Fixing shelves to "soft" wall

macinalli

Hi,
Living in an old cottage and have no idea what the internal walls are made of! Was trying to use standard rawl plugs but these walls are not good for drilling in to. As you drill, the wall can be quite soft and crumbly but then very hard in patches - I suspect the original builders put some stones inside the wall to beef it up a bit. Anyways, the upshot is that drilling holes into the wall for rawl plugs is very hit and miss - any tips on other ways of fixing some shelves to these walls? They won't have to carry that much weight but would like them to stay up!

Carlow52

If at all possible try go free standing with all the weight onto the floor and then u just need a top fixing ( okay if over a bath etc then this wont work)

Whats the application and we can develop it further: you could consider going deeper with chemical bonding:)

macinalli

Whats the application and we can develop it further: you could consider going deeper with chemical bonding:)

They're just a couple of light-weight bog standard shelves. They won't have to hold anything heavy - bits & pieces for the dog, cleaning products etc

pieface_ie

Try plasterboard fixings:



or toggles



Get both from a builders providers or the likes of woodies.

wayoutwest

If its an old house, then it could well be a lime rather than gypsum plaster on your walls and probably wont be strong enough to take a modern plastic rawplug .The traditional way of providing fixing points for screws was to bang wedges of hardwood into the gaps between the stones.You could do this where the drill is not hitting anthing solid and use a rawplug when you hit stone.As you probably dont have a dampcourse,the slight dampness within the walls will make the wedge expand making even more secure than when you banged it in.

AckwelFoley

wayoutwest wrote: »

If its an old house, then it could well be a lime rather than gypsum plaster on your walls and probably wont be strong enough to take a modern plastic rawplug .The traditional way of providing fixing points for screws was to bang wedges of hardwood into the gaps between the stones.You could do this where the drill is not hitting anthing solid and use a rawplug when you hit stone.As you probably dont have a dampcourse,the slight dampness within the walls will make the wedge expand making even more secure than when you banged it in.

Yea, very old school - the wooden wall plugs, but they work! If they drill on a stone - that will take a plug, if they hit the lime - they can wedge in a wooden plug / pce

The toggle bolt wont work that was mentioned in an earlier post as they are designed to open fully behind a plasterboard, and the pressure of the winds off the back of the board against you screwing in something on the wall, is how they work..

Another option would be a chemical anchor, essentially you drill a hole bigger than you need, and deep into the wall, pump this anchor in, when it hardens you can screw to it. Very sucessful, but about 20 quid a tube