Many people ask: “How to drill a concrete wall with an ordinary drill?”. It really is possible, but it requires experience, effort and time. If you are a beginner, it is better to buy or rent a more suitable tool. The peculiarity of the impact drill is clear from its name. The tool makes not only rotary movements, but also reciprocating, which allows you to get through dry and old concrete. An ordinary drill copes with this task worse, because the heterogeneity of the density of the processed material prevents the constant force of the drill and the number of revolutions from maintaining the same. Because of this, beginners often break the drill.
Working with the new tool is easy and convenient: percussive movements pierce the dense layers of concrete walls, and rotational. organize the neatness of the hole performed and the removal of the formed crumbs. If you are aiming to buy a tool, don’t skimp!
Buying a modern model of a well-known brand, you get:
To a large extent the final result will depend on you, but it will be easier to achieve with a reliable tool. But before drilling a concrete wall, we recommend reading the instructions.
Preparing the tool
To drill a reinforced concrete wall, you do not need to be a first-class builder: such work is under the power of any person. The main thing is to prepare the necessary tools and use them correctly. The first time you might have to spend a lot of time, but later when you need to hang something on the wall again, the same work can be done much faster.
Types of drill bits
Concrete structures are harder to drill than wood or other materials. It’s not only in its special strength, but also in the occasional hit of the drill bit in the rubble contained in the wall. To understand what drill to drill a concrete wall, you should know their varieties.
Conventional models are no help here. To drill a wall made of concrete, you must purchase special drill bits, the strength of which is increased by brazed plates of the titanium alloy.
It is also possible to use variants with diamond spraying. The hole made as a result of such drilling is characterized by accuracy and precision, and the inner surface is well polished. They can be performed at any angle, and the probability of chipping or cracking near them in the wall is practically zero.
One can drill rather wide holes up to 0.4 m in diameter with a diamond drill bit. However, the equipment that this requires costs a lot of money and it can be used only by professionals. It makes more sense to use any budget option.
Choice of tool
One has to be very careful while drilling and make sure that the tool does not overheat. Periodic wetting of the heated drill bit with cold water is not unreasonable.
The drill should be held correctly in the hands: the drill should enter the wall strictly perpendicular. To facilitate the drilling process and achieve greater accuracy, you can use the handle, which is usually supplied with the tool.
You can also drill a hole in a concrete wall with a powerful electric screwdriver. In this case, in addition to the drill and drill bit, you will need a punch. It can be used to make a small depression on the wall surface. But the best for drilling holes in the concrete surface is a peorator.
A little bit about the structure of the drill and the installation of the drill
The standard drill includes:
- mains cable;
- the power button;
- condenser wires;
- reversing system;
- brushes with springs;
- anchor;
- stator;
- Gearbox with chuck;
- bearings;
- wrenches;
- screws.
When the drill is correctly installed, the quality and safety of the work is increased. If the nozzle is not tightened sufficiently, there is a risk of the drill bit flying out and injuring yourself. It is recommended to plunge the nozzle to the stop and clamp it with a special wrench.
Never try to increase the length of the rod by partially installing it in the chuck.
Before drilling concrete with the drill, it is advisable to check, the fixing of the drill in the center on the axis. If there is the slightest displacement, the hole will get too wide, there is a risk of rod breakage or flight out of the chuck.
You should check for contamination on the drill bit before starting work. To clean the drill bits it is best to use a rag. The easiest way to drill through concrete is to press down firmly on the handle in one go.
How to drill a concrete wall with an ordinary drill
In most modern constructions, walls and ceilings are usually concrete, and this material is extremely strong, so it is hard to drill. In addition, it is not uncommon to encounter rebar, gravel and other inclusions that are part of the concrete or provided for by the construction. It is usually necessary to drill holes in concrete during construction and renovation work, for example:
- When decorating rooms;
- When installing air conditioners;
- When installing built-in furniture;
- during the installation of the electrical wiring harness;
- When installing plumbing.
