Strength of plasterboard walls

[Russell Eberhardt]

Hi

I have just moved into a new house where all the internal walls consist of 1/2 in. plasterboard screwed to lightweight (about 1/2 mm) pressed steel studwork. I need to fit the office out with bookshelves and I have been trying to find some quantitative data on the load carrying capacity of such a construction with appropriate fixings. I can only find comments like 'lightweight'. The kitchen cabinets are fitted to these walls with the expanding metal plugs so they must have a reasonable capacity.

Can anyone help with some figures?

Regards, Russell.

[usenet]

Why not put the bookshelves on the floor? All the plasterboard/studding has to do then is to keep the bookshelves upright.

[Huge]

Many years ago, I worked in a office with plasterboard walls, much as described by the OP. We had a *lot* of manuals (*). Someone from building maintenance came and put up bookshelves on Spur shelving system and repeatedly reassured us it was fine. We filled the shelves, waited for rending noises and when there were none, carried on with our sad little programming lives.

(* The "Orange Wall" might ring bells for some.)

[Andy Burns]

I've got sections of the orange and grey walls in the loft doing their best to bow down my rafters ;-) And a CD-ROM with Bookshelf Navigation Utility for windows for the rare occasion I want anything :-(

[Tony Bryer]

Were the walls holding up the Spur shelving or the Spur uprights holding up the wall?

[Dave Jones]

Could you not screw the shelves into the stud work?

[Huge]

Dunno. It never fell down, which is all I cared about.

:o)

[John Rumm]

THe elightened organisation I worked for many years ago hid all those in the IT room, and would not let developers near them!

(Still we were mainly doing cross target development for embedded systems - so it was not that much of a limitation... the 11/785 with 50 users was however!)

[:::Jerry::::]

Bloody hell, that is thin......! :~)

[OldScrawn]

Grey in my day. VMS was a proper OS...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its about standad actually.

Plasterboard isn't bad in shear.

You may also be able to epoxy glue plates to it to take screws. Or use car body filler, or even superglue.

You may be surprisd at how strong it all is.

It's only weak under high pressures. Spread the load and its fine.

[John Rumm]

You can find quite alot of VMS technology burried inside Windows NT (not too supprising given who designed it). Many of the native API calls even have the same names.

But when you think that 11/785 we used could give a passable service to ten people at once, and yet only had the raw computing power of a

386/387 combo, you do have to wonder what MS does with it all!

[Nick Shipman]

My first set was blue. And yes, it was. I frequently wonder at the way computer gear becomes less and less capable as time goes on.

Nick

[Russell Eberhardt]

Of course, but floor space is at a premium and there is a large desk to span.

[Russell Eberhardt]

Yes, bent into a 'U' sectionabout 3 cm x 3 cm.

Russell.

[Russell Eberhardt]

Sounds promising but I was really looking for some figures like X kg per metre of wall and perhaps a maximum bending moment of Y kg.m (given the appropriate fixings).

Russell.

[:::Jerry::::]

Your original typo was lost on you then ?

[Rob Morley]

What typo was that?

[:::Jerry::::]

message

"....consist of 1/2 in. plasterboard screwed to lightweight (about 1/2 mm) pressed steel studwork."

He obviously meant 12mm stud work, not half (1/2) mm !

[Rob Morley]

Do you not think that 1/2" steel would be a bit difficult to press, and rather excessive for holding a few sheets of plasterboard in place?