Why you should not buy all your appliances at once
 

For some reason we ended up buying our range, dishwasher, washer dryer all at about the same time, eight years ago.

Well guess what?

That's right.


What a PITA.

Eight years is a pretty piddly lifespan for significant domestic appliances.

They don't make them like they used to.

In America, you mean?

Planned obsolescence is a science in and of itself.

Remember people used to get toasters repaired? Ha!

When armageddon comes, those who can fix small appliances shall rule the world.

I feel your pain.

I got a new stormdoor. You wouldn't think something like that would wipe a person out financially for two months, but it did.

I'm creating amazing meals of pinto beans and rice and when those run out it's Ramen.

on the upside, I should lose weight!!

It doesn't matter what I buy or when I buy it...it's gonna be broken. Something about it will be effed up.

Every. Single. Time.

either that or the install guy will scratch his head and say, "I've never seen anything like THAT before....I'll have to call in another guy."

when your plumbing was put in in 1957 it tends to confuse the regular plumbers and they have to call in the Olde Guye Who Knoweth These Things. And he's usually a grumpy old cuss who gets pissed off that he's been called in. All he wants to do is retire, but oh no, he has to show these young guys the way of the ancient order of plumbers. He hates it but he does it for the good of the guild.

I think they do.

They used to make lots of cheap crappy stuff with a few good things here and there. By natural selection, the crappy ones are no longer with us, and we get this false sense of old products being good because all the old things we have left are good quality.

I think they make things exactly like they used to. The bastards.

Exactly. Sigh...

1) Oil change...your something pan is tricky, it's going to take a lot longer, if we can do it at all.
2) New tires...we don't have a 'key' for these tires and there isn't one in your car anywhere
3) We can't turn your gas back on until you have a plumber (a plumber?) fix the doohickey and the whatchamacallit and test it to 5 tons of pressure.
4) That new phone you just got? The sim card is bad. Please to give us 5 bucks. Then don't expect the interwebz to work even though your Droid 2 and it's predecessor never, NEVER, had any connection issues
5) Those caps you spent a couple grand on will break within a week and we'll rip them out of your mouth and put in new ones.
6) You can't buy a replacement lint screen grate cover uppy thingy unless you know your stackable washer/dryer model number. That's on the back. Oh, the previous owners built walls around it? Guess you'll need help with that.

There's more but I can't think of them right now.

Sorry foot for the hijack.

Yeah. I used to think along those lines, but you really can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

The old appliances could be repaired, but new ones mostly can't. They are not designed to be. Especially controls. You have to replace the entire computerized control panel if there is a problem, and that costs more than a new machine.

That's why it's 'planned' obsolescence. If we could harness all the energy it takes for them to make stuff no one can fix, we'd power the planet. ;)

fix your computer?

hahhahahhahahhahahhahahhahaah!

it's cheaper to BUY a new one!


(you idiot!- said under the geek's breath)

With the dishwasher, the racks are shot (we're on our second round of racks) the spinner water jet thingy whose name I don't recall is all chalky. Replacing all the needed interior giblets will cost about 50% of the price of a new machine.

The range and the gas dryer both need new igniter dinguses, and the washing machine has either a bearing problem or a cracked spider.

DIY

Well, clearly you already know the drill here.

My internal spinner/washer plumbing crapola was also in need of cleaning. It is possible, it's kind of tedious. In my case, it wasn't hard water deposits that were clogging it up, but food schmutz and broken glass. Same effect though and cleaning them made a big difference. Cost, zero.

Racks probably have to be replaced, I don't know how I'd "fix" them. The washing/spinner giblets are possibly cleanable, so you could realize some savings there, but you pay in labor and language. Getting in there to remove is possible, or if not getting in there to do the actual cleaning/coring/scraping/rinsing... like I said, tedious plus contortion grief.

Igniters are actually pretty easy. I've been inside both appliances and have replaced the igniter on my dryer. It's one of those that glows almost white hot before the gasflow starts. It is similar to the one in my furnace pics (poor pics, so sorry. I can reproduce them with greater attention to the photo quality if you like). My oven igniter style is not known--could be piezeoelectric/sparking kind, could be glowplug kind. Not a pilot light though.

As a matter of fact, there's a pic of the gas dryer apparatus around here somewhere already. I'll go find it.

This is trouble--certainly beyond my firsthand experience. I'd probably wind up driving it completely into the ground while I saved for a new-to-me unit.