A job in a 1920s brick building in Savannah taught me to always check for old plaster.

I was running wire for a new panel and drilled into what I thought was a normal wall. Turns out the lath and plaster was over an inch thick in some spots, and my standard anchors just spun. I ended up using toggle bolts rated for 75 pounds each to secure the motion sensor properly. Anyone else run into walls that just eat hardware?

2 comments

2 Comments

wade_hall21d ago

Ever try to hang a picture in an old house and hit solid brick behind half an inch of drywall?

wade_hall21d ago

My old apartment in St. Louis had walls like that. You'd drill and just get a cloud of plaster dust forever. I learned to use those long masonry bits for everything. A regular drill bit just would not get through it all. It makes you really plan your holes because patching that mess is a chore. You start to understand why people just leaned pictures against the wall back then.