I need to fit some stainless steel thread bar into an outside wall to fasten a stainless steel chimney to. I am thinking of using resin (( e.g.
formatting link
so was looking for some top tips and have a few questions
I need to secure 2 brackets each with 2 bolts so given the sort usage time was thinking I could do them one pair at a time. Sound sensible or am I over thinking this?
Conscious I may not have much time for fiddling with it to get them level and square with the wall any top tips? Was thinking of some sort of wooden jig but can't picture what it would look like.
Is the idea to fill the hole and then push the thread bar into the centre?
I assume some of the resin will ooze out. How to I tidy it up - house wall is white and looks like this is grey.
Any other top tips appreciated. Never used this before so don't know what I don't know 😃
I’ve used it once, years ago, to fix some brackets.
The resin remains soft enough for more than enough time to clean around the hole where it oozes out.
From memory, and I’m going back 20 years or so, you only half fill the hole ( at least with the stuff I used), after blowing out as much dust / debris as possible, then insert the rod ( I cleaned it with meths) twisting and wiggling it a bit.
I used a scraper to remove most of the excess then a wipe with a cloth.
The brackets hid the holes plus they were 30+ ft up in the air.
Normally I would have used Rawl bolts but the wall was rendered. By luck, I drilled all five holes into brick. ( 2 for on bracket, 3 for the other, normal for T and K brackets.)
I've not tried the injectable resin, but I used resin bolts to fix down machinery in one of my factories. They came with a capsule that you put into a very well cleaned* hole, then the bolt was simply hammered in, breaking the capsule and starting the resin setting. Very quick, very simple, but ISTR I needed to leave the resin to set a while before tightening the bolts. I don't recall any oozing out, as the contents of the capsule were matched to the size of the hole.
Very important step, as otherwise the resin only bonds to the dust in the hole.
A useful technique is to fit the bolts to the bracket after drilling and cleaning the holes but before injecting the resin. Then inject the resin into all the holes and push the bracket with bolts already fitted into the resin-filled holes. Hold or wedge it in place while the resin sets - which is normally only a few minutes. This way, all the bolts are guaranteed to line up properly with the bracket. John
Measure twice or thrice before drilling, and again afterwards because holes drilled in brickwork have a nasty tendency to end up slightly out of line.
Unless the brackets have some bendability or have slotted holes, it might be a good idea to make a plywood template with holes drilled exactly where they should be and the correct diameter. Drill one hole and push a spare drill bit into the brick hole, through the template to hold its position, then drill the other holes.
It used to be possible to buy non-ferrous expanding bolts for this sort of work. I have some stainless steel hammer in fixings made by Fischer, so stuff is available.
I have not tried that particular one, but I am sure it will be fine. I used Fischer FIS VL 300 T Vinylester Resin 300ml last time I did much[1]
Yes, and yes.
IME it is easier to bond in threaded rod rather than use a bolt, then you can add a nut later once the rod is firmly held, and lop off any excess rod of required.
Make sure your brackets have a little bit of clearance room on any holes. Drill the holes a couple of mm wider than the studding (so when I was using 1/2" rod, I was drilling 14mm holes).
Pump the hole half to 2/3rds full of resin, and push in the stud. Use some twisting motion to fully engage the thread in the resin. It will stay workable for 5 to 10 mins, and moveable for a little bit more (longer if it is cooler)
The tubes usually come with a pair of nozzles - once one has been used it can't be saved for later - they are consumable. However if doing lots of holes with multiple tubes, you can transfer the "in use" nozzle to the next tube if required. You can also take a nozzle off the tube, refit the cap and save it. You can then come back a few hours later, fit a new one later to carry on. However there is only a short window where this will work - after a couple of days the hardener seems to escape from the tube, and the remainder can't then be used.
Yes, most are designed to look a little like mortar. You can clean them up easily enough when still wet with a damp rag.
[1]
I used many tubes when doing:
formatting link
for things like bolting sections of wall back together:
formatting link
Bonding rebar into concrete:
formatting link
And for fixing things to masonry:
formatting link
(On those I used a step drill to open up the holes in the post bases just a little bit for a bit more wiggle room. Since I could not be sure the holes would all be parallel, if filled them with resin, then positioned the base, and finally pushed in the studding. That saved any problem getting the base in place if the ends of the rods were to converge or spread away from the hole positions).
I also recently used some to stick the front edge of a slab back on where it was broken by something being dropped on it.
I also used resin for bonding the handrail uprights directly into masonry here:
formatting link
With those I used a small blower to clear some of the dust from the vertical holes before fixing (since they were large and deep!)
Thanks very much all and great projects / photos John 😃
The bars need to come out of the wall about 200mm and need to be level, evenly spaced and perpendicular to the wall. Otherwise, from a particular angle it will be very noticeable given the length of them. Was thinking I could make a jig out of 4x2 by creating a square (4" high) and drill the 2 holes through opposite sides. This way when I locate the bars I can put each bar into the jig (through the holes front and back) , put resin in both holes, position the frame (check level) and push the thread bars into the holes. Hold for a few mins to set and remove. I may need to add a couple of blocks to bring the back edge off the wall to stop any seepage sticking the wood to the wall.
I think my approach would be a bit of 3/4" ply. Carefully mark and drill all holes in that in the required positions. Offer that to the wall to mark the holes positions, then drill them - say 150mm deep. Drill them a couple of mm oversize.
