Goodbye non-KISS appliances

https://willbush.dev/blog/complex-appliances/

by willbush • 2 years ago

286 490 2 years ago

Kluggy3• 2 years ago

We have a fancy Samsung fridge with display. I was livid the first day I woke up and entered the kitchen and there was a full screen ad on the display greeting me pre-coffee.

I vowed to never buy another fancy appliance again and took it off the WiFi network.

zx8080• 2 years ago

I wonder would disabling a network raises its chances to need some repairs?

willi59549879• 2 years ago

i don't understand why people buy smart devices. with anything smart i can't know what exactly the device is doing. plus the software will most likely stop being supported. by then it is just a potential tool to being hacked

Kluggy3• 2 years ago

My wife really wanted the live calendar display on the fridge, which was useful.

It was on an isolated WiFi network so it couldn’t communicate with any other devices in the house, but I didn’t count on ads being served directly on a $3000 device.

spdustin• 2 years ago

I just replaced the condenser fan (was squealing) and the evaporator defrost heater (it wasn't working at all, leading to the coils icing over) on my 20-year-old GE fridge. I threw in some SwitchBot BLE temp sensors that I monitor with Home Assistant, with alerts set to fire if it can't hold temperature or if the defrost cycle doesn't seem to be working, as measured by the swing between the "pre-chill" before defroster heater kicks on, and the temperature/humidity rise as it works.

$40 in parts rescued a fridge that my subdivision neighbors each traded up years ago the first time theirs started acting up. I already had the BLE sensors.

Runs like a champ, and remains free of an IP address.

ljf3• 2 years ago

I cannot speak for that fridge as I don't know the energy usage. But the sad fact is that often buying a brand new machine will pay for itself in only 2 or 3 years over a 'free' older fridge or freezer (at least here in the UK).

I have a 'keezer' - a chest freezer I run at fridge temps to store and serve homebrew beer.

Buying a new A+ rated chest freezer cost me £199 but only costs £35 a year to run. A friend scored a free 15 yo freezer from Facebook and it costs just under £100 a year to run. So he saved £200, but now is down £65 a year. It won't take long for my keezer to be significantly cheaper over a 5 year horizon.

I hate to see old tech wasted, but the energy and cost savings can be significant.

userbinator4• 2 years ago

Did he clean the condenser and replace the door seal? Dirty/clogged condensers and leaky door seals have a huge effect on efficiency.

Also, if his is not a chest freezer, that's another big difference --- a chest freezer is inherently better if opened often, since the cold air stays at the bottom, whereas in an upright one, it spills out.

TuringNYC• 2 years ago

I got an eye opener when a fridge with a 10yr parts warranty came with a $2100 labor bill to actually install the broken condensor. I'm not sure why the condensor would be built in such a way that swapping one out can cost $2100...but it was cheaper to purchase another fridge, this time with a top of the line parts and labor warranty

This infuriated me greatly because of the waste, not one of money, but for the environment. I considered paying the $2100 just to avoid the environmental waste, but realized this would probably be only one in a line of upcoming repairs.

cranium• 2 years ago

At first, I thought "Wow, this guy knows a bunch about fridges!" but then I realized it's not by choice. I like not having to know anything about my fridge except basic maintenance, it feels like a gift now.

Modified30192• 2 years ago

Late last year over the span of two months I got the privilege of learning how to diagnose and repair problems with my water heater (bad flame sensor), HVAC (feather/cruft blocking a tube), and oven (bottom element burned out).

While I’m glad enough to save the money, definitely not eager to learn how to fix the fridge too.

daxfohl• 2 years ago

Yeah the figuring it out part feels good sometimes, but since it's rarely the same thing that goes wrong each time then the learning doesn't actually help much. Hence the repair man who supposedly does stuff like this all day frequently not finding the root cause.

Or if it is the same thing each time, that's equally frustrating.

mlrtime8• 2 years ago

Well it kind of is by choice. Unless the author enjoys this type of work he could have easily bought a no-feature fridge that lasts for 10-15 years.

willbush5• 2 years ago

It was definitely a mistake. I had store credit to use and felt like using it all, but should of known better. FWIW I have a no-feature fridge now.

msadowski• 2 years ago

I’m about to buy all the appliances to a new place in Europe and could use some more horror stories and learn which brands to avoid. So far I’ve been told to stay away from Samsung ovens. Anyone has any regrets on appliances?

Arbortheus• 2 years ago

If you can afford it, get Miele or specifically the Bosch models that are made in Germany (many lower-end Bosch models are contracted out to e.g. Turkey, and not quite as good).

gambiting• 2 years ago

Exactly - Miele, or Bosch Series 6 or 8 are usually made in Germany with longer warranty. And Siemens(which is just rebranded bosch nowadays, usually with even better finish and longer warranty).

polskibus• 2 years ago

Siemens is same as Bosch, incl factories. But yeah look whether an appliance was made in EU or outside.

pcammeraat• 2 years ago

Second vote for Miele. They work for decades.

Freak_NL• 2 years ago

Be wary though. Miele started fucking up their value proposition too. Parts may no longer be sold by repairfolk not associated with Miele. That's usually the start of the slide down the quality and repairability scale.

See this message from an independent parts seller:

https://spares2repair.co.uk/search-results?main_page=advance...

