Screws, Anchors and Fixing Into Indian Walls

Hardware rarely pulls out of a wall because the screw was weak. It pulls out because the anchor was wrong for the material behind the plaster, or because there was no anchor at all.

Find out what the wall is

Tap it. A solid, dull sound suggests brick, block or concrete. A hollow sound suggests plasterboard or a partition. Drill a small pilot hole and look at the dust: red or brown dust means clay brick, grey means concrete or cement block, white or paper-flecked means plasterboard. That one test decides everything that follows.

Brick and cement block

Use a plastic expansion plug with a masonry bit of the matching diameter, drilled to slightly more than the plug length so debris has somewhere to go. Blow or vacuum the hole out before inserting the plug; drilling dust left in the hole is the most common reason an anchor feels loose from the start. Hammer-drill on brick, and be gentler on old lime-mortar walls, where the mortar line is much weaker than the brick.

Concrete

Concrete takes an expansion plug well, and for anything carrying real weight a sleeve or wedge anchor is a better answer. Reinforced concrete may stop the drill dead against a bar; move 40 to 50 mm and start again rather than forcing it.

Plasterboard and partitions

A plain plug does nothing in plasterboard. Use a self-drilling plasterboard anchor for light loads, or a toggle or butterfly fixing for anything heavier, which spreads the load behind the board. Better still, find the stud with a detector and screw into that; a screw in a stud is worth several anchors in the board.

Getting the screw right

• The screw must match the plug diameter, not just fit inside it.
• The threaded part should sit fully inside the plug, not stop halfway.
• Allow for the thickness of what you are fixing plus at least 25 to 30 mm into a solid wall.
• Countersink where the fitting expects it, so the head sits flush and the fitting sits flat.

Tiles

Tape the spot, mark through the tape and start slowly with the drill in rotary mode, not hammer. Switch to hammer only once you are through the tile and into the wall behind. Starting on hammer is what cracks a tile, and a cracked tile is a much larger job than the fixing was.

Where a product ships with screws or anchors, our listings state the count and the size. Where it does not, the listing says that too, so you can add what you need to the same order rather than discovering it halfway through the job.