I have recently moved to a new apartment and I am planning to mount a TV in the living room. The apartment walls are dry lined. Right in the middle of the designated place for the tv, the dry wall seems to have like a seam, but what is strange to me is the sound and vibration less of the drywall at that point. When I tap with my hand the drywall does not vibrate at all, and the sound is like there is a plastered wall behind. This area appears to be 15-20 cm wide from what I can tell.
First of all I am not sure what is behind the drywall at that point:
- Is that a concrete column of the apartment?
- If so, is it possible to drill holes? I suspect I need a powerful drill to make a hole there.
- Is it safe to install the TV wall bracket? Am I allowed to make holes into it?
The difficulty that I am finding is that I have a stud detector (which usually is not so accurate) and close to this seam it is really not accurate, so I do not know how to proceed here. Any help is very welcome.
Additional info:
The apartment is in Ireland, the development has 4 floors my apartment is in the ground floor. The distance of the seam from the external wall is around 220 cm. While the wall itself is around 7m long. Through its length there is only the innermost edge of this wall that makes the same sound. The walls are dry lined with studs. I have previously mounted stuff on the studs before (not on this wall).
Thank you.
Best Answer
Brick, poured concrete, concrete block are all likely possibilities in a 4-story building.
The solution generally would be the same on all of them: Hammer drill + an appropriate type of fastener. There are a number of different types. One popular one (at least in the US) is Tapcon:
though in this case, I would head over to my local hardware store to see the options first-hand and, if you can find someone there who knows what they are doing, get some advice.
I would consider cutting out a small square of drywall around each fastener location so that you are drilling directly into the brick/concrete/block. Otherwise you may get quite a mess trying to drill through the drywall into the other surface.
Depending on the specifics, sometimes it makes sense to cut out a large section of drywall, attach a piece of wood using appropriate screws and then mount the TV to that wood with wood screws.