Securing shelves to prevent tipping

[OneDrop]

I’ve inherited a very tall and chunky shelving system and want to secure it to the wall for safety. I’m having trouble drilling more than a couple of centimetres into the wall.

I can cut down a rawl plug but will the fixing be secure enough to be safe?

I don't think so.

One solution is to nail some timber to wall & secure to that

A nail into plaster would be a weaker link than rawl plug surely?

Do you know why you can't drill any deeper into the wall.? I think it needs to be deeper

My only basis for saying this is: we have some coat hooks mounted onto a wooden backing board, the weight of the coats kept pulling whole thing off the wall. My husband tried different kinds of rawl plug and screw, kept falling off . In the end a builder friend of ours came round with a massive long drillbit and some massive long plugs and some massive long screws and it never came out again.

@OneDrop: I wasn’t thinking 1 nail but loads and some screws too to really secure that board in: this is one way to get around not being able to get further into the wall or having weak plaster

Longer screws also an option IF you can get them into your wall

This is based on spending half the bank holiday trying to drill into a v solid wall to get a curtain pole up! You may also need a hammer drill or SDX drill to get in there

have you got the right drill bit in the drill....you need a masonry bit for walls.

the wrong type might go through a plaster layer but won't manage a brick/concrete

probably want a hammer drill too.

If you do not want to drill lots of holes and have a wide unit then fixing a board to the wall with a couple of really heavy duty screws and plugs and then using L brackets on top of the unit and screwing them into the board can work.

A couple of cm suggests you are just drilling into the plaster, which is useless. Show us the electric drill, and the tip of the bit, you are using, please.

Hi PigletJohn very much appreciated to see you here. Everyone’s thoughts and advice also appreciated.

I wasn’t getting much further than plaster and I wasn’t at all happy. I tried various bits and drills and finally made progress and got a decent fix.

I’m now wondering if I need to do more than two top fixes, will post a picture tomorrow. It’s a big heavy unit and there will be children about.