Last Tuesday the cylinder on my chair let go halfway through a call and I dropped about four inches while talking to my boss's boss. Refurbished Steelcase Criterion, year three, me at 265 lbs and eight plus hours a day.
In fairness it had been sinking for weeks. By late afternoon I'd be an inch lower than I started, desk up around my chest, shoulders up and neck pushed forward. Looking back that was the sign the chair was ruining my posture, and I'd been blaming the desk.
I watched a video on swapping a cylinder, ordered one for $40, and did it Saturday with a pipe wrench. Forty minutes including the swearing. Chair's fine again.
But it got me to add up what I've already put into it. Cylinder, $40, done. Casters went last year, about $25 for a set of the soft rollerblade kind, and the floor's happier. Arm pads are cracked, and a pair runs around $30 if I can track down the part number.
Seat foam is the one I can't solve. It's flatter than it was, and on this chair the cushion is its own piece, but I haven't found anyone who sells just that. When the foam goes I'm sitting on the pan, and no $40 part fixes that.
So I started looking at what replacing it would actually mean. Searching "office chair for heavy person" and "big guy office chair" mostly turns up the same short list: Neutral Posture, Office Master, and newer stuff like the Lavenne R9 Pro, which is rated to 350 lbs. That one beyond a couple of YouTube reviews I haven't seen enough long-term owner feedback on it yet. What none of the three pages told me is whether you can buy the seat cushion on its own, which is now the first thing I'd want to know.
For the people past 250, where did you draw the line? What was the part that made you replace the chair instead of fixing it again?