Clothes airer repair

Moving along from the oven the next piece of kitchen equipment in distress was a clothes airer; a pulley type that hangs from the ceiling. The issue here was that the cleat that the rope was fastened to in order to keep the airer at ceiling height had come away from the wall.

Bodged plasterboard wall cleat

Broken pulley airer

As you can see I had just bunged in a couple of Rawlplugs to see if it would work - it didn't. OK so now I have to replace the fittings. There are a few options for fixing into plasterboard,

Spring toggle, hollow wall anchor, self-drive and nylon toggle plasterboard fixings

Given that the cleat is going to be experiencing quite a bit of lateral force and that the load is not static (as the fitting will flex when the airer cords are applied and released) a fixing that is able to spread the load over a wide area rather than just on the edges of the fixing hole would seem to be preferable.

This narrows the field to spring toggles, GripIts or metal cavity (or hollow wall or interset) fixings. Relative data on the load carrying capacity of each was difficult to find but the metal cavity fixings looked like they were the strongest (9-18kN load depending on plasterboard and fitting size; p.81 Rawlplug Lightweight Fittings Guide). The toggle fixings were going to need a large hole cut to get them in, one that the base of the cleat was not going to cover. The GripIt fixings also needed a large hole cut and it was going to be difficult/impossible to get two in close proximity. For that reason I decided to use intersets.

The first issue to solve was that the countersunk holes in the cleat were too small to take the M6x60mm fittings. Out came the drill press and the holes were enlarged slightly to accommodate the M6 bolts.

Countersunk holes in cleat drill out to 6mm

The next issue was that, because of the close proximity of the two holes in the cleat, as the interests were tightened the closest legs would interfere with each other. Removing a leg from each of the interests with a Dremel cutting disc remedied this problem.

Cleat with pair of fettled intersets

The holes in the wall that had the Rawlplugs torn out of them were large enough so that the cleat assembly could be tapped straight into place and the interests tightened

Repaired wall cleat

Operational pulley airer

JOB DONE.

Time taken : 2hr
Cost : £0.92 for intersets