I’ve just moved my bookcases around in my study. Because they are quite over-loaded I have been worried they might topple so I stuck a small batten about a cm thick under the front edge. That seems to have shifted their centre of gravity back towards the wall so that a casual shove won’t budge them, but they don’t look out of skew. But is it enough?
I don’t live in an earthquake prone are so don’t have a body of homespun wisdom on this. If I really wanted to secure my overloaded book cases and the one I use as a display stand for a hypothetical earthquake or toddler climbing attack, what should I do?
Do I, for example, bolt them to the wall, or is leaving them free safer? I’ve heard of ‘earthquake adhesive’ but this seems to be a version of Blu-Tac.
I do live in an earthquake prone area, and around here it’s well understood that you should secure bookcases to the wall. In the 1987 Loma Prieta quake my (unsecured) bookshelf fell and made quite a mess, although there fortunately wasn’t much breakable on it at the time. There are commercial products for this purpose, called “earthquake straps”. Many of them don’t seem strong enough to me, so I use an angle iron screwed into the top of the shelf and into a wall stud, but that may be overkill; most of the straps are probably fine. I wouldn’t trust putty or shims at all.
Hot water heaters, for example, are strapped to the wall, by law. Is that the building code everywhere (in the United States anyway), or just in earthquake-prone regions?
I think, if your hot water heater is strapped to the wall, your bookshelves should be too, just as a rule of thumb. It wouldn’t be overkill.
I’m pretty sure the electric hot water heater in my parents’ Connecticut basement is not strapped to the wall. (FYI, it’s not really an earthquake-prone region of the country.)
Just to be clear, my “overkill” comment was in regards to using an angle iron rather than a commercial earthquake strap. Around here is it IMHO absolutely required to secure tall bookshelves to the wall in some way. I’d probably do this even if I moved to another area, since there is no place on earth that has zero risk of earthquake, and no place that has zero risk of toddlers.
In Anchorage, I fastened mine to the wall using a piece of 1x2 toggle-bolted to the wall, with angle brackets screwed into both it and to the top of the book cases. I need to do something here, also. It won’t keep the books and objects from flying around the room in a serious earthquake, but that’s not the reason for doing this. The goal should actually be to keep any bookcase from falling into your path and blocking your route to the outside.
Some IKEA bookshelves actually come with such a strap, like a very narrow one I have that’s quite tall and specifically for CDs and DVDs, and not very stable on its own.
For bookshelves I would use one or two straps for each one with washers, screwed into the wall studs. Or else, as mentioned, small 90° brackets, provided the bookcases are tall enough that the brackets aren’t visible.
Earthquakes, toddlers, and large dogs are all potential hazards. My big dog never toppled a bookshelf, but when he was younger he did enjoy stealing books and gnawing on the spines. I took advantage of IKEA’s modular approach and added some accessories to a set of really nice medium-oak bookshelves: wooden doors at the bottom, except for one in which I kept my rare book collection where I added full-length tempered glass doors.
I don’t know how helpful it is in an earthquake, but all of my bookcases are tied to the wall using nylon straps similar to ones linked above. I’ve been careful to fasten them into the wall with 2" cabinet screws to prevent my children from being killed by falling book cases. Anything over 4’ tall gets tied to the wall in this fashion.
We long lived close to the San Andreas Fault; we now reside in an area with no historic quake damage but our precautions die hard. The forty-odd tall bookcases and cabinets in our place, mainly barristers or Ikea Billy units with glass doors, are all strapped to wall stringers. Ikea supplied enough nylon web straps for all. Neither pets nor grandkids can dislodge them.
When I was a kid living in Whittier, I seem to recall the bookshelves in the school library had a strand of wire across each shelf, to keep the books from sliding off during an earthquake. They were positioned such that you could tilt the book over the wire to get it out. They’d look kind of unsightly in a home, though.
This would be in addition to securing the bookshelf itself to the wall.
In Japan, bookshelves are generally bolted to the wall (e.g. with angle bracket at the top of the bookshelf), or secured to the ceiling with tension rods.
I have several bookcases and use either an angle bracket or strap. Keep in mind it does not take much to get a heavy bookcase to start tilting, so even a flimsy-looking strap, when properly installed, can do the job. If you can find a stud the angle bracket is better IMHO, but the idea is to prevent the bookcase from starting to tilt. I don’t think I’d trust a shim, tho.