How to Drill Holes into Cinder Block

Have you ever tried to drill into cinder block or cement with a regular drill? It’s hard, tiring and frustrating. But let’s start with a little backstory on how we came to know this and learned the easier way to drill into cinder block.

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One lovely day we decided it was time to insulate one of the rooms in our basement (really just a little closet). After some research, we decided to use foam insulation with 2×2 boards. But the boards would have to be secured to the cinder block, meaning we needed to drill into the cinder block. We bought our supplies (which included masonry screws and a masonry drill bit) and started the project thinking this would take no time to complete. But we got a big slap in the face when we started attaching the wood to the cinder block. After hours of drilling into the cinder block, we only had maybe 4 finished holes. We were frustrated…

So we got on the internet that night trying to find a solution, we decided to try a hammer drill. The next day we bought one and came home to give it a try. And again hours later, we maybe had 10 finished holes drilled (this worked better than the regular drill but still not easy). We were even switching drill bits often… After about one hole the new bit was shot.

Why were we having so much difficulty? We watched lots of videos of people drilling into cement and they did not have this much trouble, they made it look easy. What are we doing wrong?

We continued using this process for a couple of days not really getting anywhere. Getting even more frustrated and wondering how we were ever going to finish our whole basement.

But one night, I decided to look up how to work a hammer drill because I was beginning to think we were using it wrong. But I found this amazing video called rotary hammer vs. hammer drill. I was hoping I found our answer, we needed a rotary hammer drill. Showed Eric the video and we decided it would not hurt anything to try.

HOW TO DRILL INTO CINDER BLOCK OR CONCRETE

So we took back our hammer drill (because it was not working for us) and we got the Bosch Rotary Hammer Drill plus a drill bit. Then after saying a few prayer, we tried the rotary hammer. After the first hole we looked at each other in amazement, this was our answer!! We completed 3-4 holes in the times it took us to complete 1. And it was easy to use!

Before we were using all of our strength (wondering why we went to the gym that day) but now we were using nothing, just holding the drill in place. AMAZING! We finally attached all the wood to the wall within a couple of hours after switching. And we only used one drill bit.

I am writing this post in hopes that this will save others time and frustration when trying to drill into cinder block or concrete. So if you are wondering how to drill through cinder block or cement, the answer is a ROTARY hammer drill! It will make your project go a lot smoother.

UPDATE 3/29/2018: We are still loving this drill. We have used it to drill holes through brick & concrete.  But also remove tile, this thing is amazing for demo. I would recommend it to anyone!!!

Anyone wanting to finish their basement? Or do you need to drill lots of holes into cement? I really hope this will help.