My daughter's asked me to put up one of these 'floating shelves' in her house. She wants it on an outside wall of a single-storey extension that looks like it was constructed in the last couple of years (just before she moved in).
Tapping the wall, sounds like plasterboard. The wall's a foot thick with a small stone rendering on the outside surface.
I know nought about modern building techniques, but something stirs in the old grey matter about using adhesive to stick plasterboard to walls.
Could this be a breeze-block wall with plasterboard glued to it covered by a plaster skim?
If so, any clues as to how I get a secure fixing, namely one that'll take some considerable force?
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Length. Make sure you get it into the blockwork. Lot of stress on those floating shelf fixings as I found to my cost.
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I often use a long thin masonry drill to do a test drilling somewhere that can be easily filled when hanging something heavy on an unknown wall type.... avoiding elecs of course.
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Followed Fenlanders advice and I drilled through some plasterboard into a 2" cavity.
I haven't a stud locator, just a metal/electric type (all my own walls are brick or breeze) so I've never needed one. I can detect a series of metal signals on a horizontal line, but tapping the wall sounds hollow between the places metal's detected - daughter wouldn't let me drill lots of holes to search for wood. I couldn't detect any sensible vertical fixings.
Could the wall be plasterboard fixed to blocks at irregular intervals.
I've told her to abandon any ideas about fixing a floating shelf to it.
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The extension could be timber framed with external masonry or even - I have seen them - timber built with external render.
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If you have hit a cavity then you can use one of those expanding things that will hook inside it.
If you use a long enough drill you will always reach something useful, either a cavity or something solid you can rawlplug into.
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2" cavity sounds like it is plasterboard on wooden studs. They should be at 600mm vertical spacing so sometimes if you find one you can locate the next ones OK. However, as I've done here, there are so many reasons why the spacing can go out so you end up with loads of small probe holes trying to get an exact position.
I've recently dry lined 6 walls in this old house and after having the previous solid brick for secure fixings hanging radiators, heavy wall cupboards and shelves takes a bit of extra thought.
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>>>If you have hit a cavity then you can use one of those expanding things that will hook inside it.
I think decent floating shelf instructions will say they are not suitable for fixing to plasterboard if you can't get onto the studs, even with butterfly fixings, as these shelves apply such high loadings to a small area.
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Don't even THINK about fixing this with cavity wall fixings. I'd want to be going into proper brick.
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Yeah, it wont pull the fixings through, it will tear a large chunk out the wall.
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Getting a secure wall fixing - Zero
