drilling nightmare walls, help!

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mccben9

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Hi everyone,

I REALLY need some advice on drilling in my house. We live in an ex council house which has absolutely nightmareish walls.

Basically they are made up of concrete and big stones and rocks so when you drill into them, if you hit a stone you can't go any further or the drill veers off to the side which causes huge holes in the wall and means we are having a really difficult time even putting shelves up.

We've had several joiners, builders and other tradesmen come round who said they've never seen walls made up like this before and I've searched the internet but there isn't really any information on these types of walls.

Any help would be excellent, it takes up so much time even putting up a shelf which is so frustrating!

I've added some photos where you can just about see the stones and rocks inside the wall that we can't get past.

Thanks in advance.
 

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Sounds about right, will have to look at getting one of these. Do you have any recommendations of which of these to get?

Thank you
 
kenzam said:
Sounds about right, will have to look at getting one of these. Do you have any recommendations of which of these to get?

Thank you
Click to expand...
Screwfix will have a decent enough one for the DIY'er for about £60. The most important thing is to remember to let the drill do the work. Trying to push it in too hard while drilling will just burn the bit out. Decent quality bits are a must. Hilti probably the best, but a bit extreme cost wise for DIY.
 
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kenzam said:
Do you have any recommendations of which of these to get?
Click to expand...

What's your budget? I'd say invest in a good one now and it will literally last you forever.

Do you already own any cordless tools? You can maybe buy just the bare SDS drill to fit those batteries.

If not, a decent brand corded SDS is the way to go. Bosch, Makita, DeWalt, Hilti, Hitachi, Ryobi would be my 'go to' brands.
When looking at the specs of SDS drills, the RPM and to an extent, the BPMs (blows per minute) are mostly irrelevant. The impact joules rating will tell you much more about how well the drill will perform.
 
Yeah, that's a nice drill.

Remember, these SDS drills can only be used with SDS drill bits, you can't use ordinary bits because of the special chuck.

So, you'll want a 6mm bit for red plugs and a 7mm for brown plugs. But, seeing as you have those awkward walls, buy a 5mm bit also.
Drill the wall first with the 5mm on hammer mode, then run it through without hammer with the 6mm.

In a crumbly wall, if you go straight in with a 6mm bit on hammer, the hole can end up being oversize, then the wall plug turn turns round in the hole when you try to drive a screw in and lots of swearing happens!

Gaz :)
 
Right ok, I'll just buy the parts with the drill to make sure I've got the right bits.

Thank you for the advice, hopefully this will be the solution and we can finally stop putting off finishing work on the house!

Thanks for all your help :)
 
kenzam said:
I'd prefer not to spend over £100, just been looking on screwfix and one of their top ones is ;

Bosch GBH 2-24 D 2kg SDS Plus Hammer Drill 240V

i'll probably go for this i think?
Click to expand...

Or pay a little more and get one of these Bosch GBH2-24DF:
https://www.jewsontools.co.uk/bosch-gbh-2-24-df-professional-sds-rotary-hammer-drill.html

I have one, and the interchangeable chucks (SDS and keyless) are more convenient, in my opinion, than a separate keyless chuck adaptor that plugs in to the SDS chuck.
 
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