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Warning: I zip tied my can to the joist and stopped drilling pilot holes for every sensor
I was on a 14 zone job in a two story in Chandler and running behind by like 4 hours because I kept drilling pilot holes for every contact. My old boss called halfway through and asked why I was still on the second floor, and I told him I was pre drilling every magnet. He laughed and said to just use the self tappers straight into the studs with a impact driver and skip the pilot hole on anything that is not near a window frame. I tried it and knocked out the whole back half of the house in about 90 minutes instead of the 3 hours it would have taken. The one catch is you have to back the clutch way down or you strip the cheap screws that come in the box. Has anyone else been told to skip pilot holes or is that just a bad habit I picked up?
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allen.charlie23d ago
So your old boss basically handed you the alarm tech version of a cheat code and you're out here feeling guilty about it. The pilot hole thing is one of those habits that feels responsible but usually just eats your day, and if the screw grabs and the sensor sits flush then nobody is going to crawl up there and grade your technique. Just keep that clutch low, because stripping screws on a 14 zone job will cost you way more time than any pilot hole ever did.
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