SDS hole in bricks problem - or sod's law strikes again

[tinnews]

I'm installing some kitchen cupboards and a sink, so I have assembled the units, placed the sink on top (with 40mm spacers for the worktop) and marked the back of unit and wall for holes for the sink waste. So far so good.

The hole in the back of the unit was easy! :-)

Then onto the hole in the wall, house built in 1920s so the bricks are hard but my trusty SDS made pretty good progress and I've got through to the cavity.

However, this is where sod's law strikes, the hole has a large lump of metal in the way in the cavity. I *think* it's a bracing piece (don't know the proper name) keeping the two halves of the cavity wall correctly spaced. Whatever it is it's a total pain as it obtrudes into the route of the SDS hole cutter just enough to prevent me from attacking the second half of the wall. It'll also obtrude enough to be in the way of the waste pipe I suspect.

Does anyone have any bright ideas for dealing with it, I have very little access (it's only a 40mm hole) and it's a fairly meaty bit of metal, sort of 1/8" thick by 1/2" wide I'd guess.

In addition the metal is mostly below the hole I have drilled so will tend to push the waste pipe uphill which is rather unwanted.

Grrrr!

[Tim Watts]

Can you get a manly metal hole saw in (eg Bosch - which have no shoulder and the blade is thick metal, not flimsy) to drill a path past the metal obstruction?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Drill the pilot hole right through to the outside, and then drill the full-sized hole from the outside.

If the tie doesn't fall out anyway, you can probably bend it out of the way with something.

[MuddyMike]

Sods law alright, been there got the scars. I managed to hack it away using a hacksaw blade with a bit of tape wrapped around one end as a grip.

Best of luck.

Mike

[mike]

If you Google for fishtail wall tie, is that what you've found?

Given that they're relatively thin, do you have enough leeway to redrill (or expand) the hole 1/4" higher?

Could you insert the nail puller end of a pry bar into the existing hole and jiggle the tie free?

[F Murtz]

Try a carbide tipped SDS saw (looks like hole saw) it might cut through metal.

[fred]

That never works (many T-shirts gained).

I'd drill a small pilot from the inside as Andy suggests then stitch drill the larger diameter hole from the outside and join the dots with a cold or sds chisel. It may sound messy (and a waste of your brand new big sds bit) but it's prob the cleanest way to get past and extract the wall tie. Make the stitch hole a bit oversize (+1 or 2cm) and make good with mortar or sealant, it will still be a tidy job an no-one will notice.

[js.b1]

Drill all around the outside brick, 6-8mm expendable drill bit. Remove the outside brick. Extricate the wall tie by drilling around it or cutting. Colour match mortar the outside brick. Redrill after mortar has gone off.

In general you do see a half-brick cutout for a pipe, in which case you can just hacksaw the wall tie, then colour match the mortar. Ebay does =A32.99 bags of mortar dye as I recall, just let a test mix dry on cardboard if a difficult shade. You can just cut the brick out and put back a cut down brick, it blends in quite effectively with careful pointing and was routine before core drills became so commonplace.

[tinnews]

Well sleeping on it and taking these various ideas has got the job done.

I drilled a 6mm hole right through from the inside then drilled from the outside using the 40mm SDS hole cutter. It went most of the way through the outside half of the wall before entangling with the wall tie.

The wall tie was then obviously loose and a bit of judicious thumping with a hammer and cold chisel enabled me to extract it from the inside.

Finally I cleared out the hole and aligned the two halves a bit better with the 40mm SDS and the waste pipe went through first try! :-) :-)

I haven't even made much of a mess of the surrounding wall on either side.

Thanks for all the ideas everyone - a bit of thought and time to consider nearly always helps.

[fred]

In article , [e-mail] writes

Result! Thanks for feeding back.

[ARWadsworth]

Brute force. Works most times:-)