order by phone 01622 738 699

sales and support lines open from 9am to 5.30pm

You are here: Home > Blog

A How to Guide for Drilling

by Ed 5. March 2012 07:54

I spoke about drills and drill bits but what are the jobs that you might have to undertake around the home. Now lets try and put the drills and drill bits together to do a few projects and see how the right tool for the job works.


If you need to hang or fix something to a wall and the wall is dry lined, (this is a hollow plasterboard wall found in most modern houses) you would only need a small cordless or mains drill, no hammer action would be required. The drill bit would be a jobber type bit, you would drill your hole and fit a plasterboard expanding wall plug or if the intended load is heavy you would use a more specialist type plasterboard fixing such as a toggle fixing.


If you were doing the same job but fixing to a solid wall made of breeze blocks or normal building bricks, then you would need a drill, cordless or mains, with a hammer action. The drill bit required would be a masonry drill bit, set your drill to hammer action, drill your hole and fit a wall plug. These are supplied in different colours to suit the different sizes of screw. If you are fixing something light taking no weight then a yellow plug with a 5mm drill bit and a number 4 or 6 gauge screw would be fine. If you are hanging shelves designed to take medium weights or mirrors then you would need to use the most common wall plug, the red. Drill hole size 5.5 to 6.5mm and here you would use a 8 or 10 gauge screw. If you are putting up book shelves, very large mirrors or anything with a lot of weight then you would use the brown wall plugs, these need a hole drilled 7 – 8mm in size and you would then be using a 10,12 or 14 gauge screw.


If your wall were made of solid concrete then you again would need a masonry drill bit and a drill set to hammer action but you would also have to make sure the drill was powerful enough to spin the drill bit fast enough too drill into this dense material. You would likely need at least an 18v cordless drill or a mains drill of a minimum 700 watts rating. The fixings used would be the same as for bricks or blocks.


If you need to drill a much larger hole into or through the wall then this is where you would need a more powerful drill, if for instance you need to fit an extractor fan these are normally 100 or 150mm in diameter. This is where you would use a diamond core cutter and a core drill, you would use a dry cutter if going through brick and block or a wet cutter if the walls were concrete. You could mark out where you need the fan and then drill a series of holes around your markings, you would need a masonry drill bit long enough to go right through the inner and outer walls. The drill bit would need to be a minimum of something like  8mm and dependent how powerful the drill you were using was much larger. For this type of project you would need to be using an 18v or better still a 24v cordless drill or a mains drill with a minimum motor wattage of 700w and again the higher the better. Due to the amount of work and the type of holes being drilled here the more specialised SDS drill and drill bits could be used as the drill bit would not slip.


I hope that you find this a little helpful, if you have a project and need advice please ask the question and here at thesitebox.com we will always try to help.

About Ed