On 02 Jul 2003, Fred Zimmerman wrote:

I want to put up wood shelving (2 x 4) in my basement, which consists
of cinder block foundation walls.

Can I use standard masonry screws or lag bolts to attach 2" x 4"
lengths to the cinder block walls? Do I need additional fastener
hardware? (eg. butterflies, special washers or inserts, etc.) Do I
risk cracking or splitting the cinder blocks themselves with my
hammer/drill?

How I would do it: Use a hammer drill to drill 1/2 holes in the
block and use lead anchors that will hold lag bolts. Stagger them
going up the 2x4, and make one vertical row fall right on a mortar
seam. The holes/bolts that are going into the body of a block are
prone to falling in sometimes (remember it's hollow behind that
hole in many spots) and you need to work gingerly until the anchor
really grabs the hole.

][
][ ----- every other course of block will hit this mortar
----- ][ seam, make sure either of your anchors are hitting
| o | ][ in that area (x)
| |
| x |
| | ][ (compressed vertically for conserving space)
| o | ][
| |
| x |
| | ][
| o | ][
| |
etc
-----

If the shelves are less than 5' wide I would use one riser about
8-12" in from each end (adjusted for finding those mortar seams!)
and if they're 5'+ I would heavily consider using one somewhere
near the middle.

If you use a hammer action drill and masonary bits* you should
have little/no chance of damaging a block. *you might want to
start with a smaller pilot hole and then drill the bigger one,
just like you might do with some larger holes in wood.


TP
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