Drilling into Hard Concrete
Tips for making drill bits last when drilling for fasteners in concrete. May 6, 2007
Question
I have to drill into a concrete floor. I have tried to drill into this floor before and my tapcon bits go dull almost instantly and won't drill it. The concrete is old and on the second level. Does anyone know of a bit or tool that may work? Noise is a problem, so I can't use anything but the Hilti hammer drill or something equivalent in noise level.
Forum Responses
(Cabinet and Millwork Installation Forum)
From contributor J:
I recently drilled a bunch of 3/4" holes around my pool for the safety cover. I bought a stupid expensive (Bosch?) drill bit and used a Milwaukee (plug-in) hammer drill. The bit still looks new.
From contributor E:
I've had good success with the Bosch bits also. The tapcon bits are junk! I think Hilti makes bits also, which would probably be pretty good; you get what you pay for.
From contributor M:
I was going to suggest using a rotary hammer (sds bit), but it's a little loud when you drill. Look at Hilti or Bosch. Both are very good when it comes to hammers. Or if you just want to secure some 2x or 1x to the floor, you can use a powder actuated nail gun. It will nail to concrete or steel!
From contributor F:
99.9% of our door and cabinet installations are in concrete. Over time we have learned to use water to cool the tapcon bit tip and to use lower rpms when drilling. Since January '06 we have used close to 9K tapcons for installations and average 1 bit per 200 screws.
From contributor O:
That's awesome. What kind of drill do you use?
From contributor F:
Milwaukee 18V cordless hammer drills. We have 5 with 4 batteries each drill. More than half of the time we use the driving speed to do the drilling.
