Bosch D-Tect 150 Wall and Floor Scanner with Ultra Wide Band Radar Technology

I used this scanner to locate roofing rafters through my asphalt shingle roof for installation of solar panels. The shingles are of the architectural type, which means there's a lot of topography. In order to use this scanner on such shingles, one needs a thin but relatively rigid piece of cardboard for the scanner to rest on while moving it back and forth over the approximate location of the rafter. Not every location will produce a good signal, and sometimes the accuracy is a little less than others. But by taking measurements every 18" or so, then drawing a line of best fit along all of the marks, I was able to locate 7 rafters (1.5 inches wide) and install 28 supports bolted into the rafters. No misses. This is an expensive tool, but well worth the price. No other method was as quick and sure.

I bought this unit because I was tired of guessing what was in my concrete walls when hanging shelves or pictures, or installing new electrical and plumbing. I have three of the inexpensive stud finders, but when used on a known piece of rebar 3cm below the wall surface, each gave different results, none of which were correct. Two of the stud finders failed to locate a known active electrical cable, with a 10A heater load, about 2cm below the surface of the wall. The Bosch D-Tect 150 was accurate to within one milimeter of known rebar and cable and helped find several undocumented electrical cables and domestic water pipes. The cost of the D-Tect 150 was much less than the cost of repair had I drilled into one of the water pipes, which I was about to do. This was money well spent!

I bought it to find post tension cables in a residential slab and it did great at that. Since then I’ve used it a bunch to find studs, plumbing, and electrical in walls. It’s by far the best wall scanner I’ve ever used. It’s the first one I could trust enough to just go ahead and run a screw into a stud without checking first with a 1/16” bit to find the edges. Previous wall scanners just gave me a general location, no more accurate than tapping. On the flip side, for the price...it better be the best wall scanner ever. My only niggle with it is the wheel slippage problem. You have to be extremely careful when rolling sideways not to go a little up and down or anything. Even a textured wall can mess with it. I guess that’s the price you pay for such accuracy, but it’s irritating.

Product doesn't do what it claims:- in Drywall mode it detected live wire as a 'stud'; after multiple tries (each consisting of multiple passes over as per manual) it 'sometimes' detected the wire. The wire was close to the drywall, almost at the dead center between 2 studs, no other objects were present except 2 studs about 6" away from both sides. If it can't detect that I can't use it at all: my intended use was to find the stud, drill the hole to ensure screw would go in the stud. With such mis- detection I'd drill right through the live wire! Good thing I tested it at the known location first.- I was unable to make anything out of readings over stucco wall. I tried all the modes, was patient, used smooth 3mm PVC sheet to roll it over- nothing made sense. Short of opening the wall and taking a look I couldn't see how it could be used for object detection in the stucco wallsThese were 2 main situations I bought it for and it failed badly in both, I'm returning the product.

I do so much work on existing construction that an improvement over the standard $20-50 stud finder would be well worth it ... even 10x the amount such as this unit is pricedUnfortunately for the work I usually perform -finding studs, pipes, etc... behind drywall- the Bosch D-Tech 150 was terrible. Not only was it not better than my $20 unit but it was much worse. So bad perhaps the unit I got was defective; it would miss studs and give one reading one minute and another the next. The limitations in the directions don't build confidence either; problems with hollow walls, objects being too close, etc... In any case I won't bother trying another and am returning. Quite frankly I'm upset to get such bad results for the price. I haven't been this disappointed with a product in a long time.Note, I would have easily have given this only one (1) star but I didn't try to detect objects in concrete and non-hollow walls. Since others report good results doing this I'm assuming for that function it works great.Super concept but fails measurably to a shocking extent in executing it.

we recently drilled through 240 volt wiring in a conduit in the brick work, we did our pre job inspections and found nothing in the area there was an old blanked off power wall plate about 2.400 off the ground, when this building was constructed 1970's and using these hollow blocks it was common to install power circuits this way leaving both surfaces of the block intact, thankfully our apprentice wasn't hurt but we had no way off knowing what was in the block wall, to have a wall scanned every time we needed to drill a hole is not practical and expensive, with the D Tect 150 we can do it ourselves really happy with the scanner one small issue one of the wheels is missing a C clip and keeps falling out, but i fixed this and couldnt be happier with our D Tect 150

Excellent to detect ducts, steel, wires in wood walls, in floors and drywalls. Most of the times, I use this scanner to detect steel rebar on concrete elements. For these purpose is excellent to estimate rebar deep and location but it is impossible to detect bars behind first layer of steel and specify number of bars when they are very close to each other. It will be perfect if it could detect diameter or width of the objects