Fixing uprights on plasterboard

Hello all,

I'm wondering whether someone may be able to give me some advice. I'm looking to install some basic uprights into my under-the-stairs 'utility room' to provide some adjustable shelving. The shelves themselves are 600 mm wide so I had planned to position 2 uprights (each 1m long), one at either end.

The wall in question is the connecting wall between my property and my neighbours (semi detached, new build from 3 years ago) and originally I believed it was some kind of solid wall (with plasterboard on top) between the properties as when I knocked on the wall I could not hear any hollowness and my stud detector went off at every location on the wall. However when I came to drill a hole I felt only plasterboard.

I decided to investigate further and drilled a larger hole (12mm) so that I could look around. From what I can tell I have 2 layers of plasterboard connected together to form one large double-sized piece which is followed by some insulation however I haven't gone any deeper than that. So I'm now stuck on deciding how I should fix the uprights to this wall.

When it comes to digging any deeper behind the insulation I'm fearful of going too far towards my neighbours property so I've been eyeing up other options. The best one I can come up with is getting hold of some long anchor bolts (http://www.screwfix.com/p/fischer-hm-plasterboard-anchors-m5-x-65mm-pack-of-20/99083#) to account for the deeper-than-normal plasterboard and fixing the uprights with them. This would result in 4 anchor bolts for each 1m upright that I use for my 600 mm shelves.

Does this sound like a reasonable approach? Should I be trying something else? I'd also love to know if anyone could hazard a guess as to what is likely to be behind the insulation. Is this double plasterboard + insulation + ???? normal for these kind of connecting walls?

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks for the reply. With this kind of approach would the battens need to go all the way to the floor? There's currently some skirting board in the way.

As for the redidrivas I did attempt to put a couple in the wall but they did not take. By which I mean by the time they had screwed to be flush with the wall they had hollowed out most of the plasterboard and just span in the hole once I tried screwing them in. I suspect my failing there was probably not drilling a pilot hole first but the instructions on the packet suggested this wasn't required.