JayMcB
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- Aug 8, 2011
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A check of the pantry this weekend....I bought the 'heavy duty' plastic shelves from Home Depot years ago. Some came from my last house, so some date from before 2010. I have added more units as storage has expanded.
The instruction manual at the time of purchase said the 18" wide shelves could hold up to 150 pounds per shelf, (distributed evenly), and the 24" wide ones up to 200 pounds distributed evenly as well. I picked plastic at the time for corrosion resistance. Bad call.
Those weight claims are a demonstrable lie.
I was careful to stay under 125 on the 18" and 175 on the 24" ones, and I still had a catastrophic failure, where the upright plastic pipe between the bottom and next up shelf collapsed (bent) where it went into the horizontal shelf. The falling cases and cans took out 2 other shelving units in a domino effect. Even the remaining loaded shelves all have evident sag, and one other unit has a pronounced lean. I've tied it so it won't crash down, but it looks like it's time for new shelving...this time in metal.
What a damn mess.
Lost some (glass) canned food to breakage, lost some vacuum dry canned mason jars also to breakage, and there's rice, beans, sugar, tomato and canned bacon all over the floor. I can't even sweep it up and feed it to the chickens - because of broken glass. A whole bunch of metal cans are dented from the tip over. They can't go back to long term storage, but at least that's people/dog/chicken food.
It also screwed up my FIFO stacks, so now they've got to be hand date reviewed before being re-stacked. Ugh.
Check your shelves. The food you save could be your own
The instruction manual at the time of purchase said the 18" wide shelves could hold up to 150 pounds per shelf, (distributed evenly), and the 24" wide ones up to 200 pounds distributed evenly as well. I picked plastic at the time for corrosion resistance. Bad call.
Those weight claims are a demonstrable lie.
I was careful to stay under 125 on the 18" and 175 on the 24" ones, and I still had a catastrophic failure, where the upright plastic pipe between the bottom and next up shelf collapsed (bent) where it went into the horizontal shelf. The falling cases and cans took out 2 other shelving units in a domino effect. Even the remaining loaded shelves all have evident sag, and one other unit has a pronounced lean. I've tied it so it won't crash down, but it looks like it's time for new shelving...this time in metal.
What a damn mess.
Lost some (glass) canned food to breakage, lost some vacuum dry canned mason jars also to breakage, and there's rice, beans, sugar, tomato and canned bacon all over the floor. I can't even sweep it up and feed it to the chickens - because of broken glass. A whole bunch of metal cans are dented from the tip over. They can't go back to long term storage, but at least that's people/dog/chicken food.
It also screwed up my FIFO stacks, so now they've got to be hand date reviewed before being re-stacked. Ugh.
Check your shelves. The food you save could be your own
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