Making holes in no fines concrete walls

House walls are no fines construction. It's a devil to affix things to these walls. I like the idea of using a diamond core drilll, to make say 15 or 16mm diameter holes. The idea would then be to plug with a dowel. Be nice if I could drill into the wall about 100mm or so. Any product recommendations? Thanks. Rich

Edit: Something like this I suppose:

http://www.applieddiamond.com/214-vbd-5-15mm.html

SDS drill + appropriate sized bit.

Depending on what you're fixing, expoxy fixings or rawl bolts.

I think there is room here for some experiment. Given that the hole size is only 15 or 16mm, I ought to be able to employ my DeWalt D21710 600W regular drill. The thing is, I've got lots of time to drill, it's not like I am a professional who must make rapid progress.

I've got a cheap 16mm diamond core drill that is made for tiles. I'm going to try to drill into the no fines wall for it's depth, which is 50mm. I'll do that tomorrow (21st) and report what happens. See if it will last the whole 50mm.

DIYalot said:

I think there is room here for some experiment. Given that the hole size is only 15 or 16mm, I ought to be able to employ my DeWalt D21710 600W regular drill. The thing is, I've got lots of time to drill, it's not like I am a professional who must make rapid progress.

I've got a cheap 16mm diamond core drill that is made for tiles. I'm going to try to drill into the no fines wall for it's depth, which is 50mm. I'll do that tomorrow (21st) and report what happens. See if it will last the whole 50mm.

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Not sure why you asked in the first place.

SammyInnit said:

Not sure why you asked in the first place.

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Your advice was: "SDS drill + appropriate sized bit.".

Now, if you had mentioned a specific kind of diamond bit, or even a particular product offering, I could have acted on that. Given your response it makes some sense given I have little to go by, to see what my cheap tile cutter can do. But, it was perfectly okay to pose my question, because I might have been lucky and received an answer of some distinction - I mean rather more helpful.

DIYalot said:

Your advice was: "SDS drill + appropriate sized bit.".

Now, if you had mentioned a specific kind of diamond bit, or even a particular product offering, I could have acted on that. Given your response it makes some sense given I have little to go by, to see what my cheap tile cutter can do. But, it was perfectly okay to pose my question, because I might have been lucky and received an answer of some distinction - I mean rather more helpful.

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I didn't mention a specific kind of diamond bit because there was no need to recommend a diamond bit. A masonry bit with an SDS drill would have been more than adequate. Given your user name is DIYalot I'd have thought it was a basic understanding.

Also you made no mention of what you were fixing to the wall. A set of kitchen units? A TV? A family portrait? I'm not a mind reader.

DIYalot said:

I'll do that tomorrow (21st) and report what happens

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What happened?

DIYalot said:

The thing is, I've got lots of time to drill, it's not like I am a professional who must make rapid progress.

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The reasons why guys like me use an SDS drill are partly speed, partly reduced fatigue (you don't need to push an SDS - the drill does the work for you), partly the reduced time you are actually making a racket (important if you have neighbours like mine) and partly because the hammer strength of an SDS means it is far less likely to be diverted off-track by hard stones, steel rebar, etc than would a relatively weak impact strength percussion drill

I, too, am interested to find out how your diamod drill went. I always thought that those would clog in plaster and cement/morter and that the cutting performance might be less than stellar - and it would be nice to be proven wrong

Okay, here is my report:

First of all, it's not possible to use a regular masonry drill on a no fines wall, because there are many voids, and when the drill hits a pebble all it does is slide off to the side. So, one has to use some kind of diamond core drill.

At the start I was thinking, presuming, I'll probably need something better than my inexpensive, non branded tile core drill. I think I paid £7 for it. So initially I thought what I need is someone to recommend a diamond drill (and any other kit) to cut holes in the no fines wall.

However, I then decided to give this inexpensive 16mm tile drill a test at cutting holes in my wall, with my regular 600W electric drill. Well, I'm pretty surprised to report that actually I have been able to bore 6 holes each to a depth of 50mm. It's tricky getting a start on the spot you want, but with care it's possible to centre on where you want the hole to be. I did not exert much pressure and I dipped the drill into a cup of water about every 15 seconds. The whole thing took me about 30-35 minutes. Of course, this is acceptable to a DIYer, but might not be for a professional where time is rather more important.

So, I have not spent on any new diamond drill, nor extra kit and I've my 6 holes. I'm thinking of inserting in 16mm hardwood dowel. Then probably drilling to accept rawlplugs. Also I will use glue to affix the wood as well. The current job is fixing a length of wood to the wall, to make a stud wall at right angles to it.

The drilling hardly made much noise. Pretty quite.

I attach three pictures. The diamond drill itself still looks good. Actually looks better than in the picture.