Dry Lined Walls and Hanging Heavy Objects

[MB]

I'm constantly having problems hanging heavy items in our new build house, which is constructed with dry lined walls.

I now need to hang an LCD tv weighing c. 10kg on a swivel arm. Naturally with the arm fully extended, this is going to produce a high level of force on the fixings which I am certain the dry lining will not be able to take. I have had poor experience with plasterboard fixings, that claim to be heavy duty, pulling out of the plaster whenever there is any leveraged force - e.g. heavy book shelves, and curtain poles).

If I attempt to get wall plugs into the underlying brick work, this will leave quite a hole in the plaster, and leave the screw unsupported for about 35mm - being the distance from the brick work to the outside face of the plaster board.

The solutions I have considered are:

1. Cut out the dry lining and mount a block of wood to the underlying brick. Plaster over the wood and make good, and then mount the bracket to this. This is somewhat labour intensive and rather messy.

1. Using masonry screws, which alledgedly will screw, with the aid of a pilot hole, into brick work. However, I am not certain as to how secure these are, and this still leaves quite a length of screw unsupported.

2. Use window frame fixings with long wall plugs which would then support the fixing in both the plaster and brickwork - however, again, I don't know whether these would take the force.

Any suggestions from more experienced DIYers would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Michael.

[The Medway Handyman]

Messy possibly, but secure! How much is that TV worth?

[bill]

It's not worth the trouble, I would buy a floor stand instead. This thing about hanging LCD TVs on the wall is out of fashion now. They have poor viewing angles, so the wrong height and you're stuffed. I would go for a decent quality CRT and sit it in the corner, LCD is way behind in terms of quality on any moving pictures. Shadows and ghosting etc. Try watching scrolling text! This is one problem of buying a "cheap" construction house, you probably have chipboard floors too. Try getting those up to put cables under or fix pipes. Some houses I went to had the floor nailed down, then the second floor built up, so whole boards went under doorframes! One house had a flood and the floor had to be destroyed to get it up. Screwing anything to the wall like shelves was also a nightmare for people. Massive long screws into crumbling block. It did the same as what you found, ripped bits of the wall off. I would do two things, never buy a cheap construction with poor build quality and get either a TV stand or a proper TV! Maybe you would need to fix a plate to the wall or use massive long fixings, either way - you will get home one day to find a very expensive LCD TV on the floor face down.

[MB]

The TV cost enough to upset me if it falls off the wall! It's only a smallish one - 23", and weight is quite modest at 10kg, but this still exerts quite an angular force if the mounting arm is extended out all

18".

The TV is going in our kitchen, and I want to free up the breakfast table. The viewing angle on it is excellent, so I am happy with the idea of mounting on the wall.

The construction of the house I think is now pretty standard. All builders will look for ways of completing houses in the quickest and cheapest ways possible - dry lining is one of those. However, I am pleased to say that we have both concrete ground and first floors.

[Andrew Gabriel]

What about a rawlbolt with protruding threaded stud. You can screw a nut and washer on so they are flush level with the plasterboard surface, and then bolt the wall bracket mounting plate up against those, so there's no weight on the plasterboard at all.

[MB]

Not sure that I have come across a rawlbolt before, and I can't find one in my bible (screwfix catalogue) - sorry for being naive - but can you explain how these work?

Having said that, I am not sure if a bolt would work with the bracket that I have got. I don't think there is enough clearance for a nut underneath the cover plates that fix over the mounting bracket. Of course, I could if push comes to shove, leave it exposed - but this would not be ideal.

Thanks for your input.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Screwfix part D11554-39 or D17637-39 (calls them Shield Anchors). The protruding stud on these is much longer than shown in the picture (same picture seems to be used for all sizes of them), and you'll need another 2 or 3 nuts and washers per anchor to do what I suggested.

You'll need a hole in the plasterboard big enough to get the washer and a spanner through (a box spanner would be best for this) to tighten the nut against the brick wall.

[Lobster]

It's a bit of an old chestnut, this - if you google the archives of this newsgroup you should find a fair amount of info (and possible solutions)

eg:

David

[MB]

Thanks for your explanation Andrew.

