How do you secure wood to concrete?When I installed the sheathing on the walls I placed them so that about a foot of the concrete foundation was also covered. Now ordinary nails just don't do concrete so I needed another solution to secure the sheathing material to the concrete.
I used a tool called the the 'Power Hammer' made by Remington - Yes the rifle people, to literally shoot nails through the sheathing and into the concrete. This power hammer drives special concrete nails ranging from 1 to 2.5 inched in length using a .22 caliber, necked down, crimped, low velocity power loads.
The nail is placed at the end of the barrel and the power load is loaded in the other end. The Power Hammer is held on the spot the nail is to go and a hammer is used bang the other end, thus triggering the power load to fire.It is very important to use the right length of nail and power load combination. The power loads come in 4 strengths. I used 1.5 or 2 inch nails with the highest power load, a number 4 which were colour-coded yellow.
It took a bit of trial and error to get the right combination. In the above picture you can see two power nails. The left one didn't quite go all the way into the concrete - I believe the power load was not high enough. The one on the right is perfect - I you can see where the nail is is the plastic sleeve that holds the nail in the barrel.