Miele have unfortunately changed their sales policy in UK and Europe.
This applies to all online spare parts retailers including Miele directly.
Most Genuine spare parts are now only to be available to repair engineers and not directly to the public.
Unfortunately we have had to remove thousands of parts from your view.
Hopefully Miele will change their sales policy again in the future.

gingerlime• 2 years ago

Yes and no. First it should be a German Miele. But in general, new Mieles aren’t as good as old ones. Across the board. Washers, dryers, dishwashers. The only benefit they offer is energy efficiency (at least based on brochures). If I had to buy again, I would opt for second hand refurbished Miele/Bosch/Siemens with at least 10 years of age. Where I live there are lots of second hand shops that even offer warranty.

Our fridge however is Japanese Panasonic. Not a common choice in Europe but it’s been great so far. Zero maintenance. No frost. Has some minimal digital control but we don’t touch it. YMMV.

pigeonhole123• 2 years ago

Liebherr has been good to me. They also make industrial machinery so maybe that culture transfers over internally in the company.

ce42• 2 years ago

Seconded. No-Frost freezer compartments since the 80's i think and they are manufactured in Germany actually. Miele's fridges are also whitelabeled Liebherrs

Rapzid• 2 years ago

My GE dishwasher made it about 4 years and my range hood just under 6(needs a new blower due to spun bearing now and it was never sealed well). Garbage.

But the first year service rate for even high end dishwashers is very high(over 10%!). Got a Bosch and got lucky so far but it still feels like luck..

billti• 2 years ago

Likewise. GE dishwasher got a fault after a couple years and spewed water everywhere. Got a Bosch and never had a problem in about 8 years now. It cleans way better too. Simple, reliable, looks and works great.

josho• 2 years ago

I have a 10 year old Bosch. A part recently failed. I repaired it myself. During the repair I noticed that this thing was built for repairability. The parts manual is available online. The company seems to take an interest in quality.

I just can’t say the same over the other appliance brands in my house.

blondin• 2 years ago

stay away from samsung fridges too.

lozenge• 2 years ago

I'm not so sure about Miele. I looked at their washer dryers recently and there were a lot of complaints about TwinDos. I would say keep it simple and don't extend to features you wouldn't normally expect just because a manufacturer is offering it.

stephen_g• 2 years ago

I've been happy with my Electrolux fridge (it's only seven years old but literally zero maintenance in that time and it's still working like a champ), which I bought because my parents were happy with theirs which they'd bought five or six years before I got mine. Theirs is still going well too.

My washing machine is a Bosch series 8 which has also been really good, same age, no problems.

b112• 2 years ago

One thing to be wary of (sorry to muddy the waters), is that some brands sell their name in some regions.

So a tfal pan is legit in Europe, but a Chinese cheap knockoff in Canada, the brand name sold to Canadian Tire.

dzikimarian• 2 years ago

Indeed Samsung oven I own had issue with control knob. Samsung fridge and induction hob are fine for 5 years or so.

spockz• 2 years ago

We are actually quite happy with our Samsung American style fridge. It is about the last model before they went all the way with integrated lcd and wifi etc. It is also pretty energy efficient for a double door fridge/freezer.

Bosch, Siemens, Neff, is all the same brand underneath and there is little difference between the models across years. Just get something that is offline.

Tade0• 2 years ago

I would stay away not necessarily from specific brands, but models and even variants of models.

Case in point: factories producing my mother's washing machine model were located in three different countries. Depending on the country of origin, one important part would be either integrated with a few others or not. In the former case repairs were not worth the cost.

Only way to tell if your particular machine would be repairable was to check the country of origin.

Modified30192• 2 years ago

One useful resource for gathering experiences is r/BuyItForLife/, the term is useful for finding other places of discussion as well.

encom• 2 years ago

Reddit is the most astroturfed website on the planet. Be extremely critical of anything you read there. A sub like that is especially fertile.

jabits• 2 years ago

We bought all new appliances for a kitchen remodel about 1.5 years ago, everything pretty nice, mostly LG. Even after this time I am still in love with the LG fridge, glass door, two kinds of ice, middle drawer chill or freeze. It’s pricey but I’ve never marveled over an appliance this much.

wirrbel• 2 years ago

Glass door? How much energy does it need?

jgrahamc• 2 years ago

I have had Miele appliances forever and have been very happy with them. My current fridge, dishwasher and dryer are both almost 20 years old. The fridge has never had anything wrong with it, nor has the dishwasher, the dryer needed a new thermostat which I replaced myself. I opted for the simplest models that Miele make.

iforgotpassword2• 2 years ago

Want to add a story from my parents here: they also are diehard Miele fans, and when their dishwasher broke a few years ago, they went Miele again. Unfortunately it broke six months in. The Miele repair tech came in, asked what program they usually run, and they replied they just turn it on and press start. That meant they always run the ECO mode that's taking ages because it's running at low temp and little water.

The repair guy told them that the thing breaking was their own fault since the manual clearly started you need to run one of the other modes every X cycles if you normally do ECO, otherwise all the internal tubes gunk up. They got a rebate on a new one, but they refused to replace it. I'd been done with Miele at that point, but they just bought a new one. How a company known for quality and engineering can't implement a simple logic that the device would automatically use more water/temperature every X runs, or at least show a warning on the display, is beyond me.

