Is This An Acceptable Way To Mount A Rack?

Not unless your mounting to the studs or block wall.  I hope no one got hurt with that install.

No.

Wall anchors alone are not acceptable for mounting any kind of heavy loads like that. Particularly when you have hinges or parts that move and can change load distributions.

Why would someone mark it as unhelpful?

I am simply showing a picture of a rack that obviously fell. Before I explain what happened I just would like some opinions so that nobody feels biased to agree or disagree with me.

Messing up my free IPVM...

Is This An Acceptable Way To Mount A Rack?

only on the ISS

So we have 3 no's and I agree.

I do not know the exact details but here is the jist. We are on a project with existing equipment, and adding to it. The original rack and system was not installed by us. The guys supposedly leaned on it, it fell, hit a water pipe which broke, and flooded the area. It took them a while to find a maint guy to shut the water off. Luckily the room had exterior doors, and they were able to push the water out. The room is also being gutted and rehabbed so bare concrete, and the pipe that burst was going to be rerouted anyway, so they just expedited the process.. Then a company had to bring in dehumidifiers.

All in all it was only a 3 hour ordeal so I do not think it will cost much.

Ultimately my guys caused the rack to fall but I am not sure we should be responsible for cleanup etc as they were not negligent. 

Better than plastic anchors but absolutely not acceptable.

We specify that a 3/4" plywood backboard be installed behind any wall-mounted rack or panel. On a drywall wall, the plywood would be mounted to the studs within the wall using screws, and then the rack or panel would be screwed to the plywood. On a concrete or masonry wall, the plywood would be mounted directly to the wall surface.

Racks can get heavy, especially when you start installing UPS units in them. In the past, I have been guilty of specifying wall-mounted racks that were not rated to handle the total weight of the equipment that I was putting inside of them. I always made sure I had enough RUs of height, but never gave a thought to the weight. I always double-check this now. 

Even highly-paid consultants are not perfect :)

I think it is unreasonable for the client to pin that on you. Even if your guys were standing on top of it, it was never secured properly. I won't even hang a bathroom mirror without hitting a stud, let alone an equipment cabinet.

That sucks, I'd say probably should have mounted a sheet of plywood to the wall then mount the rack to the plywood.   

Depends on who is installing

Classified , in house , or outside contractors

I have to complete with in safety spec's , others can do what ever they want

Always backing , always lag screws to support 400% of expected load

since you never know what is going in that little rack

some AV , Amps, High Tech Equip is quite heavy , then when you add the Tech who thinks its another step to the ceiling , well that's the ( why )to the question

The studs are metal, so that isn't much better. I think the only solution is to open the wall entirely and build a wood frame inside the metal studs of some sort, or use a floor rack.

They have a GC over the rehab and I can let them figure it out.

How high off the ground was it and how much does it weigh?

To be fair to the anchors, they’re still mounted to the wall ;)

No, toggle bolts in sheet rock are not going to match the load rating of the rack. I think its fair to say that the mounting hardware should be rated to hold what the rack is rated for.

My wife uses push pins to mount nearly anything to our walls so what do I know? Maybe she could get a job with you them?

An example - like the Sword of Damocles hanging over the entrance to our Master Bath.

I always use a support block of wood if I am not able to reach studs.

Can't you glue it back in with some chewing gum or Sellotape? Seems appropriate considering the original mounting method 

Ha ha. I would even condone mounting a PTZ camera with plasterboard fixings, no way a rack!

Unacceptable! If mounting to a standard drywall surface you will need to use 1/2" plywood mounted to the wall first with screws/toggles directly into the studs. Then you can mount the cabinet to the surface of the plywood with the appropriate sized screws and fender washers. If mounting to a concrete block wall I would still mount the plywood first or metal u channel with 1/4-20 drop in anchors and then mount the cabinet to that.

Yikes! I hope nobody was near this when it came crashing down!

I guess you have your answer from the other guys in the industry, so hopefully your customer can see that really no one else would think their original installer did their homework.

I agree with everyone on here saying to use a toggle bolt through the studs to hang plywood. I am constantly told I go a little overboard on these things, but I recently hung a small 12U rack by installing a 4x4 sheet of 3/4" plywood to the metal studs. I made a 16" grid with 1/2" toggles. Then I hung the rack to the plywood and also used toggles to go through the plywood and studs.

I don't really know what it will hold, but i imagine that whole wall will come folding in before the rack just falls off. 

Like a few other people pointed out already, you never know what someone is going to come behind you and do, so you always want to make sure you are over engineered on your portion so you don't get blamed if someone decides your rack needs to also house a few extra UPS and it comes toppling down.

Best of luck!

  I feel that plenty of self drilling/tapping screws in metal studs along with some toggles in the sheetrock at regular intervals always does the job of mounting backer plywood. (Big holes in studs for toggles are a pain in my opinion.) Then as others have said, use lag or #12 or larger screws to mount heavy equip to plywood. Better to over do it a bit then someone/ something hurt or damaged.

Use 3/4 inch plywood that can anchor to studs, who knows what will be put in a rack in the future.

The follow up is they never said another word about it. I guess they agree it was a bad install

During our last walk through a few days ago,  they mentioned they wanted 3 TVs hung from the ceiling, in the same area the rack fell. The rack was in a closet, the TV's are going in the fitness center.

Me: Uh aren't the the ceilings framed with metal studs? They are going to need some backing to hold a 55" TV:

GC: Would you like us to....

Me: (before the GC finished his sentence) Absolutely, you mount the wood and we will mount the TV's to the wood.

Every time I show up for a weekly project meeting, there are more change orders, but they are all small, change a door, add a TV, etc.Very time consuming and not worth the headache. But that is a different topic

In this specific case, I would have the GC add in some wood backing behind the sheetrock to mount the rack to. I wouldn’t trust steel studs for much more than holding sheetrock in place.