Drywall is a very common building material. Walls and ceilings are sheathed with it, partitions, all kinds of niches, arches and other decorative elements are made from it. In order to ensure the convenience and quality of installation work, you need to choose the right fasteners for drywall.
All fasteners used when working with drywall can be divided into three groups:
- Used for fastening the GKL to the frame, which can be made of wood or metal profile.
- Necessary for attaching frame parts to walls or ceilings.
- Used for fixing various items on drywall: trim elements, lamps and other interior details.
Fastening drywall to frame
Recently, self-tapping screws, or, as they are more commonly called, self-tapping screws, have become the most common fastener. Depending on the material of the frame, it is necessary to choose screws for wood or metal. They are easy to distinguish by the thread pitch: for metal screws, it is much smaller.
For fastening to a profile with thick walls, more than 0.7 mm, it is advisable to use special self-tapping screws with a mini-drill at their end. Using them to fix drywall will greatly facilitate the work.
How to choose the right screws for drywall? It is necessary to take into account several nuances:
- For mounting GKL use screws with a countersunk head. The fasteners are slightly recessed into the sheet, after which these holes are puttied to get a perfectly flat surface. For this reason, hardware with a spherical or hemispherical head cannot be used.
- Choose the right type of self-tapping screw depending on the material of the frame.
- The size of the screws depends on the thickness of the coating: for plasterboard laid in one layer, self-tapping screws 3.5 × 25 are usually used; in two layers - 3.5 × 35. The first number indicates the diameter of the screw, the second - its length.
- Screw material. They can be easily distinguished by color: yellow - steel with anti-corrosion coating, white - brass or steel (galvanized), black - hardened steel. The latter are the most common, despite a very significant drawback: they are susceptible to corrosion, therefore, over time, with poor-quality finishes, rust spots may appear on the wall at the location of these screws.
When using hardened screws, you may encounter another problem. Sometimes they are overheated, as a result of which, with a significant effort during tightening, their head breaks off. It is rather problematic to unscrew the part of the screw remaining in the material in order to screw in a new one in its place. Therefore, it is better to pre-test the purchased hardware in order to avoid problems during installation.
Self-tapping screws for metal profile
The drywall profile requires its own fasteners. Usually they use small self-tapping screws with a hemispherical head, popularly called "bugs", "fleas" or "seeds". They have a cross-shaped slot on the head, come in lengths from 9.5 to 11 mm and a diameter of 3.5 to 3.9 mm.
"Fleas" with a miniature drill at the end are marked with the letters "lb", with a simple sharp end - "ln".
With the help of such screws, individual elements of the metal frame are fastened together, direct suspensions are attached. During installation, care should be taken that the self-tapping screws do not interfere with the tight fit of the GKL to the profile.
Attaching the frame to a wall or ceiling
With this type of installation work, you can use dowel-nails, and if you want to get a particularly strong fastening, for example, with a heavy frame, you can use anchor bolts.
A dowel-nail is the simplest element that allows you to securely attach a metal profile to a concrete or brick wall: a hole of the desired diameter is drilled in the wall, after which a plastic dowel is inserted through the hole in the profile and a metal screw is driven in with a hammer. The cross slot on the head serves to unscrew the screw if necessary, but it is almost impossible to pull out the dowel itself.
A similar algorithm is used when working with anchor bolts, only they are not driven in, but screwed into the metal tube of the dowel with a wrench, bursting it and providing a secure fastening.
Fixing additional elements to the drywall surface
If you want to hang a lamp on a plasterboard ceiling, attach a TV to the wall from the plasterboard, a mirror or something else, then you can not do without special fasteners. You should not hope that an ordinary self-tapping screw screwed into the GKL will be able to provide reliable fastening.
To solve this problem, you can use the following fasteners:
- "Butterfly". A plastic, less often a metal dowel inserted into a drilled hole. When the screw is screwed in, its wings, which are located behind the surface of the drywall, open and securely fix the fasteners.
- Dowels type "Driva". For them, pre-drilling is not required, since this part has small drills at the end. A dowel made of plastic or metal is screwed into the GKL, where it is held by a special thread with a rare pitch. The screw screwed into it serves to fix the attached element.
- The dowel type "Molly" is somewhat reminiscent of a "butterfly", but has a more complex design and is able to hold more significant weight. It is also inserted into a pre-drilled hole, after which, by screwing in the bolt, special “shoulders” are opened that provide fixation. In the future, the bolt is unscrewed, and in its place you can put an eye, a hook or a screw necessary for mounting the attached product.
