Radiator fell off wall onto my son

Browntoa

does the fixing look like this

or

Browntoa

or this

scousethife

I'll bet its a drylined wall, with it being newbuild.

Now and again screwed plugs can be pulled right out of the wall, its rare I admit. The thing with a radiator and infact most things is its own weight pulling downwards causes a leveraging effect on the screws which makes them jam in harder however a pulling outwards can sometimes pull them right out.

trogg

or this

tanmu

they look like the last one, and one of the 'w' shaped ends bends away from the actual screw on one of the fixings - not sure if this is of any relevance though. Just had a look at some of the other radiators around the house and most are loose at the bottom where the pipe enters the wall, with the plaster cracking around it. I'm really angry that if my daughter had been playing a little closer the radiator could have fallen on her - and my sons legs could've been sprained or worse still, broken.

kevin0410

All the rads in my 5 year old house are just sat on brackets and can be easily lifted off of them

neas

We are only hearin half the story.

Im wouldnt lean on a radiator either. and by lean if you say its a 5 year old he was probably climbing on it? I'd say a radiator could be pulled off like this. Get a builder to do an assessment if you are genuinely innocent... if you arent then dont get the builder as he will favour against you and you will waste money.

SingleSue

I had a similar thing in my housing association house....the radiator in the hallway was very dangerously hanging off the wall so we called the HA and they sent someone out.

It turns out that they had screwed it into the plaster board but not into the wooden butresses (god knows how you spell it!) behind, hence the rad almost at the stage of falling off.

They removed the radiator (amidst lots of tutting about poor workmanship) and said that when it is replaced, that it needed to be screwed into the butresses and not just the pretty c word plasterboard.

Four years on and I still haven't had the rad replaced but then it does make the hallway rather less cluttered and easier to move around in although it can get a wee bit chilly in the winter whilst I am on the pc!

*Not moaning about the rad not being replaced I hasten to add!

Premier_2

tanmu wrote:

...There is no way, in my opinion, that a 5yr old should be able to pull a radiator off a wall ...

Could I change one word there and say:

"There is no way, in my opinion, that a 5yr old should be allowed to pull a radiator off a wall"

tanmu wrote:

... It banged his arm and fell on his legs trapping him. Fortunately he wasn't seriously hurt, ...

It appears he had a lucky escape, but hopefully enough of a fright to have learnt not do it again. Even so, a word in his ear explaining his folly wouldn't go amiss.

kunekune

Neas and Premier, he didn't pull it off deliberately. He leaned on it (perhaps not the best thing but nothing like the delinquent behavour you're suggesting) and it fell.