Best fixing into thermalite blocks?

haaammit

haaammit

haaammit

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Hi - we've recently moved house and need to put up some pictures and other bits and bobs, one of which is a 7.5kg round mirror that has only one fixing hook.

The wall it's to go on is made from what appears to be thermalite blocks - at least that's what it looks like when looking inside a socket - the blue, crumbly type of block you can make a hole in with a screwdriver.

What would be the best way of hanging the mirror on that type of wall - brown plug and screw or would I need a bigger plug or would shield anchors or chemical fixes be better?

Thanks in advance.
 
I used long bolts into the external brickwork for my rental(obviously only any good on an external wall). I hung 15kg off some square nylon anchors on the advice of screwfix on an internal wall.

Hopefully that will give you some idea.

Its a horrible thing to screw into. I tried the expanding bolts first and it just split the block :(
 
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Look at resin fixings, however I never tend to get too much of a problem anchoring into this type of material. Drill a hole slightly smaller than say a brown plug and hammer the wall plug in for a snug fit. Could also slop in a bit of gripfill for additional strength.
 
We have a 18Kg mirror+wood surround held on by two screw/raw plugs into the clockwork.

I used a long/heavy duty raw plug and screw/bolt. Looking at the drill bit + ruler photo I took at the time - it's about 4-5" deep given the dust marks on the bit. The raw plug alone is that size.. any shorter and the plaster work will crack and drop - allowing the bolt to simply be pulled out. They may have even been frame fixings (i.e. very deep).. in short I could hang off one..

However as Ned has said - you probably want to stabilise the block.. hence the resin.
 
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Small drill bit increments until you get to the plug size you need, you need to be careful the holes not to small though as the screw will just crack the block.
 
What I usually do in thermalite is just drive a single thread screw straight into it. If using plugs then go for a proper rawl plug rather than the cheapo ones as they will just spin in the block with it being so soft.

One other thing you can do is to angle the screw down, so you are adding some mechanical strength to it. If the plug does fail then it still wont be able to fall out of the wall.
 
I resin fix into thermalite, how they ever allowed it to become a building material I'll never know. I've made pastry with more structural value than thermalites.
 
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