radiator onto plasterboard

[TheHitcher]

well someone leant on my radiator and it came right off the wall, it actually tore the rawls through the plasterboard

thing is all the partition walls in the house seem to be plasterboard from whenever the house was built, but i'm renting from a private landlord so don't want to go changing the radiator or anything. although any other solution like affixing the radiator to a bit of wood and somehow attaching that to the wall would be ok, though im grasping at straws here

i've moved the brackets a few inches over and put in some self-tapping screw metal rawls and the left bracket is holding fine, but the rawls just tear right through where im putting the right bracket, it's just crumbling.

has anyone any advice on where to go from here? any rawls which might work better or other mehods of making sure the radiator actually stays on? it's a pretty big beast of a thing

any help much appreciated

 

[TheHitcher]

this:
http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?ts=78672&id=11143

is what was originally used. but the girl inthe DIY place said the best thing they did was them self-tapping ones you just screw in, i was dubious about how it didn't look like it'd spread the load out too well, does anyone agree i should try this next?

 

[Hitachimad]

Dont bother with plasterboard fixings, they are no use for heavy loads.

Find the nearest studs either side, fix a reasonable piece of ply or even mdf to them. Then fix the brackets to the board.

 

[TheHitcher]

Dont bother with plasterboard fixings, they are no use for heavy loads.

hence the radiator coming off in the first place so easily i suppose...

sorry what do you mean by studs?

 

[TheHitcher]

nevermind, cheers man, i'm hunting down a stud detector now

 

[Hitachimad]

Studs- the vertical pieces of wood that make the framework for the wall.

You should be able to get a good idea of where they are by knocking on the wall. The studs are where it sounds most solid.

 

[masona]

Cut out a secton of plasterboard in between timber studs (upright timber) where the radiator brackets is, put in a noggins upper & lower which a timber of 3"x2" or 4"x2" in between the studs, re-plasterboard then screw the radiator brackets to the noggins.

 

[TheHitcher]

i dont fancy knocking through walls, my mates are the construction types but im in england atm and they're all in ireland, the most i've done is laboured for a few fellas in the past...

i think the plan might be to have two pieces of wood going horizontally between the studs and affixing the brackets to them

i just hope they're in a convenient enough place, this section of wall is only about 2 metres long (my room isn't a proper square, there's protrusions all over cos the top of the stairs are behind this wall).

what i wanna know is what the original builders were up to, when the radiator came off the wall looked like it'd been sprayed with a machine gun, showing the amount of obvious attempts to mount the radiator originally... not to mention why they used plasterboard fixings if (hopefully) there were sturdy anchors behind the wall

 

[chappers]

I would have just rang the landlord and said "I came home from work and the bloody thing was hanging off the wall, send someone rounf to fix it as I can't put the heating on".

 

[TheHitcher]

ha that's the plan if i can't get this going...

it aint that far from the truth considering it was just a girl leaning on it, not even sitting on it

 

[pimpernel]

ha that's the plan if i can't get this going...

it aint that far from the truth considering it was just a girl leaning on it, not even sitting on it

its a struggle for us landlords aswell, this credit crunch.