Well, here comes refrigerator #4 since we moved to the country in 2012. That's one reason I've not posted for the month of May. We had a dryer die, too, but that's not the issue here. That dryer was past peak at about age 15. The dryer I bought in December for our rental property? When I registered the warranty, the woman at Whirlpool advised me that she'd just been to a seminar on their newest models.
"Expect three to five years, if you take good care of it."
This is American madness. If our would-be King had not gutted our Consumer-Protection Agency, dealing with this new planned obsolescence should have been high on their list of priorities.
When I took a half-ton of steel pulled out of our woods to the scrap yard recently, I saw about 100 new dryers, washers, dishwashers, and refrigerators thrown onto the scrap pile. When I asked around the answer I got was "damaged shipping container." Even if these new devices last a few years, give them to Habitat for Humanity. They still had dealer labels attached. Easier to write off the loss, I guess. To me that's immoral.
It was not always this wasteful. To be honest, the original Samsung did not fail (though the French doors were extraordinarily flimsy and I had to repair them a few times). A lightning strike took it out. The no-frills Maytag (oh, repairman of legend, where are you?) died all on its own. The freezer worked, though I had to repair the silly ice-maker, but the cooler below stopped working.
So we bought an even less frilly GE three years ago. I used ice-trays. The shelf-brackets (cheap plastic) broke over time, and I rigged repairs. Then water began to collect in the unit's floor. I've done all the things that service experts recommend: clearing the drain tube, checking the cooling coils for ice buildup, tilting the unit so it's higher in front, as this helps with draining into the bottom of the unit, where water evaporates in a pan. I found the door seal torn, so I replaced that. No dice.
This sort of refrigerator is a simple machine. Anyone with basic skills can make basic repairs, as I found when I downloaded a parts diagram.
I was about to get a new evaporator coil for the freezer, an easy replacement for a DIYer and about $150, until I realized for for $1000 more (I have some credit on my Lowes account and July 4 sales are coming) we could get a low-end Bosch, build like a from World War II. It has an ice-maker. Irony? That's about what we paid for the failing GE.
When I talked to folks in the business the consensus was "expect at least 10-15 years, maybe more) out of the Bosch brand." Only Subzero lasts longer, but we don't have $10K or more for a refrigerator. I shopped around for deals and found one at Lowes. Come July 4, I'll pull out my %5 off card, use up the credit on our account, and have a Bosch installed for the price of our dreadful GE or even worse Maytag predecessor. And yes, we'll pony up for an extended warranty at the end of the first year which we get for free.
Our 2012 basic-model Bosch dishwasher is going strong, but I'm planning for a whole-house water filter system to keep calcification from well water from clogging up our appliances that use water. Folks in the business advised I consider that, too.
Onward. I will never own a "smart appliance" beyond the home-security system I installed. I don't need a refrigerator to tell me when I need to buy milk. I just want something that may work into my 80s. That's right around the darned corner.
Creative-Commons Image: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=22055
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