Issue with drilling through external wall due to red/amber reading

[Sullivma]

We had an Open Reach engineer come to install FF today. When he did his check off the wall for the hole his meter couldn’t find any green areas. He thinks it is because there might be metal in the insulation, maybe foil. As a result he cannot drill a hole. He said that we could get a hole drilled ourselves and get OR back to install once this has been done. Anyone else had this issue and if so, how did you deal with it. Thanks in advance

[iniltous]

Although the OR engineer was probably being a little over cautious, if their  rules state they cannot drill through a wall unless the ‘stud finder’ indicates a safe place to do so  , then as they said , you could drill the hole yourself , this transfers the ‘risk’ to you from the engineer , so  if you did happen to hit a water pipe or an electrical cable you couldn’t ‘blame’ OR , the chances are it will be something like foil backed plasterboard that is setting the alarm off, and drilling a hole will not cause a problem, taking the usual precautions, drilling from inside to outside 

[36ULW]

I assume he was using one of these?

When was your house built?

is it a new and or newish build. If so some are built with foil backed insulation, which is perfectly safe to drill into. Do you have any kind of home information pack that would confirm if it is that?

 

Or it could static electricity, those testers are extremely sensitive. The best way to eliminate static electricity is to put the sensor against the wall and when it starts alarming put your other hand against the wall and if the tester stops alarming it proves it just static.

[Sullivma]

Thanks for your reply, very helpful. House was built in 2005. Another issue is that he was unable to check for pipes as we have plastic radiator pipes, any tips on how to check? Thanks again

[iniltous]

If built in 2005 it’s not likely to be foil backed plasterboard , but more obviously, there should already be an Openreach duct to the house , so the point at which the external duct ‘hits’ the house wall is already fixed , usually there would be the existing copper entry point here ( the copper cable behind the grey duct cover , capping and cover 101a , or a BT66 , so presumably you don’t want the new FTTP service entering the property at the same location as the copper cable , perhaps this is somewhere where you don’t want to have the ONT sited ,  possibly no power outlets or some other reason but the FTTP cable could still enter the property here , and the engineer run an internal optical cable to the preferred ONT location, unless you want an unreasonably long internal cable run.
So the question is , what’s wrong with the CSP on the wall where the duct cover already is , and the new optical cable using the same entry  ‘hole’ that the copper cable uses , ?