Fitting towel rail onto plasterboard wall?

[Mr Sparkle]

Should a towel rail/radiator that's fitted to a stud partition wall be screwed into some noggins as opposed to just the plasterboard?

I am thinking that one day, some muppet could pull on it and potentially rip it off the wall if supported by the plasterboard alone

Or am i being pedantic?

 

[123458384735783]

I cut in on the other side and putting some wooden supports to stop this happening, however you can get some very sturdy plasterboard anchor plugs which can even be used to secure TVs to a wall which I’d recommend using for an easy secure fix.

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Ideally you'd fix it to noggins or studs, next best is those Grippit plasterboard fixings, next best is the plastic through fixings.
If you're a landlord, do the noggins/studs route. If its your home then Grippit or thru fixings are probably good enough, especially if the thing is fed by plastic pipe (less risk of scalding water escape)
EDIT Above for towel rails. Grippits or studs for radiators- they're heavy!

 

[Madrab]

Even on a plasterboard wall it takes a good deliberate pull or fall against it to pull it off the wall.

If you think there may be a danger that it may happen though then there are lots of fasteners as suggested above. The Gripit fastners are great, I have a huge mirror on the wall held by 4 Red ones and it's still there. Then there's butterfly toggles but they use a huge hole to be fitted, fine on nice fresh plasterboard.
I've even fitted 1000x600mm K2 rads onto plaster and lathe walls using M6 wall anchors as they were the only things that wouldn't need a huge hole in the old plaster but could grab the lathe behind. There is a caveat though where the rads are marked as being on a weak wall and not to lean nor hang anything on them.

 

[Mr Sparkle]

Thanks for the help guys

Rather than going through the palava of cutting the drywall, inserting some timber/ply and repatching, i will use a stronger fixing

I must say that i do like the look of these fixings

 

[Madrab]

Nothing new with them really, look up gravity toggles, all they've done is changed the way the are fitted through the wall, the mechanics are basically the same.