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Hi John, I fit hundreds of vine eyes. One walked garden I did over 1000. Climbing plants are my thing!
Firstly I point out to the customer wether the there wall is of poor quality, ie soft pointing and damaged/poor bricks. If I slip on the pointing I repair it, which happened a couple of weeks ago when I hit a thunder bolt holding the door frame. That's never happened before.
I never, for vine eyes drill into brick because if the bricks are degrading and its much easier to replace pointing than a brick. I always use screw in vine eyes with rawl plugs rather than the hammer in ones, they are rubbish.
I've never seen a climbing pull a wall over and work with some pretty old thick wisteria.
I leave a bricks depth away for the edge of a wall and two bricks down from the top of a garden wall otherwise your can life the top brick course.
Hope that helps Dav
Thanks David for this useful information .
I have a customer in a shared property where the wisteria had climbed up a drainpipe , then wrapped itself around a cable , alarm box , gutter was motoring along the roof and strangling the telephone cable . its never had any means of support other than what it can grip .
I have managed to free it and whats left they want to keep but other property residents prefer not to have the walls drilled and now its just resting on the ground until they reach a decision .
I have drilled walls many times but glad i checked i.e regards brick spacing end of walls i had never considered this but an important point you made ., another idea i had was fixing trellis using blobs of no nails on wall but not sure if it would stand the weight and the wall is stone and uneven so probably not a good idea .unless i could fix packers behind the trellis . much appreciated Thanks .
I don't know how deep you drill, but we live in Eco house, it has insulation and membrane between inner block / outer brick skins. Out downside (ovr the ilfetime of the building ...) is that it is very imoprtant that the membrane is not punctured (or, if it needs to be, that an air tight method is used) as the house efficiency relies on being very air tight
If you use bostik sticks like shit or other stuff rated as structural adhesive you may find its impossible to remove from brick, It will have a lesser hold to plastic so be sure to key it well.
Is that normal bostik adhesive or no nails James ? its worth bearing in mind for future jobs on brick work .
I will make wooden packers or use light plastic blocks .
This is what I mean about drilling into brick! It wasn't me, a new garden and obviously they didn't use a big enough drill bit!
The whole structure looks a bit fragile , very unsightly .
I wonder if the damaged area can be chisled out and repaired with some coloured mortar ?
We have put many vine eyes in to walls over the years. Always to bricks, mortar often is only surface finished and has no structural strength. Holes in bricks should be height centered and at least 40mm/ 1.5" from the ends, to prevent cracking. Brown rawlplugs use a 7mm drill, if you use a 6.5mm e.g. the vine eye plus plug will be almost too big for the hole diameter.
An alternative, certainly for heavier plants e.g. roses & wisteria, is to fix battens using hammer or frame fixings, into the brick. And then fix either vine eyes or 65x12 screw eyes, or an eye on a plate. The latter being very robust.
Using battens also lifts the plants away the walls. Using two parallel wires allows clematis mesh to be affixed, we use this technique for clematis & winter jasmine.
We have also used hooked rawlbolts, for affixing wall mangers.
We use 2.5mm galv wire, buy it in 25kg rolls.
My local timber place has thunderbolt type eyes, no rawlplug needed. I have not tied anything heavy with them but two years on they're still there in the centre of bricks with no damage.