jack hammer

Spoke to a local roofer yesterday and he also says nail plugs in aerated concrete are just not to be depended on! I´m going to go with Fischer universal fixings plugs and decent screws. It´ll take a bit longer but at least i´ll know i´m safe! As Nickfrom says, hitting the next nail plug, i can see that loosening everything back off again!!

Thanks so far all. The thickness of the wall, inner to outer is 30cm. I´ve done a few tests to one side and used a 7mm bit so that the 8mm plugs had a tighter fit. Seemed to work OK !! Strangely ( irritatingly!) i´ve seen identical looking nail plugs from other manufacturers where they state that they aren´t suitable for aerated concrete, and these from Fischer apparently are! There are some out there solely for aerated blocks but they´re about 3 times the price! I am tempted ( as Nickfromwales says) to go for standard plugs, and just do it the slower, but safer, way!

Hi all, my first post here. Just need some guidance on what length of nail plug to use! I want to fix lengths of timber battens (24mm x 48mm x 3000mm) to an aerated concrete block outer wall. 24mm is the depth of the batten. (I´ll use 24 x 100mm at the corners) I intend to use fischer N 8 x 80 nail plugs, at approx 50cm spacings along the length. I´m going to fix lightweight aluminium cladding to these battens. Am i going too short here or do i need a bigger/longer plug? (8 x 100 ?!) Thanks in advance all,

Hello all, i´m based in Germany, got an old house which had an extension (hastily) built on in the ´80´s. We moved in in January 2006, and it´s been ongoing since! I´ve been "learning by doing" and as i´m not a tradesman it´s sometimes been quite emotional!! Being able to get advice and guidance from those in the know is a great help and gives huge assurance to those of us not so gifted! I´m currently looking at some Aluminium cladding for the outside. We had the back of the house done 10 years ago and frankly i think i can do as good a job as that which a local firm did for us back then. Plenty of poorly cut panels and no insect barrier for instance! I´ve got a query on that so i´ll leave it here and go looking for the relevant section. Cheers all