I have a number of ageing white plastic sunloungers that have seen more bottoms than a Central Line carriage and have a few cracks in them.
Before I take them up to the déchèterie, has anyone found an adhesive that works on tired, sun bleached ABS plastic?
If possible, I’d like to avoid paying tourist season prices to replace them at the moment and wait for a winter deal.
no expert but isn’t it the case that the plastic becomes brittle over time and thus virtually unrepairable?
When we were guardiens at a holiday let, this was a constant and the only resolution was to replace - well, the rental was over 1k€/week so expected!
The other consideration of course is how much it will cost you if someone “misbehaves” on the compromised ones and injures themselves requiring a hospital or medical intervention…
The teak ones are of course more expensive but since they can be refurbished, they can outlast their plastic counterparts.
We used to have white plastic ones, they were always getting broken and impossible to repair (thermosetting plastic). A brand new one was once used as a trampoline until the “child” put his foot through it. Trip to urgences , stitches, bandages, no more pool or pocket money as I made the guests pay for a new one (and I’d already spoken to them about it).
Now have anthracite coloured aluminium and fabric , looks better and lasts much longer (but don’t get them in white)
Do they get very hot? (I am buying 2 tomorrow)
The people using them do when and if the sun shines🌞, but I don’t think the actual sunloungers do, certainly not the fabric.
Thanks all. I suspected that they were FUBAR’d and will look to replace them.
We found with the basic alu and fabric ones that the seams went (especially if any of your guests are on the large side). The ones where they have laced rivets down the side are much better as you can replace it all.
What we have done with elderly, but not yet dead, sun loungers is sew a canvas sock/open ended pillow case that we slide over the lounger. Gets another year or two out of them!
We have always found that in France it is better to buy when you see it. If it has been especially popular and becomes out f stock, you have had it. There seems to be no idea that because an item was popular they could sell more.
Also they will not be selling things ‘Out of Season’ it just doesn’t happen.
The suns UV makes the plastic brittle as the plasticer is removed. I have plastic welded a couple with mediocre success. IMO, buy wooden ones, do they really cost more over the 2 or 3 purchases of plastic? Then you can poor yourself a little tipple to celebrate not adding the plastic to the earths burgeoning issue.
We’ve had cheap plastic garden chairs of various sorts, bought in France… and they’ve worked well enough… then collapsed… fair enough…
but we have 2 sturdy grey plastic, adjustable recliners, bought in UK during a sale at our local Texas store… in the 1970’s.
These chairs are still going strong…
and we also brought over some well-used metal chairs and a couple of tables (also bought in the Sales…)
They, too, are still going strong out on the patios … although a respray might be an idea one of these days.
Should mention the cheap wooden benches from Mr Bricolage over the years. Excellent value at sale time…
yes, they can be expensive 
I’ll get my 
I spotted 1 mistake due to auto correct but missed that 
We brought over a quality plastic garden bench…guaranteed for 40 years !
Some years ago, I had the gendarmes in fits when I complained that it had been stolen (along with the garden gate…).
As I explained… but it hasn’t lasted 40 years… it’s gone after only 30…
The type of plastic they use goes brittle when exposed to UV light. So, in sunnier climes, they don’t last long. They can also be extremely dangerous when brittle, as they can suddenly and catastrophically fail at any time, creating very sharp shards that can do serious damage to flesh 
. Bottom line is get rid of them.
Edit: @Corona got there just before me.
Hopefully I’ll let you know. We have one that was abused last year resulting in a crack and it is a really good quality chair so I am going to give it a go. TBH I don’t think plastic “welding” will do it and thought I would have a go at fibreglass on the underside and then a little plastic cement in the cracked bit to make the join.
And your experience to make such a comment, not being funny, just you may have technical real world reasons for saying that. I have experience of plastic welding from welding pool liners and flooring to various repair jobs with my Leister equipment.
Glass fibre wont flex as much as the plastic so may well fail.
Mmmnn. Tell the truth I hadn’t given it a huge amount of thought, and my comment about plastic welding was referring to the normal sort using products available from the typical DIY outlet. I know nothing about the equipment you mention so can’t comment (and hence the inverted commas).
I think I could live with the non-flexing aspect of fibreglass, as my first thought was to paste some matting underneath and build it up to make a fairly solid base under the cracked part and out of sight. My biggest concern was less the lack of flex and more whether the resin would bond effectively enough with the plastic, otherwise it would just drop off over time.
But you’ve made me think. 4 years ago I had a crack on part of the vane on my pool system and discovered that I couldn’t source a replacement vane, or at least not at a cost that made it viable (not much less than replacing the whole filter system). I asked around and everyone told me that repairing the crack was an impossibility due to the pressures involved – I even discussed it with a heating engineer I know who cured his own heart and he confirmed it was a non-starter (google Tal Golesworthy for an incredible story).
Undeterred, I thought I would give it a shot and bought a couple of packs of repair tape from the DIY stores – the type that self sets on exposure to air once opened, giving maybe 20 minutes to position it. It is still going strong today without any leaks whatsoever, long after I had expected to replace the system. Now I am wondering about that instead of conventional fibreglass – it is even a nice bright white!
Had a laugh at a BBQ on the foreshore at my boatyard, back-along. We had a bonfire based on an old wooden motor boat that had been ashore for many years, used as a bothy by the old chap who mowed the paddock next door.
When I took over the paddock we craned the m/boat onto the ‘beach’, filled it full of all the rubbish knocking about the yard - half empty tins of paint [lots of those], scraps of timber, oily rags.
The result was like Up Helli Aa, in Shetland.
We were all sat round this great blaze in an up-wind arc, getting tanked. It was extremely hot. Of a sudden, the plastic garden chair of the person on one end went soggy in the heat, the legs sagged sideways and we all went down, slowly, one after the other like dominoes, as the legs of our chairs went too.
How we laughed!
We had disposed of a load of outdated flares in this fire. What we did not do was loose them off into the sky. But one guy did - a red parachute flare - the Big One. Visual equivalent of SOS/999.
MoD Plod at the HM Dockyard came racing up the river. They were Very Cross with yer man.
Yes thats about the level for the pool industry. I have successfully glued, welded, and generally repaired parts for people over the years. There are some amazing polymer that can stick some flexible PVC to a point you cannot pull them apart. Could be useful for chair repairs but 1 tube costs about the same as a lower value sun lounger.
