I need to drill a load of drainage holes (approx 20mm dia) in some concrete and pavers, and so far have burnt out a cheapo hammer drill (it was about £20 from Lidl) and even using a Bosch SDS 36v cordless it'll only do 6 or 7 holes before needing to be recharged.

Is there anywhere i can hire a real heavy duty drill for a day or 2, and what should i ask for? (brand, type etc)

Hi

I would look at sds corded drills from screwfix I think they come with 2yr guarantee maybe about 80-100 but good for future projects

I agree - I have a 10 year old Screwfix special SDS drill that cost me less than £50. It is heavy but it just works!

Decide how much you want to spend and take your pick:

https://www.screwfix.com/c/tools/sds-drill...t_by=price

Alternatively, spend the money on another battery for your bosch drill? Bish.

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2011 TDV8 Vogue SE (gone)

If you are drilling 20mm or bigger holes, one option is to ask at tool hire places for Sds drill machines for machine anchor bolt holes etc basically a huge hammer drill, ie Hilti drill. They will get the job done quickly.
Tool hire places such as HSS.
If it is a 'one off' job,it may be the cheaper option than buying one that will just sit in a cupboard.

Yup. I still have my Hitachi SDS and a set of drill bit that are very long and never used used after that one job. If you were near you’d be happy to borrow it.

Corded ones have good stamina 🤣 But I have to saw my Milwaukee cordless power tools are brilliant and when using the high demand batteries they have good stamina as well.

Only problem with hiring is that it cost almost as much as just buying a corded one.

Bought a Titan SDS drill from Screwfix when doing up the house. Good heavy duty piece of kit, knocked down lots of walls in chisel mode and drilled lots of holes in concrete and bricks. Worked out loads cheaper than hiring as it was available whenever I needed it, didn’t need collected or returned. 2012 tdv8 Westminster arrived Jan 19 gone Dec 23

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Cheers guys (sexist assumption i know!)

since posting I was recommended elsewhere too to buy the titan hammer drill from screwfix, so picked one up just now, got a couple of jobs so will get my use out of it that way

Cheers again all

I bought the cheapest corded from screwfix, Christ it’s heavy, but does the job .

If you are doing loads of holes cordless drills are useless.

We screw and plug batten to floors on every house we build and a cheap corded drill like the Titan will always run rings around a more expensive cordless.

BTW one of the easiest places to hire from is Travis Perkins. They normally have a hire desk in each branch and a big drill is probably around £20 a day. There is nothing that can't be fixed with a hammer😜😜
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If you're getting a hammer drill always get a rotary hammer drill rather than a hammer drill. The difference is you can turn the hammer action off with a rotary hammer drill. This makes them a lot more versatile and also they're much more reliable as they don't use a cam action for the hammer.

Mine has no problem drilling 2cm through concrete unless there's rebar. With rebar you need something else, like one of these.

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Try cheap percussion drill with rotary and hammer actions. I bought one about 12-years ago in B&Q as it was on offer with a whole lot of cheapo electric gear close by that had what appeared to me at the time (with years of property developing behind me even then) to be Martian hieroglyphic writing and decors and no identifying names on them!!! It was £15.000 and I thought it would be OK for one job I needed it for and that would be OK as it would probably blow up soon after... 12-years later and it is still going brilliantly. I also purchased three other of the Martian tools (router, basic hammer drill, skill-saw, jigsaw) and they are still going strong...

There is only one powerfull drill on the market: HILTI!
Not the cheapest but teh best, last for ever. I have mine now for 13 years and working still like new even after some years of hard use and falling once from second floor level to the ground.

I can second Ansi's comment on the 'Hilti' kit, expensive but superb.
Drilled through concrete and rebar like a knife through butter with one of those.

Mind you, now and then you would catch some rebar at the wrong angle, and YOU would go round with the drill, This would lead to comments from onlookers, such as, 'Bloody hell, didn't know he was an acrobat'

My Hilti`s are 30 years old and just as good as when I bought them? If you want something to last it will cost?