As soon as the layout of the rooms is finished, the placo is painted or papered, it still remains to put on the wall some storage furniture (kitchen units) or shelves and decorative elements such as frames or a mirror for example. You can also hang ultra-trendy sanitary equipment on the wall of the bathroom or toilet, such as a wall-hung washbasin or a wall-hung toilet. Stay at choose wall plugs adapted and to use the appropriate tools to install them. Let’s do a check in.
What is the placo?
Placo is the diminutive of Placoplâtre, originally a trademark registered by Saint-Gobain. Today, this term has largely passed into everyday language and is used in construction jargon as well as among amateur do-it-yourselfers. It’s the favorite material of the Frenchboth for new construction and for renovation and development.
It is in fact a molded plasterboard, in the factory, between two fairly thin layers of cardboard. This is what is used in construction to mount interior partitions and ceilings, whether in the professional or private sphere. Each plasterboard is glued with a special mortar or screwed onto the support uprights which can be made of wood and even metal (rails).
Choose your dowels for placo and install them in the rules of the art
Everything must be perfectly fixed. To do this, it is necessary to use suitable dowels because the placo is hollow, friable and thin. To know which hanging material to choose, it is necessary to take into account:
- From item weight to hang on the placo,
- From direction in space of the load: it can be either verticalthat is horizontal.
All placo anchors must provide a excellent resistance. Note that depending on the anchor chosen, it may be mandatory to use a would be or a drill to put it. This is not necessary to install a self-drilling or self-drilling dowel of course.
The different types of dowels for placo and their installation method
Here is an overview of wall plugs and how to install them. The first concerns the vertical fixings and the last the suspended horizontal fixing.
From 5 to 80 kg
- Multi-support dowels
They can support from the small painting to the large radiator. But several anchoring points are essential for heavy objects. Thus, if one wishes to suspend a load of 5 kg the monopoint enough. For some charges plus lourdesyou have to go to multipoint anchor. These dowels must be installed in strict compliance with the manufacturer’s instructions. They arise with the drill equipped with a drill bit. This must imperatively be adapted to the diameter of the multi-support anchor.
From 20 to 50 kg
It’s a expansion anchor which can be placed with or without expansion pliers. Highly reliable, the Molly anchor is used for a load of 20 to 50 kg and is therefore sized according to this criterion. There are three kinds of Molly:
- Expansion anchor classic : requires a drill,
- Expansion anchor autopercussion : use a hammer to drive it in,
- Expansion anchor autophoresis : involves a screwdriver and an expansion pliers (or gun).
Less than 25 kg
This anchor suitable for vertical loads which do not exceed 25 kg is provided with a fin which comes to fall back on the plasterboard during screwing. It arises with a screwdriver.
It should only be used for hanging a vertical load on the placo less than 20 kg. This is the case with many decorative elements. It arises with a simple screwdriver.
Horizontal fixing
It is also called toggle ankle. It is only designed to allow a suspended horizontal fixing. This is therefore the case with chandeliers that are installed on the ceiling, for example. In placo, the spring pin cannot support more than 5 kg. She poses with a drill. When this pin is inserted, its wings fold down, ensuring locking.
Attention ! To fix heavy loads in placo, certain precautions must be taken. At the place where you decide to put a dowel, you have to start with install reinforcement which can be wood or steel. This protects against the crumbling of the placo which could cause the load attached to the wall to fall. For reinforce the placoit may be essential to cut it out, introduce the reinforcement, apply a filler and then sand in order to obtain a perfectly smooth result.
Finally, you can choose not to put reinforcement but to fix its load to the material on which the placo has been applied. It can be brick, breeze block, cut stone… In this case the choice of screws and dowels differs from that for placo since it is then necessary to use dowels adapted to a support plein and in addition threaded rods are used.