Oh, and the new one, according to my parents at least, occasionally just stops in the middle of the washing cycle and they need to restart it. But I wouldn't rule out that this is some sort of user error. Maybe you just shouldn't go with the model that has a dozen buttons and knobs when you're 80. :)

tetris11• 2 years ago

Miele dishwasher, going strong 3 years now

iforgotpassword2• 2 years ago

About 8 years ago I got my kitchen redone and went all in on IKEA, mostly because others had horrible waiting times. Now remember it's 8 years later so I don't know how much their stuff changed over time but here's how my stuff is doing:

Fridge: still working perfectly, light, temp control, auto-defrost, fans. I think the compressor got a bit louder but that's it.

Dishwasher: still working fine, the upper basket (or whatever that's called) and its rails show some wear ie tilting downward when pulled out. Sometimes the drainage pump sounds a little strange, maybe something's stuck in there.

Stove: induction, still working fine. Unfortunately all the models they had available had touch buttons on top, probably to make it appear modern. They don't work when your finger is wet or greasy, and the whole stove turns off when water spills on any of the buttons and it starts beeping like crazy. For some funny reason, the stove stopped making beeping noises on button presses. I guess when you don't have real buttons you want this as some form of feedback that the press registered, but the beep sounded really cheap like a square wave. It still beeps when you turn it on or off, and when there's water on the buttons.

Oven: working apart from the bottom heating element. It broke about 3 to 4 years ago. Never bothered to replace it, just using hot air mode now.

They all look like simple no-bells-and-whistles appliances, but also not sturdy. I think in all cases I picked one of the cheapest options.

Bonus nerd stuff on the stove: when the beeping-on-button-press still worked, very rarely one of two things happened: a) a button press registered, but no beep was emitted. b) a beep was emitted but nothing happened. I was suspecting that there's something going on like two completely independent sets of wires going to all the buttons, one for actual functionality, the other one just for beeps, like it was bolted on later by a different department or even company. Maybe the original design had it just beep on power on/off and they wired this in after the fact.

freetanga2• 2 years ago

Bosch - Siemens and Balay are the same builder with three different brands. Seems many times the core elements are the same. Balay is the cheapest, I think Bosch is their top line.

All 3 are quite good, and knowing this you can try to get more bang for your money.

cfeduke• 2 years ago

I had a Sears Admiral refrigerator that was built in the 90s which recently (three months ago) had the compressor go out. I've had the refrigerator since I purchased the house in 2001 and I have performed zero maintenance on it, so it was no surprise that the... uh... solid dust build up finally wore out the compressor fan. Though my wife and I did purchase a new refrigerator I intend to replace the compressor in the Admiral because >25 years is a good run and I expect the resurrected refrigerator [when I get around to resurrecting it] will outlast the new one.

I've never hooked up water lines for ice makers for my refrigerators, including refrigerators at my other properties. Call it a hunch.

PH95VuimJjqBqy• 2 years ago

I purchased a separate dispenser that takes 5 gallon drums of water. I strongly prefer the extra space over the convenience of water in the fridge door.

Mine's an LG, we've had it for roughly 10 years now and never had a problem with it. But we don't even use the icemaker in it (we have a separate ice maker as well).

imjonse• 2 years ago

Appliance engineers probably have their equivalent of "Kubernetes and SPA used for no good reason at all and now we can't focus on the actual features"

czechdeveloper• 2 years ago

By now, making UI with (by now not completely) SPA frameworks specifically made for that task is just better developer experience. I won't go back to pretty much html string concation via templates. Why do people keep pretending it's better in any way is lost on me.

eggdaft2• 2 years ago

Yeah the backlash against SPAs doesn’t make any sense. Server side rendering is fine for documentation etc. but full applications don’t want to be simulated on a server, client-server makes complete sense.

tazjin• 2 years ago

It's well understood that the reason people drag in these unnecessary frameworks is often because they prioritise their developer experience over the user experience, and you're just proving the point ;)

For what it's worth, the developer experience is also highly subjective.

zelphirkalt2• 2 years ago

Using a traditional templating engine is not treating HTML more as a string than React based frameworks do. Maybe even lass so, because of the separation of concerns. Traditional tenplating engines can separate part of HTML into named components without problem. Check for example Jinja2 or its clones in other languages. There is really no need to treat HTML in a plain PHP string concattenation style. There has not been for decades.

If you want something more structured data, look at sxml (see Racket or Guile). Then implement that in a library and use it in place of the default of most (all?) SPA frameworks.

shepherdjerred• 2 years ago

Astro gets you the best of both: https://astro.build

joquarky• 2 years ago

If you are concatenating strings of HTML, you are basically asking for an injection attack.

There are lightweight frameworks (like knockout) that keep things simple but keep you safe with bindings, without giving up control to a bigger framework.

quickthrower22• 2 years ago

Except the features are more there to sell fridges. The lifestyle of making instant ice for your guests etc.

winrid• 2 years ago

It's more cost cutting and using the same cheap fans, capacitors, relays, etc in the base models as the top-of-the-line models.

