Fixing Choice For Steel To Rendered Brick

Hi Ed, a couple of questions:

- what type of hollows - Standard brick or large grey block?
- How wide is the gate? The wider the gat, the more force that will be pulling on the top of the post

- Chemset is good but use the chemset bolts.
The bolts are "set" in place ready to slide your attachment over and fix to the bolt with a washer/nut ie: not anka screws as they are for dry fit, not designed for that purpose, may not achieve the same strength result as a chemset bolt Also from memory, there is tubular "flywire" that is pushed into the cavity and the chemset bolt them pushed into this. Cant remember the specific use case (possibly for large cavities in something like grey block to minimise the amount of chemset required) but do some research.

- Careful how much weight is pulling on the bricks as generally the brick wall is a "veneer" meaning they are not structural or designed for forces pulling or pushing the brick in/out. The dolly will obviously assist in removing this issue if set up correctly. If in doubt, post concreted in the ground 800mm min.

Is it a double brick wall or single skin ? Pictures often help.
There are different types of hollow bricks some are honeycomb and some only have three larger holes, are there any spares or faces exposed showing the pattern ?

Anka screws by themselves should be suitable without needing chemset, the question really is if the brick wall is suitable for attaching the gate directly to it.

Thanks for the reply guys, much appreciated.

I don’t know what types of bricks there are yet as I haven’t drilled in. I’ve been fabricating the gates at my current property ready to install when we get there.

Gates going in are 1400 Wide by 1700 High using 50 X 50 2mm square steel tubing.

The brick walls are roughly 250mm thick (there’s a photo there). After researching, it looks like the common width for double brick?

With that said I’m not sure what the strength of double brick is, and I’m wondering if I’m better off drilling a good way through the wall to anchor in both now. 200mm ish?

I had two companies quote and say that they’d be fixing steel tubing down length of brick and fixing gate of that, hence why I was confident enough to think I can do it. Unfortunately the quotes were way above what I had imagined, so decided to have a crack at it myself.

The problem is not the depth of the anchor, 200mm will be no different to 100mm. The issue is the forces put on the brickwork, too much force will cause the mortar to crack this will often be at the bottom.

Cut a hole in the concrete at the base and put a steel post in with proper foundation up against the brick wall to hang the gate

Thanks Droog,

Do you have a rough idea one depth if the post is approx 1600 high? Also is Width of hole a concern?

Out of interest, would you concrete the post in and fix it to the wall? Or is that likely to result in the mortar still cracking.

Thanks again for the advice.

I would try to get at least 800-900mm deep and also Anka screw the top of the post to the brick wall for extra bracing. Depth is more of a concern than width but you also want bulk weight in the foundation, I would aim for 250-300mm diameter.

I am not an engineer so these are not calculations, just suggestions of where I would start. Happy for anyone more experienced to add to this.

Appreciate the info. Think I will go this route then! Appreciate the help Droog.

EDIT

Looking around this just gets more confusing

There's not a lot of information on concreting posts against existing foundation/brick walls.

Should I be fine to just concrete up against the old brick foundation? I saw something on drilling rebar into the existing concrete with chemset and then concreting onto it to somewhat join the two. Any thoughts?

It's a shame these people put such a good fence in on a main road with zero provision for any sort of gate. I can't see why you'd build that way but anyhoo.

Thanks for all the tips!

I would not worry about tying the new foundation into the old, they are essentially two separate structures with an anchor at the top of the post for some additional bracing.

You never know the existing wall may have structural steel posts built in ready for the future gates. But unless you have the plans the only way to find out is drilling and cutting to see what is in there.