Help! How to hang cupboard on plaster board where heating pipes run up stud??

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roxburd

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Hi all,

I've got two long but narrow cupboards and I want to hang them one above the other on an internal plasterboard wall in the kitchen. The wall separates the kitchen and the living room and I suspect the wall is stud and plasterboard but I wasn't 100% sure where the studs were by tapping alone. I used a Magnusson detector to find the timber and it found it where I thought it was. But before I went drilling, I switched it to metal detection and it found metal in the same place as it found wood... sure enough, the copper heating pipes from the radiator in the living room come up right where the detector said the stud was.

How should I go about hanging these cupboards?

I was hoping to screw them to a stud as the stud will better support the weight. I'm tempted to knock a nail through the plasterboard to find the stud... but there's always the chance that I'll hit the pipes and put a hole in them.

So I'm wondering if I should just mount the cupboards on the plasterboard in several places to spread the load?

Maybe I should bite the bullet and cut out an inspection hole to get a good look in the void and figure out how best to locate and mount on the stud?

Any ideas, suggestions and inspiration much appreciated!!

Dave
 
I would go with Interset fittings

www.toolstation.com

Rawlplug Interset Metal Cavity Wall Fixings

www.toolstation.com www.toolstation.com

Not necessarily that size though.

If you use the setting tool, it grabs the screw head and pulls the arms on the fitting towards you.

In my opinion the are often the best fittings for plasterboard - so long as you use the "setting tool"
 
Last edited:
The studs are vertical, presumably?

Are the pipes horizontal or vertical?

You need (at least) two hanging points per cabinet. Have you got two suitable studs?

What is the width of your wall cabinets, and what is the spacing of your studs?
 
You can cut out plasterboard near top of upper cupboard which will allow you too see what’s behind , it will also allow you to secure a timber baton to rear of board to give a secure fixing for cupboard .
 
Pipes will run up the side of the studs. Screw to the studs.

If the unit fixings are wider than the stud spacing, plasterboard fixings are OK as long as they are suitable for the total weight, and there are not two close together for a bracket hook. Otherwise you should fit a batten or cut the plasterboard and fit a batten.
 
Or use cabinet hanging rail, wide enough for the cab and spanning at least two studs.
 
Thanks for the advice, guys, I appreciate it.

The studs and pipes are vertical. The cupboards are 900mm wide, 367mm high and 307mm deep. The stud is 670mm from the corner of the room. I'm fitting two of these units, one above the other, screwed together.

I've realised that the mountings to the back wall don't actually need to take all the load - since I'm fitting these cupboards in the corner of the room, I can fix them to the side wall as well as the back - that side fixing will take a lot of load off the mountings to the back wall. So maybe I can get away with three plasterboard fixings on the back and one or two on the side, per unit?
 
JohnD said:
Do you mean you are determined to use plasterboard fixings?
Click to expand...

Determined - no, not at all.

I'm keen to avoid over-engineering things and making things harder than they need to be.

I don't think I can use any sort of rail as then the back of the cupboard wouldn't meet the wall - there would be an ugly gap.

I'm not keen on cutting the whole wall apart to fit a batten if I don't need to. And mounting on the stud has become risky because of the pipes that run along it.

ToolStation don't give a load figure for those fixings linked above so it's tough to figure out if they would do the job. If they could take 2Kg each and I used five per cupboard (three across the back and two into the side wall), that would give a max load of at least 20Kg spread over a large area and across two walls. I think that would be adequate.

But I don't know if they will take 2Kg each...

No, not determined on anything... other than avoiding having the cupboards falling off the wall... :-)
 
roxburd said:
Determined - no, not at all.

I'm keen to avoid over-engineering things and making things harder than they need to be.

I don't think I can use any sort of rail as then the back of the cupboard wouldn't meet the wall - there would be an ugly gap.

I'm not keen on cutting the whole wall apart to fit a batten if I don't need to. And mounting on the stud has become risky because of the pipes that run along it.

ToolStation don't give a load figure for those fixings linked above so it's tough to figure out if they would do the job. If they could take 2Kg each and I used five per cupboard (three across the back and two into the side wall), that would give a max load of at least 20Kg spread over a large area and across two walls. I think that would be adequate.

But I don't know if they will take 2Kg each...

No, not determined on anything... other than avoiding having the cupboards falling off the wall... :)
Click to expand...

Hmmm... the cupboards themselves weigh 14.6Kg... each!!!

Damn.
 
roxburd said:
Determined - no, not at all.

I'm keen to avoid over-engineering things and making things harder than they need to be.

I don't think I can use any sort of rail as then the back of the cupboard wouldn't meet the wall - there would be an ugly gap.

I'm not keen on cutting the whole wall apart to fit a batten if I don't need to. And mounting on the stud has become risky because of the pipes that run along it.

ToolStation don't give a load figure for those fixings linked above so it's tough to figure out if they would do the job. If they could take 2Kg each and I used five per cupboard (three across the back and two into the side wall), that would give a max load of at least 20Kg spread over a large area and across two walls. I think that would be adequate.

But I don't know if they will take 2Kg each...

No, not determined on anything... other than avoiding having the cupboards falling off the wall... :)
Click to expand...
Having looked at the RawlPlug site, they make no mention of load bearing.

Rawlplug United Kingdom

rawlplug.co.uk rawlplug.co.uk

They say they are suitable for kitchen cabinets and rads, but with the caveat that they are used on double layer plasterboard.

I guess that makes sense. In the past I have seen rads that kids climbed on and the wings (on the fixings) bust a hole through the single layer plasterboard. The fitting didn't fail. The plasterboard did.

Assuming that the unit backs are flush to the wall, you could use something like interset fittings and a gap filling adhesive (eg https://shop.ct1.com/gb/power-grab-n-bond )

Downside= you will damage the skim when you need to remove the units.
 
opps said:
I would go with Interset fittings

www.toolstation.com

Rawlplug Interset Metal Cavity Wall Fixings

www.toolstation.com www.toolstation.com

Not necessarily that size though.

If you use the setting tool, it grabs the screw head and pulls the arms on the fitting towards you.

In my opinion the are often the best fittings for plasterboard - so long as you use the "setting tool"
Click to expand...
Long story short Opps, I've just had these fittings fail.

I priced to contractor on new build penthouses, in my terms I put "all stud walls that receive shelving to be ply lined". They didn't, I moaned, they didn't care, I used the fixings mentioned. Customer loaded shelves with plants, the whole lot came crashing down, damaged worktop, damaged floor.

I get the blame, until I refer them back to my T&C's and subsequent conversations. I can't do my job professionally if they don't do their job professionally.

I don't trust them for wall units either.
 
roxburd said:
I don't think I can use any sort of rail as then the back of the cupboard wouldn't meet the wall - there would be an ugly gap.
Click to expand...
The assumption with cabinet rails is that there is a void behind the cabinet. You only have to notch the back of the cabinet to accommodate the rail, where you have runs of cabinets and they are butted up next to each other [so the notch won't be seen].
 
For anyone reading this thread for guidance - check out this guy - Charlie DIYte:

Brilliant video.

At 28:00 he presents the results of his load testing. The very worst product takes over 20Kg per fixing. But he loads them horizontally, pulling the fixing horizontally out of the plasterboard. If your installation is loading them vertically, like mine is, the board is going to take a lot more load in that direction before failing.

So I think I'm gonna go with one of the better toggle-type fixings, with the two wall units attached to each other (one above the other) and both attached to the side wall as well as the back wall. If my physics is right, the load will be mostly vertical and I won't be able to overload the units if I tried.
 
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