How To Remove Hair From Office Chair Wheels?

From a smooth-rolling to tightly jammed, this is what hairs can do to your office chair wheels. They build up fast and are not easy to remove. Also, it is completely unavoidable. Not only hairs, but your chair can also pick up all sorts of strings and fibers that can complicate the problem further.

how to remove strings from home office chairs

How To Remove Hair From Office Chair Wheels?

You can remove hair from your office chair wheels by using your finger, duct tape, clippers, and tweezers, scissors and screwdrivers, fire, soap, and water, or by hiring a cleaning service. It can either be done by removing the wheels from the chair base or in the spot. However, if heat is being used, extra care should be taken to not burn the wheels.

If you want to check the detailed steps of each method mentioned, then read on…

Remove hair from an office chair – Detailed steps

To remove hair from an office chair wheel, first, you need to decide whether you are going to keep the wheels on the chair or pop it out for easy working.

Either way, it will work, however, if you pop it out, working with the wheel will be easier.

However, if you decide to keep it in, then you will not have to deal with the hassle of putting it back on the chair.

So, clearly, one method is not better than the other and it all depends on your preference. Also, some of the techniques that are provided below will not work if you keep the wheels on…

Okay…now that you have decided to keep how to work with the wheels…here are the different methods of cleaning them…

Use your fingers

This may be the most convenient way to get started if you don’t have any tools handy. Just start by wiggling and pulling the hair little by little from the wheel.

However, just a word of caution. The wheels will be dirty and your fingernails and fingers will be covered in that dirt.

After cleaning the wheels make sure to clean your hand thoroughly so that there is no dirt left anymore…

A better way would be to wear gloves to keep the dirt completely out of your fingers.

Also, if you are not dismantling the wheels, you may have to use a small flashlight to see the interior of the wheels for more effective removal of hair.

Otherwise, it will be too dark for you to determine if it has been cleaned or not.

Duct Tape or packing tape

This is also an effective solution when it comes to removing hair from the chair wheels.

Wrap the duct tape or the packing tape around your fingers with the adhesive side facing outside.

Then put your finger on the hair and swiftly start pulling the hair. The adhesive of these tapes is quite strong and the hair will easily stick to it and get removed.

However, after using the tape a couple of times, you may have to change it as the stickiness will get reduced.

Also, do not use scotch tapes as the adhesive is not strong enough and will lose its stickiness immediately once you put it on the hair.

One more thing I want to mention here is that this method is as time-consuming as the previous method. So, if you want to remove the hair fast, you may use either of the below methods.

Clippers/Scissors and Tweezers/Screwdriver

You can remove the hair much easier and faster if you use a clipper and tweezers.

You need to hold the hair with the tweezers and pull it towards yourself. Then use the clipper to trim it off.

After a couple of times, you will be able to pull off the hair completely and if any small hair remains, you will be able to pluck it out with the tweezers.

You can also combine this with the duct tape method.

Just cut the hair into tiny sections with the clipper and tweezers and then use the duct tape to pluck it out easily. In place of tweezers, you can use a screwdriver and in place of the clipper, you can use a pair of scissors.

Use fire

This is a method that will not work if you don’t remove the wheel first from the chair and dismantle it.

Since the inside of the wheels is a tricky spot to reach, without opening it, it will get totally ruined by the fire.

Being said that, if you use this method effectively, this may be the fastest way to get rid of those stuck hairs from the wheels.

Once you have opened the wheel, just light a fire and hold it near the hair for a very short period of time. It will turn the hairs into ashes right away and you will get an almost squeaky clean wheel.

Now what kind of flames you should use?

You can use a lighter that produces the heat but not the flames or you can use a heat gun.

Once you have burned all the hair, just put the wheel under running water and the ashes will be cleaned out.

Pay someone to clean the wheels

This may not be the solution you were expecting. However, imagine your home office has more than 10 chairs. This is a situation that many home entrepreneurs have to deal with. Their team many times works from the office space that they provide and this is more often than not their home.

Now let’s do quick math. Each of the chairs will have 4-5 wheels. So, 10 chairs will altogether have 40-50 wheels.

Cleaning them individually by yourself is a lot of work. Sure, you may ask your teammates to help you out, but that is a waste of resources and time. Whereas, you can hire someone and they will charge around $8-$10 per chair and you will not only have to not deal with the hassle but a lot of your time will be also saved which you can use to improve your own business or work.

Soap And Water

Once you have cleaned the hair, you will find that there is a lot of debris left on the wheels.

Just put the wheels inside some soap and water. This will clean the wheels really well and you will not have to worry about dirty wheels anymore.

Use Lubricant

Once you have cleaned the wheels, make sure to dry them thoroughly. The wheels have metal parts that will get rusted if kept wet.

Once they are completely dry, use some lubricants before you fix them onto the chair again.

However, be careful to not put the lubricant where the wheels meet the floor.

This will make sure that you don’t have to deal with a greasy mess afterward.

You can use those lubricant bottles that have a longer application tube.

How do you open office chair wheels?

Below I’ll show you two methods of opening an office chair wheel.

One is dismantling the wheels in place while the socket remains attached to the chair.

And the other is removing them completely from the chair.

Also, since videos are far better than pictures or steps, below I’m providing you with the follow-along videos.

In-place wheel dismantling

Removing the wheels completely from the chair

How do you reinsert the wheels after cleaning?

Reinserting the wheels after cleaning is no different than what you did the first time.

You have to either push it to enter the tip of the caster wheels into the chair hole or you have to re-screw it back to the chair. This video explains this in detail…

Related Questions

How do you remove hair from plastic wheels?

All the methods that I’ve provided above can be used for any kind of furniture wheels including plastic wheels.

The only safety measure you need to take is when using heat. If you don’t do it properly, you will not only spoil the wheels completely, but you may also damage the furniture if you are cleaning in situ effectively increasing your expense, rather than decreasing it.

How to remove strings from office chairs?

Removing strings can make it roll smoothly again. Also, removing the strings from the office chair wheels is no different than removing hair.

However, one method you cannot use here is removing strings with heat.

Most of the time these will be made from cotton or some similar material. It may take more effort for the fire to light it up. Also, this means more time exposing the wheel to fire.

This can cause all the above mentioned potential damage. So, it is better to not use fire at all with the strings.

Here are some effective ways to remove strings from wheels:

References

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-clean-your-task-chairs-122185

https://bizfluent.com/how-5873569-disassemble-office-chairs.html

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/how-to-clean-office-chair/

https://ask.metafilter.com/43260/Removing-wool-fiber-from-chair-casters

https://www.familyhandyman.com/project/office-chair-repair/

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Madhusree Basu
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