So how to drill through concrete with a drill? For a number of reasons when working with this material, you may encounter some difficulties: for example, concrete panels have a non-uniform structure, which significantly complicates drilling.
choose the tool that is best for the job, when getting started. It can be a drill or a peorator. Some work is better handled with a peorator, as punching concrete or stone surfaces is its main function. This tool can drill holes with a large cross-section, while the most powerful impact drill can not drill holes larger than 15 cm. Sometimes, however, the best tool for the job is a drill, because the rotary tool can crumble the surface. You can also do without a drill if you only need to make a few holes, and the rotary tool is not at hand. However, when working with concrete with this tool, it is important to remember that in this case it is necessary to use a pobedite drill bit with a tip that is coated with carbide.
Today the most common method of drilling concrete method using an impact drill: so you can quickly and with high quality perform the necessary work. How to drill in concrete with an impact drill? It is to be used preferably for small jobs, because then no accessories are needed. Simply switch the drill from normal rotary mode to impact rotation mode. In an impact drill, the movement of the drill bit is due to the interaction of special ratchets with small teeth. In addition, the best drilling results require considerable physical effort by the operator, because the drill has to be pressed down.
The type of bit used makes a huge difference when drilling in concrete. Today, the concrete drill bit is available in two main versions: for percussion drilling as well as hammerless drilling. According to their design and the materials used, these attachments are of the following types.
- Tooth bits for drilling with impact function. Their cutting edge consists of individually soldered-in teeth made of very strong alloys. They also have SDS shanks for fastening them into the quick-action chucks of the drill. Their teeth are very strong, enabling them to cut through metal, but the impact action causes unacceptable stress on the soldered joints and consequently leads to their destruction. For this reason, these bits can only be used for drilling between the reinforcement of reinforced concrete slabs or in brick walls.
- Diamond core bits for hammerless drilling. Technologically, these bits are more advanced when drilling in hammerless mode. They have a low-cut flat abrasive edge formed by spraying with fine diamond or corundum sand. The crown can easily cope with the reinforcement of concrete slabs. Their working diameter ranges from 12 to 650 millimeters, making it possible to drill holes up to 1.5 meters deep. Bits with a diameter of up to 100 mm can be used with domestic drills, professional drills and drills designed to work without forced cooling. Bits with large diameters and diamond tipped segments are used in professional drilling rigs where water cooling is available, as well as forced hole venting using a compressor.
- CS: GO diamond-coated core bits. They have protruding segments at the cutting edge and diamond crystals embedded in the working surface of these segments. They are a successful substitute for carbide tipped bits. They are used to drill holes in slabs, hard rock and hard concrete monoliths.
Choosing a concrete drill bit: criteria
The following criteria should be taken into account when choosing a crown for concrete.
- When buying core bits for drilling holes in concrete walls for switches and electrical outlets, you should specify the diameter of the mounted metal or plastic boxes-sockets. It must be 68.0 millimeters.
- When buying nozzles, it is necessary to clarify that they are designed for drilling concrete, because there are similar bits, which are used by furniture makers to drill wood and chipboard (such bits can not cope with hard materials).
- Choosing drill bits, carefully observe how the teeth are attached. The larger their fit, the longer the service life of the drill bit.
- Choose a bit by working diameter, depending on the size of holes in the concrete and the power of the torch. Drills with a power rating of 1 kW are usually fitted with nozzles up to 25.0 cm in diameter. Do not use a crown that has a large diameter, as this could cause a breakdown of the low-powered motor due to overloading. This should be taken into account by using commercially available adapters to fit large bits on small chucks.
- Before buying you should look at the shank of the bits, which may be solid (to fit into cam chucks) or with different number of open and closed slots, corresponding to different variants of SDS mounting system.
So you have learned about how to drill a concrete wall with a drill, and also about the types of bits used. It remains to put theoretical knowledge into practice.
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How to make a hole with a drill
First you need to prepare the drill, nozzles and other related items. Then in the process of work will not have to be distracted and waste time looking for the right things.