Animats• 2 years ago

    An error occurred: API rate limit exceeded for willbush/blog. Sign in to increase the rate limit

Unsure if that is a joke or a real error message.

joatmon-snoo• 2 years ago

Pretty sure it’s a real error message. I believe it’s a comment system implemented by piggybacking onto GitHub issues, and GH API rate limiting can get aggressive fast.

willbush5• 2 years ago

Think I'm just going to disable it. I haven't had a single person use it outside of me to test it.

kmoser3• 2 years ago

My parents have a clothes drier from the 1970s and a fridge from the 1990s. They have needed repairs, but they were infrequent and not so costly as to necessitate buying a new unit.

My A/C is only four years old and the maintenance guy is telling me one of the fans is drawing too much power and will need to be replaced soon. Despite the part being free under warranty, they want $600 to replace it. This seems to be standard in the industry. Same for the capacitor: the part is only $17 but the authorized service companies want several hundred dollars to replace it, a job that should only take 15 minutes. It's almost as if they know they have us over a barrel.

jamiek88• 2 years ago

Anything that doesn’t involve coolant bleeding can easily be done yourself or by a handy pal via the university of YouTube.

rentseekingb2• 2 years ago

1000x this.

I’ve started to learn how to do everything myself via YouTube.

Am I an expert? Heck no. Can I do a dang reasonable job for easily 1/10th the cost? Sure seems to be true.

ljf3• 2 years ago

After about 3 years my washing machine broke - 3 mins on youtube showed me it was likely the carbon brushes - £5 part from ebay. Took 30 mins to fit once they arrived, and I've had to to the do the job twice more, but now approaching 10 years with the same machine still going strong.

rentseekingb2• 2 years ago

This frustrates me to no end.

Nearly every industry feels like a scam now.

Outright lying to customers, over-charging them. Heck, I get it, they’re a business and need to make money. But there are reasonable limits.

beAbU5• 2 years ago

That dryer will probably use a shocking amount of power.

Depending on local power costs a modern compressor dryer will easily pay for itself in a couple of years compared to sticking with the old one.

leoedin2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I did the maths with a heat pump drier and found it would pay for itself in electricity savings in a couple of years. And that was before the cost of electricity in the UK tripled. It uses something like 1/4 of the electricity per load, and because it's unvented all the heat remains in the building envelope.

ProllyInfamous• 2 years ago

Similarly, I just installed a hybrid water heater and it is incredible. My kWH usage for hotwater went from 10% monthly bill to just 3% (and the heat pump tank cools/dehumidifies the basement it's within).

kmoser3• 2 years ago

Are you factoring in the more frequent repair costs incurred when the "smart" features fail and incapacitate the whole device?

beAbU5• 2 years ago

Watch out for survivorship bias.

How many of those old appliances had to break and fail in the first 10 years for these two to survive.

kmoser3• 2 years ago

My appliance repair guy, who repairs appliances all day and has seen it all, told me to hold on to my (relatively old) appliances as long as possible because they are more easily repaired than the newer ones. Sure, it's his job to fix things so he has incentive to repair rather than recommend a replacement (in which he would make $0) but I trust him: when my 20-year-old microwave oven recently died, he said it would be several hundred dollars to fix and would not be worth the money (I agreed).

So yes, many old appliances have broken and were likely not worth repairing, but on average all the evidence points to newer devices being more finicky, easily broken, and harder and more expensive to repair than older, simpler devices. Every engineer worth their salt knows that simpler is usually more reliable.

Tanoc• 2 years ago

I've been lucky enough to live in basically the same place since the '90s with almost all the same neighbours, and when I'm invited into the houses of my older neighbours almost all of them have the same appliances they've had since the early 2000s. Meanwhile if I go into the houses of more recently moved in neighbours or younger neighbours who had to restock their houses when they moved in, often times when I enter into their houses to talk I notice that there's a new appliance every few months, almost all replaced due to poor performance or failure.

I myself have repaired everything from toasters to microwaves in the last few years as things have aged in my house, and it got me a reputation that has encouraged family members to bring things to me to be fixed. There's a stark difference in how things are made post 2010, and the quality only gets worse post 2020. Often times the cost cutting goes so beyond making manufacturability easier that it makes it impossible to use whatever it is for it's intended purpose for more than a few times.

For example older smoke detectors have the boards on legs where the screws go through them, and for high quality ones the legs have threaded brass inserts so that if you tighten things down after replacing the battery you don't have a chance of stripping the threading. Newer ones the boards just float freely inside the case and are held in by snap clips which become brittle after just a couple of years and break easily, meaning you have to glue the board back in after replacing the battery. Key fobs and remotes often suffer the exact same problem of using plastic snap clips which will break the first time you have to pry the body open to replace the CR2032 battery inside. I've had to buy a new car key specifically because of that. Showerheads use soft compound plastics for the flow rings which break down unlike their older rubber variants, not only clogging some of the showerhead's openings but also failing to function as a flow ring and allowing the full force of the pipe's throughput. Freestanding lamps no longer route the cable through the bottom and attach it via a ring inside the body as a double insulator. Instead often times the cable is just glued into a hole in the side, and if you're lucky there's a rubber ring to cap the hole and act as an insulator. I've gotten shocked from cheap metal desk lamps because of this. Clocks these days are just single chips blobbed onto a cheap board with an induction motor powered by a single AAA battery and three plastic gears to move the hands. Most have as severe a drift as minutes per week which gets worse as the batteries lose charge. Old ones used batteries to periodically wind springs under tension or the 60Hz frequency of the electric grid which would move a gear system at a consistent ratio, keeping drift under a few seconds a month.

