Saw this one over on r/hometheater and it is the nightmare version of every rental I have stayed in. Guests check out, the cleaners arrive and find the TV on the floor, the owner messages them asking how they intend to pay for it. Nobody was in the room when it came down.
The thing is, the wall usually tells you everything. A mount lagged into studs does not just let go. When one of those fails you get a bent arm, a sheared bolt, or the set hanging crooked off one side. When a mount was hung on drywall anchors you get a clean cone of gypsum pulled out of the wall, two neat craters, and the plate still bolted to the bracket. That second pattern is not something a guest causes by watching Netflix, and any handyman who looks at the hole will say so.
Full motion arms make it worse. The moment you extend a 55 or 65 inch set out on an arm, the load on the top fasteners climbs, and cheap arms tend to end up on cheap anchors because whoever did the install was doing five units that day.
If you are the guest: photograph the wall and the hole now, from your own phone, and dig out your check-in photos. Timestamps beat arguments. If you are the host: fixed mount, into studs, no exceptions, and stop putting swivel arms on plasterboard in a unit where strangers will be shoving furniture around.
Has anyone here had a properly lagged mount actually fail? I have seen plenty of anchor failures and not one stud failure.
The thing is, the wall usually tells you everything. A mount lagged into studs does not just let go. When one of those fails you get a bent arm, a sheared bolt, or the set hanging crooked off one side. When a mount was hung on drywall anchors you get a clean cone of gypsum pulled out of the wall, two neat craters, and the plate still bolted to the bracket. That second pattern is not something a guest causes by watching Netflix, and any handyman who looks at the hole will say so.
Full motion arms make it worse. The moment you extend a 55 or 65 inch set out on an arm, the load on the top fasteners climbs, and cheap arms tend to end up on cheap anchors because whoever did the install was doing five units that day.
If you are the guest: photograph the wall and the hole now, from your own phone, and dig out your check-in photos. Timestamps beat arguments. If you are the host: fixed mount, into studs, no exceptions, and stop putting swivel arms on plasterboard in a unit where strangers will be shoving furniture around.
Has anyone here had a properly lagged mount actually fail? I have seen plenty of anchor failures and not one stud failure.