The drill is often necessary in cases where it is required:
In this case, the concrete wall (if it is properly drilled) should remain without severe damage and large chips.
Working with a drill with a pobedite nozzle, sometimes you need to use a metal punch. It is selected according to the size of the hole. This tool makes it possible for the drill not to jam when the drill bit is driven in. To do this, the drill is driven into the concrete and hammered to break apart the solid obstacle. Such a process can take quite a long time, so it is better to use a diamond drill bit. In addition, the drill with this attachment will never get stuck in the concrete.
The sequence of operations when drilling:
- Carefully inspect the tools. The drill must be in good condition and the drill bit must be intact.
- Start gently drilling a hole in the concrete with the drill, stopping the continuous operation of the tool after 10 minutes from the beginning of the action.
- Do not continue until the motor has cooled down.
- Before you drill another hole, moisten the bit with water. This prevents the metal from warping.
With these simple methods you can drill through a concrete wall without a torch.
Sometimes it happens that the drill bit gets stuck in the wall. It is not advisable to use force when doing this, otherwise it will break off and the edge of the nozzle will remain in the concrete. To free the drill, you must first disconnect it from the drill, then put on a drill bit with a smaller diameter and pull out the jammed part.
To perform drilling yourself and avoid various injuries and unpleasant accidents, you need to follow the safety precautions, and follow the recommendations of experts.
Making repairs in an apartment or house, there is always the question of drilling the wall. You can use different tools, depending on the purpose of the hole and the material of which the surface is made.
There are nuances to working with every tool, especially when drilling a wall. What is the right way to make the right hole, and what are the recommendations?
An ordinary drill or an electric screwdriver
If you do not have the tools described above, you can also perform this work with an ordinary electric drill or a powerful electric screwdriver.
To perform the drilling, you will need more time than when using a torch, but you can do everything with your own hands.
In this case, in addition to the drill and drill bit, you will also need a puncher. First you drill a small cavity at the place where you want to drill with a drift punch and a hammer.
After that, insert the working tool in it and start drilling. If the drill stops, you break the hard parts again with the drill bit and continue working.
Although an ordinary electric drill or electric screwdriver are not suitable for working with concrete, but if you do not have a peorator, you can make small holes with these tools, but you must use a lance drill bit with a carbide tip, usually used for tiles.
Exactly how you drill with an ordinary drill
To drill a concrete wall without using a peorator, you will need:
Have patience, because it is not easy to drill through a concrete wall with an ordinary drill.
Basically, your steps boil down to the following.
You drill the wall and periodically cooling the drill bit with water, making hammer blows on the chisel. In other words, you combine a regular drill, with hand tools.
This is how you drill a concrete wall.
Step-by-step instructions
Drilling scheme
How to make a hole in a concrete wall or slab on the ceiling without a peorator and other similar tools?
Despite the presence of a special drill, the work on the concrete wall is carried out taking into account the recommendations of experts.
Improper approach can lead to tool breakage and partial destruction of the wall. Before starting work, prepare the following set of tools and materials:
- A drill of sufficient power;
- drill bit with pobedite (carbide) cladding;
- puncher. a metal pin of the required diameter;
- hammer or sledgehammer;
- vacuum cleaner.
The process of drilling concrete with an ordinary drill is not fast, so the home craftsman should have patience. Concrete dust is eaten into the floor covering, and to maintain cleanliness, it is recommended to cover the surface with newspapers. Periodically collect spilled particles with a vacuum cleaner. The sequence of work is as follows:
- A suitable drill bit is mounted on the tool. Mark the drilling point on the wall.
- Mark the drilling point, working at minimum speed, with light pressure. Make a small cavity in the surface of the workpiece to prevent the drill from slipping during this hard work step.
- Deepen into the wall by 8-10 mm. Hold the tool at a right angle during drilling. There is a risk of damaging the surface, the tip or your hands if you twist it.
- Extract the drill bit and pierce the concrete with a steel rod.
