I've just moved house and my new garage is a prefab concrete jobby. The previous owner hasn't drilled a single hole anywhere in the garage,
everything is either wired around the roof beams or bits of timber wedged above the beams, or screwed to horrifying timber frame contraptions held to
the walls by brackets on the bolts holding panels together. He appears to have gone to some great lengths to avoid making new holes in anything.
This leads me to think that either a) he's a bit wierd, b) he didn't own a hammer drill, or c) he knows something I don't about not
making holes in precast contcrete?
He was a or b or both.
The panels are reinforced so should be fine to drill in to - just dont fire a huge drill bit in - start with a 4mm or 5mm, also keep it more than 50mm from edges and you should have no issues
Depends how big the holes are :p I guess hitting a piece of steel reinforcement would be a PITA...
But it wouldnt bother me... drill some 8mm holes and screw some battons to the wall to hold stuff up....
maybe a bit of c - I have one of these, it is quite tough to drill, especially if you hit a piece of gravel or stone.
in these cases the drill bit can wander so may be an issue if you need precicely positioned holes.
but given a bit of time and a decent drill bit it can be done.
Depending on how many holes you need to drill an ordinary (Black & Decker type) hammer drill will struggle/burn out. You really need an SDS drill
and their special bits to cope.
(Says he with a Victorian house made of concrete which requires an SDS drill to even hang pictures!).
Also if it's proper pre-stressed with metalforming inside beware of hitting re-inforcing bars - could that be why the prev. owner avoided
drilling it?
Best to do as Tegwin ^ ^ suggests and batten the walls.
HTH.
Cheers, Pewe 
Definatly C,
Even With a decent SDS hammer drill I burnt out a couple of cheep SDS bits
Regards
agriv8
Yes that's the plan, I just want to throw up a couple of shelves so a few rawlplugs is all that's going in. I've got a 110v SDS drill
that should be more than capable of making a right mess of it 
Cheers all. The rest of the house was making me lean towards him being a bit odd but I thought i'd double check.
quote:
Originally posted by martyn_16v
Yes that's the plan, I just want to throw I've got a 110v SDS drill that should be more than capable of making a right mess of it
quote:
The rest of the house was making me lean towards him being a bit odd ...
One of our neighbours bricked his front door up to stop the draught 
quote:
Originally posted by tegwin
quote:
The rest of the house was making me lean towards him being a bit odd ...
Im intreagued... what else has he done?
quote:
Originally posted by Agriv8
quote:
Originally posted by tegwin
quote:
The rest of the house was making me lean towards him being a bit odd ...
Im intreagued... what else has he done?
It has got to be smoked mirrored tile's on the ceilling in the bedroom !!!!
I agree with pewe, we live in a pre-fab type cottage and to drill through for the cable was a real PITA! Defo need an SDS and don't use cheapo
screwfix or wilko drill bits 'cos they'll last about 10 seconds before the wings on the end of the drill bit disappear!
Good luck
Not sure the panels are thick enough for wall plugs.. i have drilled holes all the way though the thin bit to allow nuts and bolts and penny washers
to secure a baton for the gutter..
I have the same problem it is simpler to get free standing shelving, as the walls are not flat anyhow (because of the concrete castings) or that
strong (I could probably put enough weight on the walls to cause em to fall down, roof collapse and squash the car and me!)...
I would not want to expose the concrete re-enforcement as this will start to rust and eventually break the concrete up.. It seems the reinforcement
is around the perimeter of the panels..
Think carefully about it....
Dan
[Edited on 25/11/09 by Bluemoon]
Depends how old it is, it could be 'C'. It would invalidate the warranty if you drill holes in the prefab concrete
i wouldn't worry about drilling at all.just dont be too over optimistic about the anchor bolts you use.i've seen then crack the concrete,explode bricks far more often than drilling them itself.
The reason he didn't drill into it is it would invalidate the warranty from the garage manufacturer.
I inquired about a concrete sectional garage some years back, and you coudn't drill into any of the concrete sections
Graham
Drill a hole in the joints putting a threaded rod through. Get some cls battons and run them up from the floor. reseal with mastic when you push the
rods in.
The precast will only have a very small diameter rod mesh in it. Its prone to spall if drilled with sds as its hard and brittle.
easier to use the joints
I like that idea Mango, I think i'll give it a go.
Warranty isn't a problem, the garage is 20 years older than I am
The rest of the house...
The wiring is just horrifying. The garage is fed from a spur off one of the lounge sockets, hole drilled through the back of the socket box out
through the wall and SWA stuffed through. No RCD anywhere in sight. The split load consumer unit has nothing at all connected to the RCD protected
half. The shower has it's own separate consumer unit, despite the main unit having nothing whatsoever connected to the RCD half. Ground floor
ring circuit feeds two socket outlets, ground floor lighting circuit feeds one light. Bar the cooker (and aforementioned shower) pretty much
everything else in the house is on the first floor ring circuit 
The chimney breast in the lounge is made of very bendy hardboard.
The bathroom door is a sliding door which is only attached at the top. My son uses it like a giant cat-flap.
In the loft there is a door. No frame, no walls, just a door. It's hinged on a vertical timber in the middle of the loft, with 6ft of clear space
all around it. Very odd.
It's amazing how little attention I appear to have paid when I was looking at the house
We dismantled a precast garage at my brother in laws and he decided to use the sections to make a fence. He tried to drill one panel and it shattered from the hole but when no hammer action was used it worked better but took longer, like drilling tiles.
Simple solution for fixings in garage--- sticK battens using Gripfill or something similar.
For house---------MOVE!!!!!