Now, say you want an 200mm projection from the wall, cut your rods to say 380mm. Place them though your template and fix them in place with a nut on both sides of the ply. Snug the nuts to hold the rods parallel, but still free to turn.
Inject all the holes with resin. Offer up the whole assembly and push the rods into the holes. The flexibility of the rod combined with the oversize hole will allow for any slight slight errors in angle of drilling. Twist the rods to get them fully embedded in the resin.
Since the timber won't need to go anywhere near the wall you have space to get in and clean any squeezed out resin (in reality you don't need to over fill the holes - you will get a very strong fixing even if the last inch has no resin in it).
Leave it all to go off, then remove the template and nuts before fixing you final brackets.
Let me know if that description makes sense - I can always draw it if you want!
I've recently used resin fixings to mount a couple of TV brackets.
They are great for the kind of walls commonly found where I live, they're solid, very thick and made of rubble with a very thick layer of plaster on the inside. You try to mount something on the wall and you drill a hole and find the hole ends up a lot bigger than you expected and full of all sorts of dust and general crap. I describe it as like trying to attach a kitchen cabinet to a wall made of digestive biscuit!
Resin fixings are an absolute godsend - especially when mounting a TV bracket which only has a small footprint and has a cantilever design that exerts a lot of leverage. Two 8mm studs do the job fine.
It's important to clean out the hole so it's free of dust as far as possible, I blow into the hole with a metal drinking straw whilst holding the nozzle of my Henry up to the hole to catch all the crap.
My main issue is ensuring the studs line up with the holes in your TV bracket or whatever - a carboard template taped to the wall would probably be very helpful as on my TV bracket I got one stud a little out of line and had to make the hole in the bracket a bit bigger with my Dremel Multi.
Thanks John. I understand most of your idea except for the bit where you say the ply is a long way off the wall and take the nuts off after. Won't the inside nuts be up against the holes and stick with any resin that oozes out? Also the ply will be a nuts depth from the wall of I understood correctly? Sorry if I didn't get it 🙂
You indicated that you wanted a fair bit of projection of the rods from the wall, so:
formatting link
Drill holes in ply, use it to mark, then drill holes in wall. Then fix rods as shown to the ply - 2 nuts on each rod to trap the ply.
Insert the whole assembly into the wall - when the rods are seated to full depth the ply will still be on the far end of the rods - not up against the wall.
Ah got it thanks. With the holes being 2mm wider than the rods, Is there a potential for the rods to not be quite horizontal/ perpendicular to the wall if the ply is held a bit too low/high or too left/ right relative to the holes? I wonder if I used your technique but added some (same size) blocks to each corner and positioned the rods so they extend 100mm beyond the feet. I can then position the "feet" against the wall so in theory if it were out relative to the holes then the feet wouldn't sit against the wall. The ply could still of course be marginally high/low/right/ left but that would then only impact whether the rod is in the middle of the hole or not - I think. The feet would also keep the ply off the wall to enable any oozing to be cleaned off. What do you think?
Out of interest John what did you use to draw the diagram? It looks cool :)
Some, but not much - 2mm is not much play - especially with a decent depth in the wall.
Chances are the rods will interfere with the sides of the holes at a number of points since there will always be some inaccuracy. The holes etc won't be perfectly perpendicular or parallel with each other. So the whole assembly will tend to stay where you put it once you get it in place.
Hence all you really need is a quick way to measure the wall ply distance in each plane. A measuring stick or blocks will do that (as would a ruler!) You can fix them to the ply away from the rods if you want to make it all self contained.
The other way to do it, is cut some small fine wedges from scrap timber. Do away with the template once the holes are drilled, and then insert each rod on its own. Use a square to make sure it is perpendicular to the wall, and tap in wedges to adust the position if not. You can then either pull them out before the resin is fully cured, or just trim them off flush.
That is what I did when I was setting the uprights for the handrails into the base. Some of the holes I drilled were not perfectly vertical. So I setup a laser line level to indicate vertical in one plane, and then used a 2' level on the other, and just wedged the gap between the top of the hole and rail to get them plumb. (since the wall was sloping there was no level frame of reference to measure from)
formatting link
Also keep in mind that with smaller diameters of studding, it is easy to bend it straight once the resin has set if you need to.
Sketchup. Was google, now Trimble. Probably the easiest and most intuitive way to knock up 3D models. It is not full blown CAD, but also more than just a drawing / illustration package. Loads of demos and tutorials on youtube.
I use an older version of Sketchup (that was one of the last desktop based version that still followed the google tradition before Trimble started pushing toward a subscription / web based version).
You can use the new web based "free" one if you want:
formatting link
They do still have a "pro" version that runs locally, but I am less keen on that since it is now subscription based at £245/year, which seems a bit much for hobby use.
I don't think they make the older standalone free versions available for download any more, however there are plenty of copies to be had elsewhere.
Thanks very much John. Just been up the scaffold and the projection is 400mm. I have 1m thread bar so was wondering if 100mm in the wall is enough? The outside skin of the wall is rendered brick so I guess much more and I will be in the cavity. The brackets are holding the s/s chimney sections with the weight bearing on top the structure below so these are really just holding it in place from wind etc.
Just to correct something from above the brackets require 2 bolts each and the 2 brackets are around 1m apart. Doesn't impact this question but thought I would mention.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.