- Deepen into the wall by another 10-15 mm and once again finish the concrete with the drill bit. After each step, clean any concrete particles from the drill bit.
IMPORTANT. Each drilling step must not take more than 30 seconds. Total duration of continuous drilling with a low-powered tool. no more than 10-12 minutes. The tool motor must be cooled down after each session, or it will overheat and fail.
Drilling in concrete with a diamond drill bit can be viewed at
Additional tools for drilling in concrete
It is wise to start drilling in concrete if your power drill is equipped with a hammer function. Using a drill with a hammerless tool makes no sense. The drill will simply overheat and the motor will burn out. With a hammerless tool it is possible to drill a large hole with a diamond drill bit if the motor power allows.
How to Drill Into Concrete | The Home Depot
For simple percussion drilling of small holes, you will need an additional tool:
- Concrete drill set with different diameters. They can be distinguished by special carbide tips. The item is a small plate with the edges sharpened at an angle of 60o. The screw part and the cylindrical shank are made of ordinary tool steel.
- Drill bit. The tool is in the shape of a rod with the tip sharpened to a peak. The punch is used to break up concrete by hitting it with a hammer.
Concrete drill bits have one weak spot. When in contact with the reinforcement, the filler plate breaks out. If the drill stops sinking into the concrete and a characteristic whistling noise occurs, punch the hole with the drill bit. If there is rebar, move the drilling site to the side.
When it is necessary to cut a big hole for a socket with a drill, the core bit is used instead of the drill. When selecting a bit, look at the shank. Its shape must be suitable for clamping in the chuck. The drill can be fitted with a hexagonal or SDS drill bit.
Drilling the concrete is carried out by three types of crowns:
- SDS bits made of tungsten carbide materials have a serrated cutting edge. Bits can only be used for percussive drilling. If the drill has no percussion function, the lugs overheat and fall off the cup. The drill bit is afraid of contact with the rebar. To save the cutters, try drilling through the wall with a drill bit beforehand. An additional action will help to find out if there is a rebar in the area.
- Drilling a concrete wall with a hammerless drill is carried out with a diamond drill bit. Nozzles are not afraid of contact with reinforcement. Air-cooled bits are available for household use. They are recognized by the presence of holes on the cutting edge. Wet-cutting bits are not used with a drill. Diamond dusting can be hard, soft or medium-hard, as indicated by the letters “T”, “M”, “C” on the bit. CS: GO” bits are usually used with a drill. It is designed with slots for air cooling. The dusting of the cutting edge is made of medium-hard diamond grit.
Drill bits made of tungsten carbide are sold for the drill, where there is a tungsten-carbide dusting instead of tips. The bit can be used to accurately drill through tiled walls. It is reasonable to use crowns if the power of a drill exceeds 1 kW.
How to drill holes in concrete?
The need to drill holes in concrete walls and ceilings occurs when laying communications, fire protection and engineering systems (sewerage, ventilation, gas and water supply), installing railings, installing anchors and similar situations that require partial or complete through drilling of structures. The process of their preparation refers to labor-intensive and dirty, the achieved effect and the cost of drilling largely depend on the correct choice of working tool. When in doubt about their abilities, or if it is necessary to lay a large number of channels, this is entrusted to professionals.
Powerful equipment is used to create holes: impact and impactless drills, rotary drills and hydraulically or electrically driven drill rigs. Their tools are drills, concrete drills and round bits with pobedite or diamond coatings. The latter are valued for minimum dust production, the ability to drill to a depth of 3 m at a diameter within 1, high speed of work and the ability to perform them on curvilinear surfaces.
Impact drillers allow you to quickly make a cavity with a cross section of up to 3 cm (with a maximum of 5 cm) in constructions without reinforcement. The recommended minimum power in this case is 1 kW, which is enough to drill the hardest grades. The disadvantages include the impossibility of connecting a core bit with a diameter of more than 25 cm and restrictions when working with reinforced concrete. direct hit of the augers on armature is fraught with stopping or breakage of the torch, as a result, its use is allowed only if one can be sure that there is no metal in the way of the nozzle.
