Is it pooping?

September 10, 2015 8:24 AM

I clean house for a friend every other week. Her office chair, with its standard plastic caster wheels, is leaving chunks of black, sticky goo on the floor. It then, of course, gets rolled through the gunk, repeatedly, and I have a huge mess to scrape up with a butter knife. How do I fix it, make it stop, something, without damaging or replacing the chair? (And if those ARE the only options, please recommend some cheap high-backed office chairs.)
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess to Home & Garden (9 answers total)

Best answer: Have you flipped the chair upside down to feel around all the mechanisms, to see if it's a lubricant in one of the joints, or a piece of plastic that's degrading or some other possibility for the source?
posted by aimedwander at 8:28 AM on September 10, 2015

And in the interim, maybe get one of those plastic protector chair mats to stick under it? They make them for floor and carpet.
posted by postel's law at 8:40 AM on September 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Sounds like chair lubricant and dust. And hand oils. We get on chairs and mouse roller balls.

Chair may be dying.

It's not poop.
posted by tilde at 8:40 AM on September 10, 2015

If fixing it at the source isn't possible, consider a chair mat or cheap low-pile carpet?
posted by Runes at 8:40 AM on September 10, 2015

New casters. There are places that supply replacements. Look for the chair brand and model find a set of new casters/rollers for the chair.
posted by Oyéah at 8:44 AM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: We had the same problem with our office chair. In this case, it turned out the hydraulic post thingy that raises and lowers it was leaking oily fluid. It was a very slow drip, and before I noticed it, the casters were rolling through the droplets and then picking up a bit of dust off the floor, forming a black goo.

My solution was to cap the bottom of the post with a few layers of packing tape, like so. It's worked so far (like six or seven months now).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:01 AM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Very likely hydraulic fluid, yeah. Chair mats are good, but if you get one to put on a bare floor, make sure it doesn't have little spikey bits that are intended to hold it down on carpet that then proceed to make holes in the flooring.

If there's an Ikea near you, they have some reasonable high-backed office chairs. Or just try your local big-box office supply store.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:15 AM on September 10, 2015

I've had this problem and the wheels were literally dissolving. Like, the plastic had started to just... decompose somehow.

At which point yea, you replace the wheels.
posted by emptythought at 11:41 AM on September 10, 2015

Response by poster: It was, indeed, leaking lubricant. I think it was from the connection that let the chair spin - which I've enjoyed as her office assistant, while pondering ways to help her life operate more efficiently. Chair's in the garbage now, replaced with the padded folding variety until a better solution comes around. Thanks y'all.
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess at 6:39 PM on September 19, 2015