I have an old tenemant flat. The walls are masonry of some type, with a thick layer of very crumbly plaster that is causing me problems for mounting weight-bearing fixtures. I’ve put some hooks on the wall to hang my bikes off (approx 15 - 20 kg) and they’re not inspiring confidence.
I used an 8mm drill bit and put 2 60mm holes into the wall, inserted plugs and screwed the hook-thing on using 60mm screws. This was totally useless, and it immediately fell down with the weight of the bike. I think the problem is that the first 30mm or so of the hole is a mess of soft plaster, so it doesn’t bind the plug.
I sort of solved the problem by doing the same thing with the 2 screws but adding a good layer of ‘no more nails’, a glue that is marketed as being able to stick cupboards to walls. This is working OK for 3 of the 4 bike hooks, but one fell down today. I suspect this is not a long-term solution.
What’s the correct solution here? (I am limited in the size of the screw / bolt I can use at the moment by the size of the eyes in the bike hook thing, but could always look for a different hook.)
Thanks for the link **Squink **- that looks like the answer. That said, I’m not sure how thick my walls are. I’m a bit nervous about really sinking the drill in - don’t want to put a hole into next door. They must be at least a brick length wide I guess.
Well, you’ve got two things going on here. The first is the 1 inch layer of unstable plaster, the second is the unknown masonry behind it. You can’t rely on the plaster for any holding support at all, so you’re going to have to drill deeper holes than normal and perhaps use extra long anchors to get to the subsurface. If the substance behind the plaster is old, brittle brick, the masonry anchors may fracture the brick when they expand and thus fail. The old-timers’ solution was to drill a hole big enough to jam a piece of broom handle into, and then screw your hooks into the broom handle (after predrilling of course).
If you are dealing with plaster it’s probably not masonry at all behind the plaster. In older places it would likely be lath and plaster attached to studs. Get a stud finder and locate your studs. That’s the location to put in your anchors.
Whenever I have encountered a solid (ie not lath) wall with crumbly plaster, it has been associated with old soft crumbly brick walls.
You may be better off ghettoing together a timber frame to either pass most of the load to the floor, or (my recommendation) spread the load over more of the wall by screwing a board to the wall with 6-8 well-spaced bolts and then mounting the hooks onto the board. This is the super-upgraded version of your “multiple screws and some glue” solution
We’re having the same problem at my boyfriend’s store. There it’s brick (and in some cases concrete block) with, yes, about an inch of very crumbly plaster. To hang a bathroom mirror I had to do the broom-handle solution.