Drilling into concrete

Some years ago, my BiL wanted to put battens on his cellar wall. He went out in the morning and bought a B&D hammer drill which lasted him till lunchtime. He returned it to the shop saying "It just stopped working" nad got a replacement which failed just as he was drilling the last hole. That went back next morning, so he ended up with a new drill & the job done.

That was about 40 years ago, they might make them better these days.

Once you've used an SDS (even a cheap one) you will not bother with old-style percussion drills again

I see they are from about £50 for toolstation own brand. I may never use it again, and I am trying to clear junk, not accumulate it, but ... TW

My view of hammer drills is they make a lot of noise to not much effect. And the harder the stone, the less effective they are.

An SDS, on the other hand, just works.

Our last house and next doors were a one off and the builder back in 1957 u sed a lot of reclaimed materials such timber he also built the house form o verbaked engineering bricks bought from a local specialist brick manufactur er. These bricks were like iron so my standard drill at the time would not even touch them, borrowed a B&D hammer drill off a mate to put some shelves up had to give up after making no impression and grease was leaking out of the gearbox. Eventually got an SDS drill and never looked back still using it even to core drill out 117mm holes.

Richard

IMLE concrete floors come in different guises. Is it too late to do a test drill?

I have an old Stayer SDS which I bought from Screwfix many, many moons ago for (if I rmeember right) £24. It's still going strong and I just take it everywhere with me if there's any chance of needing holes in walls. It has also quite happily managed big holes for waste pipes and one for a tumble dryer vent. I have drills with 'hammer action' but never use them now.

If it's a screed the percussion drill will probably work.

I only use my SDS for core drilling and not more routine stuff as it's a lump and an effort to heft about, but it was all I had with me the other day and I needed to drill a couple of holes to fix a sink.

I'll be using it more frequently in the future.

on 11/07/2020, TimW supposed :

Probably not and it will be slowhard work anyway.

Chalk and cheese. SDS+ will fly through anything, with zero effort.

charles wrote on 11/07/2020 :

No, hammer drills wear out the hammer mechanism very quickly.

When I started DIY, I had to use a Rawltool to make any impression in brickwork. We've come a long way in the past 55 years.

Most of the screed in my hosue could be 'drilled' with a screwdriver :-(, so I just dug it out and fitted 3x2 battens on a 2nd dpc (long side up) and filled the 250mm gap with 70mm quinntherm and topped with a hardwood floor.

Green bosch sds drill made short work of drilling the slab and I used those self-tapping concrete screws to fix the battens down.

SDS every time for me. Even a cheap one should be fine.

It does depend on the concrete, of course. Test drill as a check. I've got away with an ordinary hammer drill offsite with only a 750W genny, and didn't think that would run the 4kg SDS.

Chances are it will be fine.

That's the sort of task more likely to knacker you IME!

There is a huge variation in concrete, and hence how hard it is to drill

- especially with a normal percussion drill. If you are lucky and the floor is relatively weak then the percussion drill will make a hole it in. (drilling down is somewhat harder since you can't clear the dust as easily). However you may take a fair amount of time per hole. If the concrete is hard, then you may find it very difficult and time consuming per hole. (and good quality drill bit like a Bosch multi material one will help)

I think with a task like you describe, I would either go get a SDS and not even bother trying the percussion drill, or, drill a couple of test holes with what you have and then go get the SDS.

For floor drilling, it sometimes pays to get a *long* bit, so you can do it standing and not on your knees. (1m SDS bits are readily available in some diameters, and 450mm ones in most sizes down to 8mm)

Of course! why haven't I just done that? Not always the practical man.

TW

Fully endorse the SDS comments, but, Still sounds like a lot of work. Thought about hiring a Spit/Hilti gun?

In message , at 11:17:17 on Sat, 11 Jul 2020, charles remarked:

I broke down and bought an own-brand SDS drill at Screwfix last week.

It's gone on my list of things I should have had years ago. (Although it's surprising big and heavy - about three times the size and weight of a regular DIY hammer drill).

Today where was a contractor needing to dig up some of my concrete floor a different contractor had laid a fortnight ago (Flanders and Swann have a song about this sort of thing) and he only had a puny cordless, so lent him mine.

Likewise, only the contractor (satellite dish, I don't do satellite dishes up ladders) had a beefy Hilti SDS.

Not much good without a charged battery though :-)

Owain