Locating an outlet box buried behind sheetrock...

[ritelec]

It would be nice to be able to see what is behind the walls.:happyyes:

And below grade. You'd be a gazillionare.

Lets not mention if you had a dirty mind :+)

 

[kwired]

It would be nice to be able to see what is behind the walls.:happyyes:

And below grade. You'd be a gazillionare.

Lets not mention if you had a dirty mind :+)

You wouldn't be wasting your talent on locating missed cutouts in drywall, your services would be too expensive for that.


People kind of overreact to this problem. It is just drywall and is not that hard or expensive to fix. That is part of why it is so commonly used. Might also be part of why the cutout gets missed. Marble and granite people don't make that kind of mistake nearly as often.

 

[mike7330]

I worked for electrical contractor years ago, his way to find hidden boxes was to tell the GC on the job that he was going to start 18 inches above the floor with his hatchet. He never had to find them, but when he got to those rooms the GC found them.

 

[Fulthrotl]

I worked for electrical contractor years ago, his way to find hidden boxes was to tell the GC on the job that he was going to start 18 inches above the floor with his hatchet. He never had to find them, but when he got to those rooms the GC found them.

yep. i've told this story here, but it's a good story...

stucco crew filled every box up level, didn't clean them out.
forman went to talk to the stucco foreman, as we were triming
right ahead of them, coming back for exterior as the color coats
were done.

stucco guy told him to do something rude.

next covered wp on back of house, my foreman starts at eye level, at
the left hand corner of the house, and looks for the wire, on both sides of every stud.
with a framing hammer. when he finds the wire, he follows it down to the box, then
opens up the stucco around the box, and puts in the device and bell cover.

moves on to the next house.... same box is covered in the same place.

starts at the left hand side, and made about 3 holes when the stucco guy
comes up screaming... he kept going till he found the second box....

went to the third house..... went almost all the way across the house, didn't find
the box... turns out the rough in crew missed it.

quickly nailed a box in a hole he made, with a romex tail going up the wall.....

oops.

in any event, the stucco guy found all the boxes, and didn't cover any more up...
we only had to make a couple holes inside the house to get the box cut in....

 

[yanici]

Back in the 70's I worked under the supervision of a crusty old journeyman who would "locate" the covered outlet boxes with his steel toed work boots. After a few "locates", it didn't take long for the drywaller's to gladly find any covered outlets for us. Sometimes I miss the old days.

Reminds me of a job we were on back in the early 1970's. The sheet rock crew was really burying a lot of our stuff. Well, there was a long hallway in a 24 unit apartment complex that had a receptacle box buried somewhere in the center of this long hallway. My coworker says," Don't worry. I'll find it in the morning."

Next morning comes and there he is looking for the box. He brought an ax in and proceeded to smash the wall starting at one end and working to just short of the middle where we knew the box really was. He says," Well it ain't down this end so I guess I'll start down the other end." He then bashes the other end all the way up to center where he "magically" finds the box. I was LMAO.

Sheetrockers had to do the repair on their dime. We never had a buried box after this fiasco.

 

[readydave8]

Accused the sheetrocker of covering us up and guaranteed that we had a box there...whoops.:ashamed:

Yeah I did that too, so I started saving the looking for box thing until no-one was around, if there wasn't one there I'd add one.

 

[PetrosA]

One technique I've found useful for ceilings is to get on a ladder in the corner of the room with a nice bright flashlight and use it to skim the ceiling with light. It will usually find hidden boxes, recessed lights etc. Simple and effective.

 

[kwired]

One technique I've found useful for ceilings is to get on a ladder in the corner of the room with a nice bright flashlight and use it to skim the ceiling with light. It will usually find hidden boxes, recessed lights etc. Simple and effective.

No reason this shouldn't work on a wall either.

 

[kwired]

I try not to be hard on the drywallers if they just missed one box - it happens.

I sheetrocked my own house - not as quickly as some of the guys that do it every day - but I discovered at trim time I missed a cut out for a ceiling mounted smoke detector. Was the only cut out I missed in the whole house and it was in the room that the first few sheets were hung - apparently I was not quite warmed up to the task yet.

 

[PetrosA]

No reason this shouldn't work on a wall either.

I haven't tried it on a wall, but I think you're right. I use an LED flashlight nowadays and they have a nice tight beam that works well for this.

 

[K8MHZ]

One technique I've found useful for ceilings is to get on a ladder in the corner of the room with a nice bright flashlight and use it to skim the ceiling with light. It will usually find hidden boxes, recessed lights etc. Simple and effective.

I have a laser that I use for layout. It makes a straight, flat line. I would be great for finding buried boxes if I were looking for a way to make it easy on the person that buried them.

But, I don't think I have ever been that drunk.

Even when the drywallers don't bury the boxes, they push one side in because they are trying to use them to make marks on the back of the drywall with.

I make it clear to the drywallers that if they screw up my boxes in any manner, I will make life very hard for them. The EC and owners are all made aware, as well. I just don't seem to be able to find buried boxes the first, second or third try. Fourth try is always a charm.

Oh, and I have been photographing my rough ins for over a decade now, so there will be no false accusations. You would think that with pictures I would be able to locate the buried boxes the first try.

