I'm mounting a rafter support for a lean-to at the side of my house (45mm x 120mm wood beam). I know that the bricks are 100mm thick, so I'm wondering what length of expansion plugs (rawl plugs) I can use. I don't want to drill right through the brick obviously but am wondering how far I can go?
How far can you safely drill into 100mm thick brick for expansion plugs
brickscrews
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"Is there a good and code-compliant way -- and barring that, just a good way -- to rectify this situation WITHOUT REMOVING THE BRICK OR INTERNAL STRUCTURE?"
No.
"I am planning to remove all of the sheetrock and insulation in the affected rooms, cut the brick ties (most of which are rusted anyway) after supporting the fascia from the exterior, slip housewrap between the studs and the fascia, and then slip a sheet of 4x8 1/2" (or less, I think I saw 1/4") of extruded foam sheathing between the studs and the housewrap. The entire thing will be re-anchored and affixed from the outside using CTP Grip Ties or a similar product. This should provide a watertight, sheathed, and even (insufficiently) thermally broken envelope without having to do any tearout work beyond the sheetrock."
Your plan sounds like it could work, (except for the challenge of slipping 4x8 sheets of anything between studs and your bricks).
As a suggestion, I would use diagonal metal strapping for lateral brace across the studs if you are not using structural sheathing (i.e. foam).
See this article (goto page 2) and below image from finehomebuilding.
Here's what I did (probably a little over-engineered but it worked well)
- Filled current holes and the surrounding mess
- Got 135mm long, 7mm screws with wall plugs, and drilled 10mm holes for them
- Located the holes 50mm above the current holes, 50mm being approximately half a course of bricks
Whilst drilling I think the problem might have been that I'd gone between two brick courses, but this was probably compounded by the fact the plaster was thicker than I thought (it might have been 60-70mm before it hit the brick by the noise of the drill), so the ridiculously long far too heavy duty screws probably did the trick.
Each of the screws is apparently rated to hold 90kg, though I doubt either the wall or the coat-hook thing itself would be anywhere near that.
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Best Answer
I think 75% of the brick should be fine.. normally there is a "blow out" of the brick within 1cm of reaching the other side... but this is really dependent on the type of brick (cement, clay, etc), moisture contnet, age of brick, diameter of hole and strength of the hammer action of the drill
If it were me, I would drill to about half way, then add some water to the hole and start to reduce my force on the hammer drill in order to slow the drilling speed. -- do not attempt to drill if you have an SDS type drill since the hammer action is not dependent on your applied pressure.
once the plugs are in place, you should have no issue hand tigtening the plug. just dont over-tighten