I had attached a shelf to my wall using the hardware that came with the shelf, but then it came crashing down in the middle of the night and all of my stuff came down with it.
The hardware came from Home Depot, I don't remember the name, but there are two pieces, one is pictured below. They were rated for 30 pounds IIRC, and I only had 8 board games and 10 small books of sheet music on the shelf – I don't think I overloaded it.
I drilled holes in the wall, hammered in the plastic bits, and drove the screws into the plastic bits. There are wooden studs where they were placed.
- Did I install the shelf wrong, or did I put too much weight on it?
- When I put the shelf back up, should I use a different method? longer screws? do I need to get new plastic thingies?
Best Answer
It was installed incorrectly.
It appears what you have in the picture is a knotting anchor. Near the tip of the plastic sleeve is a threaded section. Properly installed, tightening the screw should pull the far end of the sleeve up against the wall, making a thick "knot" that prevents the anchor from pulling through the wall. Since your failed anchor looks smooth and undeformed, this evidently did not happen.
Here's an example from NPA:
You say there are wooden studs where the anchors were installed. Perhaps you drilled a hole large enough for the anchor then pushed it into the hole in the stud. Since the body of the anchor was then constrained by the surrounding wood rather than in the empty space behind the wall it was unable to expand. Possibly you also did not tighten the screws with sufficient force.
When mounting something where there is a wooden stud, the proper procedure is to not use an anchor at all, but just run a wood screw into the stud. The holding power of a wood screw in wood is a lot more than any hollow wall anchor.