But I have a depth perception problem that makes it hard for me to be accurate when I am PO'd.

 

[kwired]

I have a laser that I use for layout. It makes a straight, flat line. I would be great for finding buried boxes if I were looking for a way to make it easy on the person that buried them.

But, I don't think I have ever been that drunk.

Even when the drywallers don't bury the boxes, they push one side in because they are trying to use them to make marks on the back of the drywall with.

I make it clear to the drywallers that if they screw up my boxes in any manner, I will make life very hard for them. The EC and owners are all made aware, as well. I just don't seem to be able to find buried boxes the first, second or third try. Fourth try is always a charm.

Oh, and I have been photographing my rough ins for over a decade now, so there will be no false accusations. You would think that with pictures I would be able to locate the buried boxes the first try.

But I have a depth perception problem that makes it hard for me to be accurate when I am PO'd.

Just remove the entire back side of the wall to find the missed cut out

 

[John120/240]

Had a garage service once where sheetrockers went right over the panel with rock, how the

heck do you do that.........

If stucco exterior one solution is to mount Arlington plastic spark rings backwards on

weather proof boxes

 

[PetrosA]

...
But I have a depth perception problem that makes it hard for me to be accurate when I am PO'd.

I'm with you on that

I've had situations where it wasn't new construction and some yahoo remodeler had patched over four new works in a room, still using them as junctions. The client wanted their lights to stop flickering and the flashlight saved a lot of aggravation.

 

[hurk27]

I have a laser that I use for layout. It makes a straight, flat line. I would be great for finding buried boxes if I were looking for a way to make it easy on the person that buried them.

I forgot about this method:ashamed1:

I have also used one of those little cheep lasers I call toys, but the beam out of them is never real straight and you might have to roll it to get it to aim right but it does work if there is a bulge in the drywall, the ones I hate are where the rocker do cut the box out, but the mudders tape and mud the box back closed, (sometimes I think intentionally) but in this case there wont be a bulge in the drywall.

But I find that after back charging them and then when they question the bill I show them how easy it is to use line marking spray paint to go around and mark the floor to where there are box's they tend to realize I'm trying to help them and myself to bring this problem to an end, I rather make friends then have an enemy on a job site as it can get ugly, while buirying box's is one problem, using routers with regular full length drill bits which get into my wires can really rack up a bill for them, I have had to re-run home runs because of it, and I tell them, if they think they are saving money buying drill bits instead of the correct length router bit they need to think again, because its going to cost them dearly for me to have to re-run a home run and dry wall will come down in doing so.

 

[iwire]

I try not to be hard on the drywallers if they just missed one box - it happens.

I think that is a good attitude I know I still make mistakes doing my job.

 

[cal1947]

cal1947

cal1947

That's what I use.

how does that work

 

[jmellc]

We once worked for a GC that pushed his guys nonstop. They buried something on nearly every job, usually several items. They also cut up some wire and boxes with roto zips. We got less and less careful about tearing up walls. Last few, I went to general location & opened the area with a hammer, told his guys they needed to patch it.

I have had fair luck with a toner, if wire is not surrounded by other wire. If you have attic, easier to go up there & spot the box, work a slimline screwdriver through ceiling next to it.

We considered using the blue Carlon boxes on the sliding bracket, where we could set them an inch out. That would be hard to bury. On trim, can set them back again. This would have worked with that GC, as he didn't have his guys patch around boxes either; would leave 1/4 or more gaps.

 

[cpinetree]

Compa Covers

Compa Covers

Had a garage service once where sheetrockers went right over the panel with rock, how the

heck do you do that.........

If stucco exterior one solution is to mount Arlington plastic spark rings backwards on

weather proof boxes

We use http://compacovers.com/our_products.html on the outside boxes. They work inside as well, but generally we don't have as many problems with drywallers as the stucco crews.

 

[renosteinke]

I can't agree with a lot of the attitudes expressed here. For me, it's never proved to be worth it to carelessly make life harder for the other guy.

I find that the attitudes of ALL trades, not just the rockers, improves the moment I make the smallest effort to work with them.

As for the rocker specifically, I find that the level of competence varies greatly, even within the same crew. One guy will be neat, while another guy will get a pound of mud in each box. It's a skilled trade, after all, and it takes some time to master it.

Finding boxes .... well, it helps to be both paranoid, as well as anal in your documentation.

Make sketches.
Take pictures - of both the boxes and the wire routing.
When checking your work, bits of red and green masking tape will help you see patterns to problems (red for a problem, green for it checks out OK).
A straightedge, like a 4-ft level, helps.
Spray paint markings on the floor directly under each box is a real big help- especially for ceiling boxes.
Different wire for the smoke detectors keeps you from hanging a light there.
A toner is great - especially when using conduit. The metal will block the tone, but you'll find it where the mud ring provides an opening.
Push your wires BACK into the box.
Use mud rings one or two sizes deeper than usual; make up for this by setting the boxes back a bit. This will recess the screw heads and give the rocker a better 'target.' He won't have to fight the box nearly as much.
Supply a wobble-light, and the rocker might even be able to see what he's doing. There's an idea.