Maybe I haven't got the terminology correct. We have brick (breeze block?) internal walls on the lower floor of our house, and thin plaster-cardboard-straw internal walls on the first floor. Are these called stud walls? Question: How do you find the location of the wooden bits? Is there a typical spacing for these? Thanks.
When was the house built? If it's within the last 40 years, the upstairs internal walls will be made of a timber frame covered by sheets of plasterboard and then skimmed with a thin layer of plaster. The vertical frame members will typically be on 18" centres. You can find the studs with (would you believe?!) a stud finder - such as Screwfix 16093 (which also detects pipes and cables).
If your house is older, the walls may well be lath and plaster. This, too, has a wooden frame - with a lot of thin wooden laths nails to it with a slight gap between adjacent laths. The whole thing is covered with plaster - often re-inforced with horse-hair. The frame members are much more difficult to find because the detector can't easily distinguish between the heavier timbers and the thin laths. [Your description of plaster-cardboard-straw leads me to suspect that you may have lath and plaster walls].
Two methods come to mind.
You can buy stud detectors which are very similar in design to metal and mains cable detectors. They work on the same principle - you wave them across the wall and they bleep when they are over wooden struts.
You can often detect studs without this technology, by tapping gently on the wall with your knuckles and moving across the wall. There is usually a discernable difference in sound as you move over a stud. Use this method to find both sides of the stud - then choose the centre between these two points.
However, you may not need to use studs if you are intending to mount something on the wall. You can usually use cavity fixings which push thru a hole you've drilled, and these then expand to pull against the far side of the holes as you tighten the screw. Unless you are intending to hang a hammock for use by a bull elephant these are usually good enough for most purposes - and if you are hanging that sort of dead weight you wouldn't want to be using studs either!
PoP
On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 19:37:43 +0100, in uk.d-i-y "Set Square" strung together this:
Actually, it's the new trend. The walls are strawmit, compressed straw with a sheet of plasterboard stuck to each side. There is no standard spacing of the studs, they are just put in where two pieces meet and at the ends, which could be anywhere along the whole wall in other words. The construction method is the same as paramount or eggshell walls. To find the studs on an upstairs wall you will be able to see where they are in the loft. Obviously careful measuring would find them in the rooms below, or poke a bradawl through from the loft in the corner inline with the stud.
On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 19:42:05 +0100, in uk.d-i-y PoP strung together this:
All very good for normal stud walls but utterly useless for the walls that the OP has.
Either 600 or 400 millimetre centres these days. But it sounds more like paramount. Egg box with plasterboard on sticks every 2040mm or whatever a board is. The sticks are about 1 1/4 inch thick. It may even be roof batton with three layers of plasterboard. It is all crap though, whatever.
It would have cost another couple of hundred quid to use quality stuff. On a house worth less than 200000 nicker and tying the owner up for 30 years, is it worth it though?
No, I have seen strawboard used in cheap estate houses of the 70's.
I have seen a hole punched right through it by someones fist. AND it wasn't skimmed, just painted.
Strawboard downstairs walls here on a 20 year old house, upstairs are timber studwork.
Hmm, on reflection you could be right. I immediately went into "regular partition wall" mode :)
PoP
On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 16:32:05 +0100, in uk.d-i-y PoP strung together this:
Makes a change from me writing anything that comes into my head! I've come across these strawmit walls mainly on a new housing estate in Nottingham and one or two older houses. Fitting extra sockets is fun, because the straw is compressed by the time the hole in the wall is big enough for a metal box there is enough straw on the floor to give an average sized donkey a comfy bed! ;-)
What are they like to fit a dry lining box then ?
Dave
What kind of fixings are you using? My experience with expanding fittings is that the ones I've used are simply turd. OK for holding nothing more than decorative bits, but having used a pair of nice big metal toggles for a coathook I can honestly say I'm in no rush to use them again.
Regards, NT
Use Fermacell pre-finished drylining. You can hang cupboards off it.
Regards, NT
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 07:12:20 +0100, in uk.d-i-y Dave Stanton strung together this:
You don't.
On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 12:08:47 +0100, in uk.d-i-y "IMM" strung together this:
the wall down in order to fit a shelf to it is a bit excessive.
FRom £15-10 depending on where you buy for an 8x4 sheet.
Thanks for all of the replies. I still haven't located the studs, but would like to slide slightly OT if I may? I'm fitting a new bath, and the fitting instruction say that you should, using the two angled steel brackets, screw the bath's wooden frame to the wall. The wall, in my case, is this stud wall. The walls are then to be tiled. The question: to me, it seems sensible to tile before the old bath is removed thus preventing dropping anything into the new bath. Obviously the new bath will have to go exactly where the old bath was so that the tiles line up properly. This'll require good measurements. What are the pros and cons of tiling before/after new bath fitting?
I'm fitting a new bath, and
When we had our bathroon done (not d-i-y) they tiled down to within a few inches of where the top of the bath would be, *then* fitted the bath - hard against the untiled wall - *then* finsihed the tiling down onto the bath flange, and sealed the slight gap with a bead of sealant. That worked fine - and is still fine over ten years later.
Thanks. I'm just going to re-post my question as another thread, to get more opinions (not that I don't regard yours as excellent ;-). I also fancy tiling first.
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