Drilling into old-house walls
I keep having trouble every time we try to install shelving or other hardware in the walls of our brownstone. We’ll drill through a top layer of plaster/lath and then (either a half inch or one-inch in) hit a very hard surface that feels like metal. (These are interior, not party walls.) I’ll poke around…
I keep having trouble every time we try to install shelving or other hardware in the walls of our brownstone. We’ll drill through a top layer of plaster/lath and then (either a half inch or one-inch in) hit a very hard surface that feels like metal. (These are interior, not party walls.) I’ll poke around one wall and find that I generally can’t drill anywhere in a given area. This has happened in a number of places in our house…. I don’t want to force drilling our of fear that I’ll run into electrical cable, but there’s so much of this stuff it can’t possible be all electrical. Stud finders don’t seem to help. there seems to be metal in random places back there. Any ideas?
I am running into the same problem but I live in an old (1960’s???) high rise in Manhattan. The wall sounds a lot more solid than drywall when you knock on it. When I drill into it, the drill goes in 1″ without any trouble (pushing back gray dust) then the drill hits something really solid. I often get magnetic metal shavings stuck to the drill tip so I am pretty sure that it is metal backing the drywall or something. I am pretty sure it isn’t bark beetles and I am pretty sure it isn’t pipes because I have drilled a lot of holes. I have also had this same problem in old houses in Los Angeles. Haven’t figured it out yet but I think that the solution might involve a sharper drill bit (and standing in a pool of water while you do it).
I just bought a house in the Midwest with the same problem. Every time I would drill through the plaster and end up where I thought a stud would be (as opposed to just empty space), the drill would just stop biting. Come to find out, the studs were just THAT hard – they’re made of Brazilian Ipe (aka Ironwood around here), and it feels just like that. I actually have to drive a finishing nail into the stud and then go back and drill a 3/32″ pilot before I can get a wood screw to do anything in there, and even then it’s about all you can do to turn the thing.
That may not be what your issue is, but it’s made some major headaches trying to mount surround speakers…
For starters, it’s possible that you’re hitting the old gas lines for the gas lamps that were originally used to light these brownstones. When the plaster was removed from our living room wall to reveal the brick wall behind it, we found the capped gas pipes imbedded in the brick.
There are all sorts of pipes and drains that run through the walls between the basement and the roof. You could be hitting one of those.
Is your home in a brownstone that was cut up into apartments or is it still in the original configuration?
For starters, it’s possible that you’re hitting the old gas lines for the gas lamps there were originally used to light these brownstones. When the plaster was removed from our living room wall to reveal the brick wall behind it, we found the capped gas pipes imbedded in the brick.
There are all sorts of pipes and drains that run through the walls between the basement and the roof. You could be hitting one of those.
Is your home in a brownstone that was cut up into apartments or is it still in the original configuration?
What 1:40 said. Bear in mind that even if your house has steam heat now it may have had passive heat when it was built. That’s what those ducts are for.
I have ancient steam heat here and ran into the same thing. I opened up the wall and found those metal ducts. This may be what you’re encountering: http://www.brooklynrowhouse.com/node/40
It confounded me until I learned why they were there. You’re probably not hitting the duct itself but the metal plaster lath in front of it. When the walls were framed, metal rather than wood lath was used over the ducts in case of a basement fire.
There’s a pretty common situation in old brownstones like these. There is a wood and stone boring beetle that leaves boring trails which can calcify and become so hard that, for instance, you can’t nail through them.
The problem is that you can’t really use a stud finder to figure out where these are- they work on relative moisture and also PH, and these are going to register all over the place for these kinds of tunnels.
If you were badly infested at some point, it may be affecting the structural integrity of your house. You should have a qualified structural engineer over immediately, and also retain an exterminator that specializes in this.
In the meantime- STOP DRILLING IN YOUR WALLS AND POKING AROUND IN THEM- it could be very dangerous. You may weaken the structure further, or worse, spread what could be a current infestation to other parts of the building.
Hope this helps.
You might be hitting the original hot air ducts. They’re heavier gauge steel than current ducts. They won’t stop a bullet but they will stop a nail(under floor boards) or screw (walls). Check out the original wall registers, if they are there, and trace them back to the cellar. They were never taken out.