A sinking office chair implies that the whole chair is defective. There is a fairly simple explanation as to why this occurs. For a chair to sink, the lift on its cylinder must have failed. The cylinder inside an office chair is the component of the chair that links the core to the seat.
It is also what continues to move the seat upward and downward. When you hold the seat pedal, the nitrogen gas within the cylinder switches compartments, enabling it to move upward and downward. Over time and with repeated use of your seat, the seal in the cylinder gradually wears out and triggers the chair to sink.
Recognizing why office chairs capsize is the fundamental step in understanding how to repair a sinking chair. Although there are multiple underlying factors, they all cite a specific component: the gas cylinder. The gas cylinder is tasked with maintaining the lateral motion of your seat through a pneumatic, high-pressure area with a progressing piston.
When all this is functioning properly, this compartment stays tightly closed and even the piston maintains its position. Just hold on to the chair’s height lever to move it. This expands the pressurized cylinder’s compartment, splitting the gasket and allowing pressurized air to enter the component.
The pressurized air forces the piston eastward, raising your office chair to the peak point. Once you take a seat on the chair and engage the lever, the exact reverse phenomenon occurs. Your pressure downscales the air in the compartment, and the piston goes back to its starting position, significantly reducing the chair.
The issue arises whenever the chair’s cylinder fails because of a mishap or old age. Any split in the gasket or arrangement, no matter how minor or pinpoint, disturbs the equilibrium of air within the core. As a direct consequence, the chair is constantly plunging and failing to stay in place.
What to Do If Your Office Chair Continues to Sink
Below are some possibilities to consider if your office chair begins to sink;
-
Purchase a new chair
Purchasing a new seat is not a smart option because a useful seat will cost a significant amount of money. Nevertheless, if your seat is very old and stretched out, it is best to replace it. The perfect office chair, as per specialists, is the Herman Miller Aeron.
It comes with a great design and unique features. The seat is built with long-lasting components and is simple to wipe down. It also has a comfortable fit that will maintain your rear in good shape.
-
Repair your chair
Repairing the chair is the most economical way to go. However, if you are going with this option, you have to understand that you will not be able to adjust the height once you get it fixed. Furthermore, this is not a long-term fix and it will have to be serviced once in 3-6 months.
-
Replace the faulty gas cylinder
Another of the safest bets is to replace the cylinder. Aside from saving you money, this will also offer you a chair in great condition.
A moderate chair gas cylinder can be obtained for a portion of the price of a new one. Brands such as this Office Owl gas cylinder appear to be a common pick, and it comes with guidelines and the instruments necessary for making it user-friendly.
Steps to Repair a Sinking Office Chair
The one point you must understand is that you cannot explicitly repair a chair gas lift cylinder. It’s a machine-made part, and pumping nitrogen further into the cylinder is nearly unfeasible. Owing to that, the remedies provided concentrate on allowing you to reach the required elevation instead of repairing the gas cylinder. Among them are the following:
-
Change the gas cylinder
If you want the chair to operate and feel the same as before, you could perhaps swap the gas cylinder. The gas cylinder in desk chairs is frequently a conventional installation, with many chairs utilizing the same cylinder. When serviced correctly though with a high-quality gas cylinder, your seat will last at least another 6 years.
To be cautious, ensure to come with the brand of your desk chair to the retailer to verify which gas cylinder to purchase. Acquiring a conventional fit is not really a problem because many distributors provide a refund or exchange if yours do not fit.
The process for removing the gas cylinder is straightforward and involves retrofitting the section of the chair from the seat’s core to the middle of the base.
-
Insert a plastic spacer (or PVC Pipe)
A plastic spacer or perhaps a portion of PVC pipe can be used as a stopgap measure to the plunging chair. The spacer or pipe is designed to wrap across the cylinder’s piston and accommodate the weight of the chair at a predetermined level. To enable this feature, you must first determine the desired altitude and the existing altitude of the chair.
You afterward split a length of pipe to that size. It ought to be significantly bigger than the piston of the cylinder. There are two techniques for attaching the pipe or spacer to such cylinder pistons. For one, you start by removing the portion of the piston that is attached to the chair’s seat, then plug the pipe and tighten it back in place.
The second approach involves cutting the pipe itself along the length, opening it up, and inserting it into the cylinder piston.
This technique necessitates the use of a sellotape or a pipework clamp to hold the pipe in place. All these techniques are only momentary fixes. The only disadvantage here is that the seat will be limited to one height and will not be configurable.
-
Set up a chair-saver kit
The Chair Saver Kit is a low-cost alternative for the gas cylinder that can quickly restore your seat to good order. It is indeed a set of rings that are snapped onto the piston of the existing gas cylinder lift. You can lift the chair in this manner, and the rings will hold it in state at the required size.
They are inexpensive to purchase and come with something like a 5-year warranty, which represents a significant signal of trust from the producer. Because they are generally applicable, you should purchase additional quantities for when you will require them.
-
Use a chair riser
A chair riser is a collection of keys that you attach to the bottom portion of both the seat’s legs to raise it. Based on the structure of your furniture’s legs, they can sometimes be spherical or some other shape. Many chair risers are attached to the legs by connecting them or by inserting the chair’s legs into the loops in the risers.
-
Duct tape and a pipe clamp or Jubilee clip
Another stopgap measure for a sinking chair would be to use a pipe clamp and masking tape to keep the chair up. It’s similar to the plastic spacer technique seeing that you’ll use the fastener as well as masking tape upon that piston of the gas cylinder to keep the chair in place.
The chair is held up primarily by the stiffness of the pipe clamp. The masking tape exists to improve the clamp’s hold. For good traction, bruise the region now under the clamp with abrasive paper. Because the clamp very seldom remains in position for more than a few weeks, this technique is the least productive.