Survivorship bias may be real, but even cheap garbage from the '90s is far better built than anything I can buy now that isn't hand made.

brodsky• 2 years ago

When we upgraded our appliances, the "smart" or "wifi-enabled" ones were specifically avoided like the plague. "Dumb" appliances - especially fridges, for some reason - are becoming hard to come by, but they do exist. Electrolux, KitchenAid, even LG all make some no-frills models that can save both money and frustration. Hopefully those companies continue serving the "luddite techie" market.

Brian_K_White• 2 years ago

Watch out for the LG "linear compressor", and it's in other brands too like Kenmore I think it was.

Even without brains, new appliances are shit.

krasin• 2 years ago

Related: LG Settles Class-Action Lawsuit Over Refrigerator Compressors, https://www.consumerreports.org/lawsuits-settlements/lg-sett...

arter419• 2 years ago

Yes, I agree. I'm not a luddite per se - heck, I make a living out of making stuff talk to one another on a network. But I don't get the appeal, from a customer standpoint, of having all physical objects talk to you or to the Internet. Like, why?

I get it when it comes to alarm systems. Being able to get a notification when someone breaks in is nice, because the alarm system is mostly doing its job when you're not at home. It makes sense.

What it does not make sense, in my humble opinion, is pretty much everything else. Why do I need voice activated lights, outside of a cool party trick ("hey, I can turn the lights on with my voice")? Why should a vacuum cleaner, even if a robot one, be able to upload a picture of a woman on the toilet to the Internet (which has actually happened)? Why should the fridge talk to you?

Ironically, this kind of stuff might become less and less appealing with remote working. If you're at home anyway, can't you just stand up and look at the fridge or turn that light on?

darreninthenet12• 2 years ago

Fridge/freezer one is handy for temperature and door open alarms

mewpmewp226• 2 years ago

If you have an image of the fridge you could have GPT vision interpret it and offer you recipes or what is missing.

I personally like the idea of smart home things and everything connected. It feels like it opens up so many possibilities or ideas.

Do I need it for survival? No. But I do like the idea and how it triggers my imagination.

AndrewDavis• 2 years ago

Even appliances that aren't internet connected are going down this terrible UX path.

My old washing machine had nobs (dials) you turn. You put the clothes and soap in, close the door and press the button. My preference of type of wash and water temperature were all "saved" by the nob position.

My current washing machine, nob is type of wash, capacitive touch buttons for everything else. Keeping the nob "on" keeps the digital display on and consuming power. And the wash options like temperature, extra rinse etc are all controlled digitally with no memory. Want 60 degrees water? Press the water temperature button 8 times, each with a delay of about 3/4 of a second for it to register before a press works again. It's utterly terrible.

cqqxo4zV46cp3• 2 years ago

I control my lights with my voice practically all the time. It’s easily my primary mode of changing the state of my lights. Whenever I travel it only takes an hour tops after entering a hotel for me to get annoyed by whatever command I’ve yelled out being met with silence.

I say this because maybe it goes to show that different people are different. Maybe someone gets use out of the silly camera that shows them the inside of the fridge. It sounds ridiculous to me, but evidently my lights sound ridiculous to you.

lelandfe• 2 years ago

Why do I need voice activated lights

My parents are getting older. Their knees appreciate being able to tell Siri to turn off the downstairs lights from upstairs.

brabel2• 2 years ago

Why do I need voice activated lights, outside of a cool party trick ("hey, I can turn the lights on with my voice")?

It's actually very convenient :) I hated when I forgot to turn some light off and had to get out of bed just to flip it. And you don't need Internet for that, just a local hub with voice recognition (though most off the shelf stuff does everything it can for you to go with Google/Apple systems, which do need to be connected all the time - besides requiring you to be logged in at all times for no benefit to you, obviously just so they can either sell your data or to ensure you're properly locked in and can deny you service if you somehow get out of line).

My heat pump does require Internet, though. Apparently the firmware must self-update continuously and you can probably be denied warranty if you don't let it do so. But at least there are genuine use cases: it can monitor the electricity prices with 1-day in advance, so it can "plan" the best time to power up and down to save electricity (at least they say it does it)... and it can control the temperature better as the temperature outside goes up and down, knowing it beforehand via weather forecasts. But of course, to actually control the machine via the app requires a paid feature :D no thanks.

EasyMark5• 2 years ago

the only thing I see worth using "smart" appliances on are lighting, thermostat, and security system. Everything else in my experience is extraneous and useless.

naravara4• 2 years ago

The lights make some sense in that you may not want to walk to another corner of your house, or up and down stairs to be able to turn them on or off. Similar functions, like smart locks or blinds or ovens also let you have some peace of mind to make sure you’ve got everything in the On/Off state you need it to be in.

Though personally I think we’re barking up the wrong tree by trying to smarten up every appliance. The objective of having remote control/sensing of all your stuff would be better achieved by having a single robot “butler” that can check on state and interface with everything, but the appliances themselves should be simple and easily controllable. As long as there’s a universal communications standard for all devices to be able to communicate with the “butler” the mechanical interfacing could basically be designed in as accessibility features. That way the software and smart capabilities are all in one package that can be upgraded or modified instead of scattered across a bunch of individual things that are expensive to replace or repair.

