Introduction: Repair a Broken Office Chair

These chairs are everywhere and sold in office supply stores. Faux leather makes you feel like the chairman or chairwoman of your domain. They all seem to be based on the same pneumatic lifting mechanism which eventually fails. My company has dozens of these chairs in conference rooms and I have one at home. One by one the lifting mechanism fails and gathering a meeting becomes a game of music chairs to figure out which one works and which are broken.

My chair at home eventually failed too, and for a while I thought I had no choice but to buy a new one.

Step 1: Easy Repair and Possibly Get a Free Chair!

This repair is so simple and obvious, so why would I be posting it? Well, because it didn't occur to me until I finally was ready to throw away the chair after 6+ months of frustration with it.

Get a hose clamp and secure it around the post like in the photo. Set the chair to the height you want. You might need more than one clamp depending on the weight of the chair occupant.

Companies discard these cheap chairs regularly, go find yourself a free chair and repair it.

Wait a minute, ... that didn't work after all.

Step 2: Back to Square 1

The pipe clamp alone did not hold. I thought about adding more, but instead decided to go all out to make the repair permanent.

Step 3: Add Structural Support

  1. Cut off the plastic
  2. Measure the length of wood required
  3. Find some paint stirring sticks or equivalent
  4. Find some more hose clamps
  5. Uh-oh, the new hose clamps are too short

Step 4: Final

In order to go around the post you can open up two clamps, join them and make them larger. If you want to trim the excess tail you can cut it them back it out again so the sharp edge is near the screw and not at risk of snagging anything. The remaining slack can be taken up on the other screw of the pair.

Tighten it all down. The wood will split along it's length, but that shouldn't matter. Snug the clamps nicely.

You can either replace the plastic trim to hide the repair or tape over it, or do nothing at all.

If this doesn't work I'll come back and update the instructable.

Thanks!