So I place the pressure treated bottom plate on floor and line it up with the chalk. I then grabbed my brand new Black and Decker Hammer Drill equiped with the appropriate masonary bit (included in my box of 100 Tapcons). The hole wasn't that hard to drill but it was kind of loud and shook my hands pretty good. I even set the depth gauge to 3 1/2" (leaving 1/4" extra as noted in my materials). I then vacuumed out the dust from the hole and drove in my very first Tapcon using my Skil Cordless Drill. The first one went in no problem.
I then went to the other end of the plate to secure it so it would move. I drilled the hole, vacuumed it out, started screwing in the Tapcon... then suddenly at the bottom I heard a snap. Uh Oh. The Tapcon snapped off in the hole. I tried to imagine why this happened and quickly decided that I had a defective screw. So I tried again.
And again snap. So now I was baffled... there is no way I had defective screws in a row. I was also getting concerned that I would have all these broken screws in my floor. So I went online to find out the solution and I tried some of the solutions.
Solution #1... using the hammer drill to drive in the Tapcon. WRONG. When I did this it just stripped the screw.
Solution #2... changing the torque setting on my cordless drill. WRONG. When I did this the screw just wouldn't go in far enough.
Through trial and error and after wasting about five Tapcons, I figured out how I could make it work. I had to drill the hole 1/2" deeper than the Tapcon and I also had to drill out the dust many times before screwing in the Tapcon (the vacuum wasn't getting enough dust out). One other thing to note is that I did have to reduce the torque setting on my cordless drill. I had the torque set to the highest setting This would prevent the Tapcon from breaking when I drove it in.
Eventually I managed to get the bottom plates for the back wall secured.
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