I’m basically imagining a drone that runs around the house along a rail track on the ceiling and has a little dongle it can plug into devices to control them like Star Wars droids. Bonus points if the method of control is purely mechanical without needing much computing power in the appliance at all.

The reason this will never happen, of course, is obvious. You’ll never get everyone to retrofit their houses for a robo-rail.

vladvasiliu2• 2 years ago

all make some no-frills models that can save both money and frustration

Actually, those features seem to have become so common that they don't seem to command a price premium anymore. My washing machine was the cheapest that ticked all the boxes I wanted (most importantly size), and it still has some kind of wifi thingy. Ditto for my dishwasher.

They both work perfectly well without any connection to anything, and not once have they even tried to get me to connect them.

For the washing machine, a notification that it's done can be useful. I usually do laundry while I'm either working or playing some game, so 9 out of 10 times I won't hear that it's done and forget to take the clothes out. Now I've taken the habit of setting an alarm to check on it after the estimated time is up.

For the dishwasher, I really don't care. The dishes can stay there until I need them.

ThePowerOfFuet3• 2 years ago

They both work perfectly well without any connection to anything, and not once have they even tried to get me to connect them.

Is there an open Wi-Fi network nearby?

al_borland• 2 years ago

We should also hope they remain cheaper, and companies don’t start selling the “smart” appliances for less with the idea that they can somehow makeup for it on data collection or ongoing upsells and subscriptions.

comboy2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't. Cost to make a device "smart" is much less than $1 in parts, app and infrastructure are not rocket science and even with no evil intentions you get very valuable data on usage, what breaks first, environment, location etc. Seems like a no-brainer.

Those will soon also not require you to connect them to your wifi, NB-IoT both chips and plans cost for businesses are already very good.

Semaphor2• 2 years ago

Is that hyperbole regarding fridges, or is it really that bad in the USA? Here in Germany, the vast majority of fridges are still just fridges.

madaxe_again3• 2 years ago

And they just work. I’ve fridges going back 30 years which have never had so much as a compressor pump fail. Boring under-counter units, fridge/freezer stacked units, etc.

I think the European market is different, in general.

willbush5• 2 years ago

A person over here https://slrpnk.net/comment/4749319 said

The EU just made it so that any new major appliance must be repaired by the maker for 10 years

I'm not sure how true that is, but I set by VPN Dublin, Ireland and did some shopping to see what brands are avaliable.

Lot of interesting brands I ran across:

    BEKO
    BOSCH
    CANDY
    HOOVER
    HOTPOINT
    INDESIT
    LIEBHERR
    MIELE
    NORDMENDE
    NORKO
    POWERPOINT
    SIEMENS
    TCL
    WHIRLPOOL

Really surprising to my that a Bosch / Miele can be had for less than $1000. In the US, it’s hard to find anything less than $3k in those brands. I have seen some places around here sell Beko, but only in white.

qwertox• 2 years ago

I've "smartified" my washing machine by using as smart plug with included power meter. This gives me all the info I want to know about the washing machine and there are no vendors spying on my washing habits.

When the replacement thermostat of my fridge broke I replaced it with an ESP32 with a DS18B20 and a relay, now it posts temperature data to a logging server and the temperature range can be adjusted over WiFi when needed. Here again, I guess if it were really smart, that this would mean that the vendor would place the requirement of me sharing all the data with them so that they then give me a subset of data.

madaxe_again3• 2 years ago

I’ve done the same with my washing machine, and a tiny bit of automation has homeassistant tell me when the laundry is done.

MilaM• 2 years ago

I also avoided smart appliances when replacing an oven and a washing machine recently. I would have considered them, though, if the "smart" part was based on the matter/thread standard. What I don't want, for sure, are appliances that need an internet connection using my Wi-Fi and only work with the manufacturer's app.

mlrtime8• 2 years ago

I'm a little confused about these fridge posts. There are refrigerators that do not have any tech that will last [most likely] longer than you stay in your home.

I've had multiple Subzero basic commodity or commercial refrigerators last 15-20 years with only minor parts replacements which are easily found. Of course these are not cheap, but isn't that what everyone here is asking for? Something made well that lasts a long time?

They don't look fancy at all and nobody even knows it's a Subzero because there are no labels on it and no stainless steel front.

jader2014• 2 years ago

I had never heard of Subzero before this post, and just looked them up.

$10k-$15k for a refrigerator?

I’ve only ever owned fairly “basic” refrigerators (e.g. LG or GE), that are about 1/10 of that cost, and have never had any problems with them going out or even degrading in quality (e.g. 10+ years). Maybe needed an ice maker repair, but that’s about it.

Do people need to spend that kind of money for a refrigerator that lasts?

Maybe if you’re going to be in your home for 30-40 years, but not many people stay in one place long enough to outlive these “basic” refrigerators. And even then, I’d argue that a $1k-$2k refrigerator can still last that long.

(I’m using “basic” in quotes here because I feel like our refrigerators weren’t even the bottom tier — they’re quite large, and have the features we need. But now seeing other brands that cost as much as some vehicles, to some they may seem basic.)

