Wall Hang Your New TV Securely

Avoid a Christmas DIY Disaster

Over this Christmas holiday period, as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the New Year launch another wave of winter sales, a huge number of new flat screen TVs will be gleefully acquired and triumphantly attached to walls in homes across the land.

Sadly though, for a large number of people, joy and delight will turn to shock and despair as their new TVs suddenly fall off the wall and smash themselves on the floor! Yet this scenario can be completely avoided.

Don’t spoil the ship for a ha’peth of tar!

You may well be familiar with this old saying – if not see the explanation at the end of this article – and in this context it means; don’t risk losing your expensive TV for the sake of spending on the right wall fixings. If you have just spent a grand on your 4k TV, spending less than one percent more to fix it securely is a definite no brainer!

At Metex we just can’t understand why people will happily spend £1,000 or more on a TV and then not use the appropriate wall fixings to ensure their expensive investment stays fixed safely and securely on the wall. Yet this is what many people do, they simply use unsuitable fixings and inevitably they suffer the consequences.

So, if you are planning to buy a new TV over Black Friday or Christmas, here is some important information to help you have a Happy New Year.

Understand what type of wall is your TV being fixed to

Unless you are planning to install on the ceiling, then you will be fixing your new TV to either an external or internal wall. If it’s an external wall it’s likely to be a solid wall constructed out of bricks or blocks with a plaster skim finish. If your house is of an older construction, your internal walls may also be the same.  If this is the case then a suitable number of good quality appropriately sized wall plugs and screws and the correct bracket should be fine as the solid wall will be taking the weight of the TV and as ever – always follow the manufacturer’s instructions and advice.

In more modern houses – and newer extensions on older houses – you are much more likely to encounter a dot and dab or dry lined wall.  This is a solid masonry wall which has been faced with plasterboard, most commonly supported on blobs of adhesive (hence the phrase dot and dab). This wall type presents an entirely different challenge when wall hanging your TV. Here there is a gap between the plasterboard and the solid brick or block wall behind it. This is absolutely where you need to make that additional investment and use the correct fixings. With the dot and dab wall, a significant percentage of the load is being supported by the plasterboard alone and in many cases the plasterboard will not be capable of supporting this weight and therefore it will fail, typically collapsing into the void with the result that your TV comes off the wall.

When we say choose the correct fixing, we mean a fixing which bridges the void between the plasterboard and the solid wall beyond. This type of fixing transfers the load to the masonry wall and therefore means the fixing is not solely reliant on the strength of the plasterboard.

There are a few ways that you can achieve this, but by far the quickest and easiest way is by using our Corefix fixings. These have been purposely designed to solve exactly this challenge. They use a unique, patented plastic expandable plug into which a metal sleeve is inserted and this fixing bridges the gap between the plasterboard and the solid wall. All you need do then is to screw your TV bracket or plate into the fixing using a standard screwdriver.

Corefix will deliver a rock solid fixing and has been independently tested and certified to a vertical safe working load of 100kg using just four fixings (our own in-house tests have securely supported 250kg!)

So if you are going out to buy a new TV in the Black Friday sales, make sure you take an extra few minutes to get the right fixings so that it will still be hanging securely on your wall next Christmas. Don’t just fix it – Corefix it!

And finally … if you were wondering about the phrase “Don’t spoil the ship for a ha’peth of tar!” It is one of those great old sayings designed to pass on valuable lessons and help us all avoid life’s mistakes like; “A stitch in time saves nine! or “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched”. Except the origins of this one is up for debate – some say that it is about making sure a ship stays seaworthy by caulking its hull with tar – if you skimp on the tar you risk the ship leaking. But others suggest that the word ‘ship’ is actually a corruption of the word ‘sheep’ and the ha’peth (half penny) of tar refers to the ancient practice of putting tar onto a sheep’s skin if it was injured to protect it from infection – so don’t let your sheep die by not putting on a bit of tar.

Either way, it means don’t take a risk with you investment and in this case – fix it safely!

Find out more about Corefix in our Knowledge Base!

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