Drywall – how to drill through two different materials

One option especially suitable for this scenario (outdoors, often drilling above your head, with the tube bending and vibrating, using handheld drill) is using special drill bits tailored for fast drilling into sheet metal. The market has numerous offers, including Irwin Turbo Max, DeWalt Extreme 2 and Ruko Fast Cut - the idea behind all those is that the drill bit looks similar to a drill bit for wood and the small tip of the drill bit helps the drill bit dive into thin metal.

One important thing is that you should not proceed to drilling the second wall until you retracted the bit from the hole and checked that there's no metal on the tip. Otherwise the following can happen: the drill bit will burst through the first wall and the metal which the tip was facing will remain on the tip and prevent the tip from contacting the second wall.

Beware of the following downsides:

• these are next to impossible to sharpen in your workshop - prepare to either throw them out or grind them into "regular" shape bits once they get dull
• the price is notably higher compared to "regular" bits
• the "metal on the tip" problem described above
• not that easy to find in an average store, so you should shop in advance

You likely hit the DWV (drain waste vent) stack. This is the drain plumbing for the bathroom and is commonly black ABS plastic.

This pipe is typically empty except when waste is moving though it. Depending on the size of hole, you may find small water spots that gradually get larger or notice a sewer gas odor in that room or nearby rooms.

It is not too hard to apply a patch material to the puncture to fix, but you'd need to cut a good size hole in the drywall to access it. The other option would be to enlarge the hole enough to get the tip of a caulking gun in to fill the hole and then patch the drywall.