Nifty39294• 2 years ago

People SAY that want well made, simple things. But people will generally not PAY FOR simple, well made things when much cheaper options are available. You and I might, and many others as well. But the vast majority of folks will not pay more for a higher quality, longer lasting item.

Another example is Speed Queen for washers and dryers. They are substantially more expensive and look very plain and even old fashioned. But they are built to last a long time and be repairable. They have a large part of the laundromat market because the laundromat owners do value these qualities. But they have very little of the consumer market, because consumers don't.

Consumers also tend to favor nice-sounding features that are in fact unreliable and frustrating, such as ice makers in the refrigerator compartment.

ensignavenger• 2 years ago

I've never seen these anywhere- where do you get them from?

paganel• 2 years ago

luddite techie" market.

I honestly wonder how big that market has gotten in the last few years, and I’m including software/services in it.

I know I’m definitely part of that market and also that the most technophile people from my list of friends and acquaintances are mostly working in non-tech industries. For example I was very surprised when visiting an acquaintance that works in the media and the first thing he did when he entered the house was to “talk” with Alexa, we have such a device at home but to this day it still is unboxed, hence uninstalled (received it at an IT event).

tlonny2• 2 years ago

I bought the wife a "thermomix" because she was ranting/raving about how great it is. Its a glorified blender with a heating element that cost (at the time) well over a grand.

Its only after I bought it (and the free trial expired) that I discovered that an additional subscription is required to use the integrated "cooking recipe" service that guides you through cooking various dishes - insanely cheeky given how much it cost!

To top it off, I'm constantly nagged to connect the thing to WiFi so it can update god-knows-what. Never. Again.

eutropia• 2 years ago

Vitamix blenders blend hard enough that the friction of the blades in the liquid can bring your soup to a simmer, fwiw.

daeaeae• 2 years ago

I have only bought small things like a kettle since the "smartening" of household items started, and every time it feels like navigating a mine field of planned obscolescence. But I guess it is good motivation to give my current old and trusty appliances more TLC.

dangus• 2 years ago

It sounds more like OP didn’t do research on which brands and models are good/reliable.

On top of that, with scratch and dent, you do get what you pay for at some point. If an appliance is visibly damaged you don’t know what happened to it: could have been dropped, hit with a truck, returned due to problems/abuse, etc. When physical damage is involved you don’t know if it can exacerbate a design weakness, loosen some screws, whatever you might dream up.

I get it, a lot of appliances are cheap shit that aren’t “built like they used to.” But also, nobody twisted OP’s arm to buy a fridge with an LCD touch screen.

Here’s another thing: good, built-to-last-decades appliances exist and just cost a lot because that’s what they cost to produce. We can’t really blame appliance manufacturers for either the decline of American purchasing power and/or the change in consumer preferences toward shopping on price and nothing else.

You can buy a tank of a washing machine like a Speed Queen but you also get into it knowing you’re paying three or four times the cost of an equivalent shit box. And here’s the thing, if the shit box goes for 6 years without repair/replacement and the Speed Queen lasts 20, congratulations, the shit box wins on TCO. On top of that, your money can sit in your bank account or be used for something else instead of being paid up front for the appliance.

It’s the same deal with refrigerators like Sub-Zero. I talked to an appliance technician who told me all the luxury brands are less reliable, but I think the more accurate statement is that customers don’t call for repairs and blow money on labor costs for their cheap refrigerators, they just buy a new one. When you look at Sub-Zero and similar offerings, they mostly eschew gimmicks, often not even bothering with a water dispenser and going with a basic ice machine instead.

They’re not universally good, because there are shit brands in that space too (like Viking), but you’ve got a lot more quality options at that price point.

I think one solution to the situation of disposable goods might be a disposal tax that the manufacturer and customer share half and half. Or, improve warranty laws for product categories that should last longer. Nobody’s going to make a shitty fridge if you make a 10 year warranty mandatory.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

This was my takeaway from the article as well. The author bought a cheap refrigerator, then bought another cheap refrigerator when it broke. He's acting like durability is what he cares about the most, but it sure seems like price is the variable he's optimizing for, with predictable results.

Solortho• 2 years ago

In France, we have a name for French-door fridges, it's American fridges...

ponector• 2 years ago

As French fries, which actually should be Belgian...

fmajid• 2 years ago

Nope: https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/2018/...

NullPrefix3• 2 years ago

I enjoy American food - pizza is my favorite and Chinese would be the next best thing

glandium• 2 years ago

The french in french fries is about the cut (french cut, aka julienne), not the affiliation t a specific country of origin.

Twisell• 2 years ago

It seem even funnier. From my research.

The "side by side" standard US frige is what we call in France American fridge because it has two door and look so oversized and fancy compared to the standard fridge in france.

The US "french-door fridge" take the oversizing a step further by adding a third door on the bottom of the "side by side" design. We don't even have a name for theses fridges as nobody buy theses, so I guess we'd call them big American fridge.

Symmetrically EU "regular fridge" probably don't sell in the US because it's perceived as too small. An thus is probably called small/tiny fridge.

goriloser2• 2 years ago

I wonder if EU fridges are smaller because people buy food more frequently, but in smaller quantities. Because the grocery shops are closer.

bee_rider5• 2 years ago

We do have a thing in the US called a micro fridge. College students will often get one for their dorm rooms.

