear, so I went in with the recip saw. Turns out the scanner reads rebar in the slab fine but hates old cloth wiring, and I nicked a hot line that a previous owner had buried behind the drywall. Who else has a tool that works great on paper and eats it in the field?
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victorhill10d ago
Figured those wall scanners were just a gimmick tax for years and told guys to trust their hands and a cheap stud finder instead. Then I ate crow hard on a job where a guy's scanner caught a gas line nobody knew was there, and now I get it, they do earn their keep when the wiring is normal. Problem is old cloth and knob-and-tube stuff, the signal bounces around and the thing basically lies to you. So now I still scan, but I also cut a small test hole and poke around with a non-contact pen before the saw goes anywhere near a stud bay. That Sacramento job sounds like the wiring was buried by some DIY guy who never pulled a permit, and no scanner on earth is gonna sort that out.
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