drilling into brick

farley · Post by **farley** » Fri Dec 21, 2012 6:47 pm

I need to drill into my brick wall of my work shop.

Should I go and use anchors in the motor, or the brick?

TIA

claimdude · Post by **claimdude** » Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:14 pm

farley wrote:I need to drill into my brick wall of my work shop.

Should I go and use anchors in the motor, or the brick?

TIA

Brick.

Jack

joedw00 · Post by **joedw00** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 12:10 am

I would say in the mortar unless the brick is solid. Maybe if it is a block it would be o k in the brick.

heathicus · Post by **heathicus** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 12:18 am

I've always put the anchors in the brick.

JPG · Post by **JPG** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 12:25 am

'All depends'!

What are you going to mount to the wall?

What kind of anchors are you using?

How solid is the mortar?

How hard is the brick?

Light weight objects can be mounted using the mortar joint.

Heavier objects may require using the brick.

The mortar joint is easier to drill.

The brick may be too brittle(cracks easily).

It may be easier to provide an 'opinion' if we knew more.

skou · Post by **skou** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:02 am

farley wrote:I need to drill into my brick wall of my work shop.

Should I go and use anchors in the motor, or the brick?

TIA

Can you get to the other side?

If so, drill completely through the wall, and put some kind of load spreader device on the other side.

Some bricks will be stronger than the mortar, but not all of them. Once you crack the mortar, your strength will be gone.

What do you want to mount on the brick wall?

steve

hdoilcan · Post by **hdoilcan** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 2:45 am

I would take it easy and drill the brick myself.

farley · Post by **farley** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:17 am

I am going to put up some shelves, not going through the entire brick, so I will probably go with anchors into brick.

I might put up a backing board into the brick and then put the adjustable shelf bracket on the wood backing board

BuckeyeDennis · Post by **BuckeyeDennis** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 8:33 am

I usually drill in the mortar joints, as mine are good and solid. Then if I ever want to remove the anchors, the mortar can be patched almost invisibly.

The key is to mount the whatever so that the anchors are mostly in shear, not tension. The shear strenth of an anchor is excellent, but too much tension can pull them out of the wall.

In the case of shelves, I'd anchor vertical wooden uprights to the wall, and then mount the shelves to the uprights. Ideally, you want the distance between the top and bottom anchors on the uprights to be considerably larger than the width of the shelves. Mounted that way, stuff on the shelves puts mostly shear loading on the anchors.

db5 · Post by **db5** » Sat Dec 22, 2012 3:08 pm

Unless you are going to be putting heavy stuff on the shelves you can use Liquid Nails to mount 2 - 3 or more vertical mounting strips on the wall 1x1-1/2 would be about right. Let cure and mount your shelves.