David - sorry I missed that thread when I searched previously. Do you think your idea of the wall plug and glue packing would work with the TV mounting?

[Mike Dodd]

Frame fixings; using them to secure battens to the wall to support 3.6m of desks holding home office equipment in same construction house - no problems whatsover (and I've walked on the desks).

[Lobster]

Erm - well, I reckon it would probably be as strong as it if you used rawlplugs with a non-dry-lined plastered wall. However the question is whether rawlplugs would be strong enough for your application... hard to say without eyeballing the situation and making a judgement accordingly; but personally I think I'd probably be going with Andrew's shield bolts here!

David

[Dave Fawthrop]

|Thanks for your explanation Andrew. | |David - sorry I missed that thread when I searched previously. Do you |think your idea of the wall plug and glue packing would work with the |TV mounting?

The packing *must* be waterproof or have a waterproof membrane between it and the wall. Otherwise it will get damp from the wall, and deteriorate.

[MB]

The wall in this situation is an internal one. So I assume this isn't an issue.

Besides, the exterior walls are two skin thick. i.e. the brick work, cavity, block work and then interior dry lining. So presumably, again in this case, damp penetration isn't an issue?

[John]

How thick is the wall? I lived in a new build house a few years ago and all the internal walls were only about 3" thick (apart from the loadbearing ones). These walls were basically made of a straw inner with PB outers and then skimmed. What a b*****d to hang anything heavier than a calendar on, and only then if it wasn't a 'his and hers'!! One day I could smell an awful mouldy smell in my sons bedroom and traced it to a 'bulging' lower part of the party wall between his bed and our En-Suite shower. It turned ot that the grout in the shower had failed and water had been leaking into the wall, with it being straw it had soaked in and not given the tell tale drip, drip... downstairs. The builders of the house were building another estate close by so I asked why they used the "three little pigs style of house bulid" to be told by the site foreman, "It's cheap and cuts down on the noise transfer from room to room".

If your walls are like this I wouldn't hang a 10Kg bag of spuds of them, never mind a TV.

HTH

John

[h]

the desks presumably sit on the floor

you could find two studs and fix a decent sized piece of 19mm mdf to them studs are either 600 or 400mm centres(approx) decorate the mdf and fix your bracket

breeze

[meow2222]

I think most of the ideas mentioned wont work in this case. The wall is presumably either 4" lightweight block, wood frame, metal frame, 2" concrete or straw.

the tv is 10kg, the shelf another 2kg. The screw fixings are maybe 3" apart, and tv 18" from the wall, giving a lever ratio of 3/18= 6. Bracket c of g has a lever ratio of 3. So at the lower fixing the bracket pushed the wall in wards with 60+6 = 66kg force over a few inches. PB will simply crush under such force.

You have to not only fix to something a lot more solid than PB, you also have to have something solid in the space between the solid wall and the PB. This rules out most of the suggestions.

If you have a frame wall, the simplest is to locate the uprights and screw into those. PB screws are sharp enough to go into steel frames.

If youve got aerated block I'd try to screw thru the whole 4" of block. If 2" concrete, ditto.

If you have a straw wall, forget it, fit an external upright and attach to that, use a stand, or possibly dangle from ceiling. The tv, not you.

NT

[fred]

In article , MB writes

I'd use chemical anchors or hammer/frame fixings into the brickwork but I think it is important to have a hard spacer between the solid wall and the bracket to take the compression force when the fixings are tightened ie not the plasterboard. Make sure you have at least 4" of fixing in the wall.

Have some ascii art (fixed font):

wall plaster board backnut | | | / | | |/ front nut chemical | | /|| / anchor | |XX|||XX //////////////////XX|//XX/// /////////////////|XX|//XX/// | |XX|||XX | | ||| | | ||| | | ||| OR |gap| ||| | | ||| bracket | | ||| hammer/ | | ||| frame | | ||| fixing | | |||

-------------|#######|||| //////////////--------/|| //////////////--------\||

-------------|#######|||| | | \||| | | \|| | | |\| | | | \ | | | \ | | | spacer

HTH