How to fill an internal gap with limited access

[Milleniumaire]

I am fitting a shower door to a tiled partition wall but one of the three screws in the upper hinge is not getting any purchase. I believe this is because the screw is unfortunately positioned between two pieces of timber, with a slight gap between them.

Here's a photo of the top of the shower door showing the hinge and the tiled partition wall to which it is being screwed:

20210209_194925

• Milleniumaire
• 9 Feb 2021

As you can see, the third screw hole is slightly to the right of the other two screws. Here's a photo of the wall to which it is being screwed, prior to boarding and tiling:

20200403_153508

• Milleniumaire
• 9 Feb 2021

I'm as sure as I can be, that the two left hand screws have screwed into the corner wooden support and I suspect the right hand screw is "spinning" as it has ended up between the two vertical studs.

My only access is through the 6mm drilled hole through the tiles.

I have tried using the largest screw I can screw in through the hinge and while I can feel it grabbing the wood, it will not screw tight.

If this was the bottom hinge I wouldn't be as concerned, but as it is the top hinge and the 8mm safety glass door weighs nearly 40kg I would really rather have all three screws holding the hinge firmly in place.

I have wondered if it might be possible to spray some sort of expanding "glue" through a tube into the "gap", which would then give the screw something to screw into.

I would appreciate any advice on what I could do to resolve this issue.

 

[KenGMac]

Milleniumaire, good evening.

When my sons shower door was being fitted we had an identical issue,

What the fitters did was to squirt some adhesive, in this case it was "Sticks like S**T" leave it overnight, squire more if you can leave it then try a screw.

It did work and given in your case the screw [appears] to be between two uprights???

The installer used as thin and long a nozzle as possible.

The door is still ridged after about 8 Years in use?

Ken.

 

[foxhole]

Drill 6mm hole into timber and use a decent wall plug.

 

[diy_fun_uk]

Assuming the tile itself is well adhered to the wall, coupled with the fact you're pretty certain 2 x screws are into wood, I'd just put a raw plug in the hole you've drilled. It will get enough purchase to sufficiently hold the third screw.

 

[Milleniumaire]

Thanks for all your responses so far they have all been helpful. I haven't had a chance to try anything yet, but I think I'm actually going to go with a combination of all three!

- Attempt to squirt in some glue, although I'm not sure if I will be able to find a nozzle small enough to squeeze far enough into the 6mm hole.
- Push some long "sticks" (my wife uses these to test when cakes are cooked in the middle - they look like long tooth picks) into the hole after dipping in wood glue. I'll possible get three in and attempt to align them one above the other.
- Pop in a raw plug so the first 35mm of the hole (10mm tile + adhesive + 18mm marmox board) provides some grip to the screw.

I've also purchased some longer round headed screws as the M4 x 50mm that were supplied I suspect aren't going into the wooden stud as much as I would like, when you consider the first 35mm is just the drilled hole, meaning only around 15mm of the screw is actually in the wood.

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[cdbe]

Put a longer screw at an angle, it won't need to be much if it's going through 35mm of nothing first.

 

[Milleniumaire]

Put a longer screw at an angle, it won't need to be much if it's going through 35mm of nothing first.

I did try that, unfortunately I assume the small hole in the metal hinge and the 6mm drilled hole through the 10mm thick porcelain tiles are preventing the angle being enough to be able to hit the wood. I could do this more easily before the hinge was fitted, but not after.

 

[Milleniumaire]

Success. Over the weekend, I remove the new shower door to get access to the 6mm holes I had drilled through the porcelain tiles. I managed to push in a number of long "kebab" sticks coated in wood glue and then squeezed in some "no more nails". Today I carefully screwed in a screw to the problem hinge hole and it successfully tightened up just like the other screws.

Job done.