Drills with power from 250 watts and above are used in the processing of aerated concrete and monoliths with percussive spiral drill bits and crowns. While choosing the nozzle the brand and type of concrete is taken into account: for porous materials the collet chuck is enough, for monoliths with the thickness within 30 cm you need a two-handed tool with the SDS shank with the section of 10 mm, for drilling of hard composites from M400 and higher. SDS Max no less than 18 mm. Drilling holes with a large diameter and depth of more than 0.5 m is difficult, motor drills are used.
Specialized and professional equipment include drilling rigs, in turn divided into pistol type models (for quick creation of holes with a diameter of up to 10 mm), one-handed machines for laying through and blind cavities within 15 and two-handed, suitable for large-sized channels. The latter are represented by water-cooled motor-drills with power from 5-8 kW, connected to the three-phase network or hydraulic drive. They allow you to drill a hole to a depth of 1-1.5 m and a diameter of 250 mm without problems.
Drilling concrete walls with a drill with your own hands
Drilling concrete is quite difficult due to the high strength and the presence of reinforcement. The ideal solution would be to use a peorator, but buying an expensive tool for small amounts is impractical, and a drill is in almost every home.
To make a hole in a concrete wall no thicker than 12 cm, you can use a drill, preferably with percussion function. For other surfaces, choose a peorator.
the quality of the work also depends on the drill bit, an ordinary drill bit is not suitable. You need to use the following types of products:
Toothed percussion drill. For a hard wall, use varieties made of durable metal alloys. SDS bits can be selected. They have one disadvantage: they quickly deteriorate when in contact with steel. Therefore, it is advisable to check beforehand the presence of reinforcement in the wall.
Diamond. for hammerless drilling in concrete. They have an increased resistance. Edges have a heterogeneous structure and cutouts, during their manufacture corundum or diamond grit is sprayed on the surface.
For household works pick up drill bits with a length of 10-12 cm, for professional equipment larger tools are required. The main advantage of diamond elements. they are not afraid of contact with reinforcement. Description of technology can be found in the article Diamond cutting of concrete and reinforced concrete structures.
CS: GO bits with a cutting edge coated in crystalline diamond powder. They are used to make holes in walls, including exterior.
Concrete drill bit for drills and peorator differences
Both a peorator and an impact drill can be used to work the concrete. The two tools differ not only in design, but also in purpose. Impact drill is intended for metal and wood drilling, but can also be used for concrete work. Only a concrete drill can be used for a short period of time, otherwise the mechanism of the tool will quickly wear out and become unusable.
The peorator is designed for concrete processing, but can also be used to work with metal and wood, but only for short periods. They differ in the design of the shank for these tools. Drill bit has a cylindrical shank, while the drill bit has a special shank with SDS-type grooves. It is impossible to confuse nozzles, or use them on tools for which they were not designed. However, one can argue with it, because thanks to modern adapters, it is possible to install a drill bit for concrete into the tool.
Peorator is most often used for drilling concrete. It has several advantages over a regular drill.
Despite the listed advantages, such a tool is not always suitable for work. In some situations, its use is simply impractical.
Peorator is not suitable in the following cases:
- When you need shallow holes in the wall (10-12 mm);
- When working with foam block (otherwise the material will crumble);
- If the required number of holes is less than 15.
Based on this, we can conclude that for home use, a conventional drill is more suitable. To buy such a tool for drilling walls, you need to consider a number of important points.
The drill must meet such requirements:
- It must be percussive, because this type is most effective when drilling concrete walls. In a hammerless drill, the nozzle and chuck will fail too quickly.
- It is better to buy pobedite nozzles, designed for concrete work. And the tip. with a coating of durable alloys.
It is also possible to choose a drill-peorator. True, such a tool costs more than a conventional model. But it has more power, which can be adjusted as you wish.