Walls and Ceilings - How much weight can this shelf hold (pictures)

Hi all,

I plan to put a CRT TV (either 68cm or 80cm) on a shelf in my garage. The shelf is held up by metal brackets with corner supports, bolted to the brick wall. The owner didn't put them up so doesn't know how much weight they can hold. The TV will be around 50-70kg, and along with other stuff like xbox, speakers, hifi system etc I like to be sure it can hold 100kg.

The bottom shelf is 18mm MDF, the top shelf that will hold the TV I found on the street in front of my house! So I don't know what it is, but it seems very hard, denser than the MDF.

Here are the pictures. You may see a metal ruler, which is 30cm (12in) for perspective.

http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/9360/dsc022202nt.jpg
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/5844/dsc022210tr.jpg
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/3497/dsc022226gw.jpg
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/6034/dsc022237fa.jpg

As the cheap heavy TV will be on the top shelf, and the expensive DVD, xbox etc gear on the bottom, if the TV falls it will fall on top of the good stuff. Thus my paranoia about this.

Cheers!

It's a little hard to see how they are attached, but it appears that it is a pretty sturdy setup. The brackets seem to be a heavy angle iron type stuff. The weak link would be how they are anchored in the masonry. It looks as if at least some of the anchors are in the mortar joints and not the bricks themselves which would have been stronger. I wouldn't be surprised if they would hold what you have planned, but a hundred kilos might be pushing it. I would take everything off the brackets and see if they would indivdually hold my body weight by grabbing them and gently lowering myself until my arms were straight and then carefully lifting my feet off the ground. Should make a pretty good load test and if it pulls free at most you'll bang your knees on the floor.

Okay I checked last night and there are 2 bolts on each side, 3 of which are going into the bit between the bricks like this:

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/5189/dsc022277jz.jpg

And one of the bottom ones going directly into the brick like this:

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/7420/dsc022247yg.jpg

There was actually a third bracket which I had no need for and took out, but left the bolts in, and I would be guessing these are the same ones used throughout, so should give an idea on the strength of them:

http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/7658/dsc022280wn.jpg

I could do the hanging body test as luck would have it I'm probably about 100 kilo. It if can hold me it can hold anything!

Thanks!

Be careful and be prepared if it does fail and yank the anchors out.

I ended up finding some old barbell weights, and put 70kg worth on the shelf and left it for 2 weeks. It held fine, some very slight bowing of the actual shelf (I have since screwed in a support beam of spare 18mm MDF I had under the main shelf to stop bowing), but the actual structure was fine with 70 kilograms.

I ended up getting a 68cm CRT TV, and the weight was 43kg so worked out fine.

Cheers.