I would like to attach pressure treated furrings to a poured concrete wall. Then attach 1/2-inch plywood to the furrings to make a French Cleat Wall to hold cabinets and tools. Any ideas how to best attach furrings to a solid poured concrete wall that will be secure enough to handle the weight of a French Cleat Wall with cabinets and tools?
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Replies
Tapcon screws or a powder-actuated nail gun. If you're hanging serious weight I'd swap out the furring strips for 2x material.
Agree. Tapcon screws (use the socket head and not a flathead screwdriver), lots of drill bits, lotsa time, and a good power cord hammer drill. Also think furring strips might not be the best weight bearing choice.
I agree with the above
I use Tapcons for the same purpose here.
They will hold more weight than you'll ever need to worry about.
Cheap and easy.
I have a big boy hammer drill but the small drill driver with hammer drill option works more than well enough for me. no need to buy new expensive stuff.
That is alot of tapcons. If your concrete is old it is likely to be very hard and your going to fry alot of bits. You could do a combination of tapcon screws and ram set nails. If you fasten every foot or 16 " maybe and with strips on 16 " centers that's 7 or 9 screws per strip on a 8 foot high wall ,so 28 or 36 screws for your 1st sheet of plywood and 21 or 29 screws for each sheet after. So power actuated nails in combination with screws might mean you could maybe half the number of screws. Someone suggested maybe firring strips are maybe inadequate for holding weight but if you want a plywood wall what else are you going to do? If you making shallow shelves then most of the stress is straight down ( not pulling away from the wall)and your most likely fine.. but deep shelves or cabinets then you may end up with weight pulling away from the wall. In that case you might consider fastening your cleats by bolting through your plywood wall and anchoring them directly into the concrete.
It depends on how much you expect it to carry. Is it dead weight, straight down, or heavy doors, swinging out?
If lightweight, tapcons are fine. If there's more to it, or could be in the future, build a 2 by wall with the studs attached to the joists at the top. That gives you space for some outlets, insulation if you want it, and it will carry any load.
You can skip the furring strips and just attach the cleat right to the wall. I have done that many times. Make my cleats from 1/2" or 3/4" plywood. Loaded all my clamps on one a cleat. That is a fair amount of weight and never had a problem.
Agree. Unless you want a plywood instead of a concrete wall look, just directly attached cleats using tapcons. It's cheaper and quicker. I did all my shop wall cabinets that way. They are dead weight heavy and have worked perfectly.
I went through this a few years ago. In the end, I wound up simply erecting 2x4 studs, floor to ceiling. You don't have to do a whole wall if you don't need it -- just as wide an areas as is required for your wall cabinets.
In my case, my house was quite old and the wall wasn't as plumb as you might hope. Furring strips required a lot of shimming to be tapconned enough to the wall to hold the load. YMMV.
I’m with mschlack. If you’re concerned about moisture you could use 18ga, 2x2 galvanized studs and seal the wall too. That wall is likely not to be plumb anyway.
At he risk of being repetitive Tapcon screws are the way to go
Depends on what it will hold up. The option of framing an entire furred wall may in the end be easiest/fastest. Tapcons are great and all, but their load rating isnt very large. they are also not very ductile, meaning when they fail they go "snap". Maybe use 2x4's flat as furring, and install a 3/8" wedge anchor thru the stud to the wall. Maybe 2 per stud. Those will hold a good 300lbs in allowable shear each. Fewer fasteners but harder install.