Drilling often requires that you also use the right screw anchors. This often works out fine even if you don’t really know what you are doing but sometimes things can go badly wrong. Here is a short screw anchor overview, helping you to avoid the worst mistakes.

Every now and then you need to fix some item to a wall at home. Generally, this is very straight forward, you drill the necessary holes, insert the plastic plug, also known as a screw anchor or wall plug, and secure the item to the wall. But like most things, quite a lot of things can go wrong. Unfortunately, house walls are built from many different materials so it is impossible to use the same process for all walls.

Before you start drilling into any wall, make sure that no wires or pipes are hidden under the surface. Fortunately, you can buy inexpensive gadgets, called stud detectors, which check for pipes and wires in walls. Once you have located suitable locations for the holes, you need to determine how deep you need to drill. This depends on what screws you are going to use. What screws you need depends on what you are going to fix to the wall. In most cases, you can’t just secure the screw into the wall, you need a fixture to make sure that the screw is held in place.

The most common fixing is the plastic or fiber expansion plug. They are cheap and last forever. In most cases, extension plugs come with instructions on the package or the plastic strip holding the plugs together, telling you what drill bit and screws to use. Some plastic plugs are color coded, you should use a 5 mm drill bit for yellow plugs, 6 mm for red plugs,7 or 8 mm for brown plugs and 10 mm for blue. The screw size is not clearly defined but generally you use screw size 6-8 with yellow plugs, 8-10 with red, 10-14 with brown and 14-18 with blue. But always check the instructions that come with the plug, plugs come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes and colors.

Obviously, the hole has to be deep enough to hold the fixing and the screw. Once you done with the drilling, make sure to remove the dust out of the hole. Otherwise, the plug will not hold very well. Use hammer to get the plug flush with the surface. Note that the hole should fit the screw, not the wall plug. You want the screw to go all the way through the plastic wall plug and split it open to force the tightest fit possible with the wall.

Note that if the wall has plaster, you should make the hole deep enough so that plug can be pushed through the plaster, into the masonry. Otherwise the plaster may crack when you tighten the screw. It also best not to use the hammering action before you hit the masonry behind the plaster, the hammering action is likely to damage the plaster.

The screw anchor is not the only type of fixing available but they are easy to use and very inexpensive.