Survey: your approach to securing furniture and TVs

If you’re a member of our Voice Your Choice group, you may have already received an invite to complete this survey.

If not, we’d like to understand your approach to securing furniture and TVs to prevent them from tipping over. Please share your thoughts here:

https://www.voiceyourchoice.com.au/c/r/topplingfurniture

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Have done the survey.

My parents recently bought a 49 inch Sony TV znd it came with an anti-tipping strap which was fitted to the TV and attached to the back of the TV table.

This was the first product I have seen with such straps included.

The instructions were also clear about its use.

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I’ve just done it too. As I wrote in the comments, I’m surprised the survey is even necessary.

Our TV is wall mounted, and the rest of our (all old) furniture has close to zero chance of falling over, no matter how hard you crashed into it.
Have modern furniture designers gone mad and started producing unstable products that easily tip over?

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Could be…we predominately have old timber furniture which is heavy, sturdy and usually has a low centre of gravity. Newer furniture is often made from manufactured composite boards to make them lighter (for both handling and shipping), for ease of machining, for a uniform and known quality etc. The downside is when light and potentially more flimsy (esp. if flat packed and maybe not put together well by the consumer), they are not planted as well on the floor and often have higher centre of gravity.

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No, with the exception of tech products nearly all furniture has been around for hundreds of years in some form or other. The materials may be different but not the geometry.

Is this really a big risk or have we just seen a couple of cases of negligent /unlucky parents in the news and so it has become a ‘thing’?

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MDF and particle board are typically in the same density range as solid timbers. Some composites are lighter than some timbers but the reverse is also true, especially if looking at cheaper solid timber furniture that is often made of softwood like pine that is fairly low density.

The reasons for its use are as you say uniformity and ease of manufacture but also price. In particular for panels composites are readily available, cheaper and more stable re changes in humidity where for timber the converse of those characteristics. The availability of composite panels allows for simpler joining than solid timber. There is a whole family of fasteners for such panels including the famous Ikea systems that permit home assembly without glue in most cases.

Not really. For furniture that is made of the same stock throughout the centre of gravity depends on the geometry of the structure not its density. So if you had a tallboy made of pine (500g/l) and one of the same design and thickness made of hardwood (800g/l) the latter would weigh 60% more and be stronger, more durable and stiffer but its CoG would be in exactly the same place in the structure.

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