Fixing to porcelain tiled cement board walls

[elsabio]

In a rash moment, we chose very hard porcelain tiles for our wetroom walls. Our tilers and builders complained of burning out several diamond drills when working with it. Now I want to fit a mirrored bathroom cabinet to one of these walls. The porcelain is secured to cement board, which is fixed to a stud wall. Knowing the difficulties and thickness of materials here, a cavity fixing seems like a major challenge. I had hoped to find a stud - but my stud finder is just not helping here. I would value any advice on how to fix to this wall. For example, will traditional plugs and screws provide enough load bearing into the cement board, assuming I can drill that far?

 

[bathstyle]

You might be surprised just how much weight a tiled wall will take, stud or no stud. Use a good quality nylon plug with lugs and only you will be able to tell if it's secure enough. If it isn't then I would use some fast brolly cavity fixings. Use a diamond coated hole saw with a water spray to drill your Porcelain.

 

[elsabio]

Not half as surprised as having over 10kg of porcelain tile plus attached cabinet fall into your toothbrush beaker ...

Thanks for the advice! I'll see how it goes.

 

[Richard C]

Cement based board is a lot stronger than plasterboard so you should be OK with conventional PB fixings; to be safe just go + 50% with the number of fixings; but don't go silly with the weight you put in the cabinet