For the biggest fridge you describe, the extra space is usually a freezer. If you are going to have a freezer anyway, it seems like an overall savings to include it in the fridge. If you don’t have a freezer, you won’t have any icecream, and then is life really worth living?

pimlottc2• 2 years ago

Importantly, in the "side by side" fridge, the two sides are separate compartments; one side is a freezer and the other is the refrigerator.

In the "french door" fridge, the two doors on the top both open to the same compartment, which is the refrigerator. The bottom compartment is a freezer and opens as a drawer.

quickthrower22• 2 years ago

Like the “Vietnam” War

dieulot• 2 years ago

America means “french-door” as in https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/French_door

x86x87• 2 years ago

yup. it's the doors themselves. wr took that to describe the doors on a fridge.

computator2• 2 years ago

the combustion engine and hybrid cars are surprisingly reliable

The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?

smt88• 2 years ago

Cars are highly regulated.

jfim• 2 years ago

There's a lemon laws for cars in many places, where if it breaks too much you can just return it to dealership for a refund. No such thing for appliances, unfortunately.

staticautomatic• 2 years ago

In CA you can use the lemon law for other stuff. I got the cost of a laptop back that way in small claims court.

bryanrasmussen2• 2 years ago

We bought a new stove about 6 years ago, basically had to get induction stove top because that was all that was available. I bought one of the more expensive ones.

That stove top broke after a couple months, but luckily we're in Denmark where the warranty is a year, and when something gets repaired like that it's also under warranty for a year (actually sometimes more). We got that stove top replaced about every 4-6 months for 4 years until finally they did a good enough job that it lasted. The repairman said yeah sometimes it's just like that, ha ha.

No monetary cost but every few months you can't cook for a week.

Luckily I also bought a portable non-induction stove with two plates which we use whenever the main stove has problems.

gmac• 2 years ago

Maybe part of it is that there are few enough models of cars that it’s possible to collect reliability data (and people do), and it’s a big enough purchase (and breaking down is annoying enough) that people pay attention to it?

Ma8ee• 2 years ago

There are fewer car models, and people tend to do more research before buying a car than a fridge. That means that if a model gets a reputation for being unreliable, it actually costs the manufacturer lost sales.

michaelt2• 2 years ago

The reliability of fridges was "Buy it for $300, plug it in, it works continuously for 10 years with no servicing" so the reliability really had nowhere to go but down.

The reliability of cars, on the other hand, used to be pretty awful. Lots of maintenance, regularly needing repair work done - not to mention regular servicing, oil changes and tyre changes. And people replacing their 5-year-old cars because 'old cars just aren't reliable'. So there was a lot of scope for improvement.

torginus• 2 years ago

Cars haven't become more reliable, that's for certain - if you are European, you've encountered your fair set of travesties. Manufacturers, in the pursuit of stringent Euro emission standards, nonsensical regulations, more horsepower, and reduced material and manufacturing costs have put out such a set of scrap-worthy engines. They typically have low displacement, few cylinders, small turbos, exhaust recirculation.

Ford's EcoBoost and Peugeot's Puretech engines come to mind in particular, with the latter being so bad, that they tend to fail well before 100k km, and there's an active investigation going on about it by European Commission.

aartav• 2 years ago

For the most part I agree with this, over engineered feature creep is really just horrible stuff. I never need a fridge with wifi and I absolutely swear that that anything more than auto-off is a waste in a coffee machine.

But I think the "Other appliance anecdotes" part suggests that the author has very different requirements than I do. I grew up without a garbage disposal, but its a huge convenience to have one. Also I've had top loader washing machines that don't have easy access to the trap, gimme easy access to the trap ANY DAY and I don't care how its loaded.

neilv2• 2 years ago

On the garbage disposal, I've heard that water treatment facility managers hate them (or at least one does), because it encourages people to put through food waste.

I've also heard landlords say garbage disposals are a net-negative for maintenance visits: disposal-related problems are more costly than the occasional clog because someone put down something the disposal would've stopped.

Also, in multi-tenant buildings, disposals can be a nightmare. Too many people with varying folk wisdom of what's good to put down it. Some people create blockages for the entire stack or more, which ends up causing powered backflows of nasty wastewater into some units. And then what eventually gets snaked out of the drain, and dragged across their kitchens... mere bleach will never get that sufficiently clean. (Even after 3 of these kitchen-apocalypse episodes, you just can't get some people to understand that they can't keep grinding orange peels in their disposal to freshen the air, even when the rot of previous orange peels in the increasing blockage they created might be the reason they want to freshen the air now.)

I try to tell people that pretty much only water and dish soap should go down the drain, and that one of those few-dollar mesh drain strainers is a great tool to help follow this rule. (Also, a container for collecting most of the grease/oil that would otherwise go down the drain.)

computator2• 2 years ago

garbage disposal ... encourages people to put through food waste

That's like saying bicycles encourage people to ride bicycles. It's supposed to encourage it. That's the literal purpose of a garbage disposal unit: "a device that shreds food waste into pieces small enough—generally less than 2 mm (0.079 in) in diameter—to pass through plumbing."[1]

Some people create blockages for the entire stack or more

I don't know how that could happen since if you put something into a garbage disposal unit that can't be shredded to tiny particles, then it's the garbage disposal unit itself that will get clogged, not the pipes or drains. Whatever gets through the garbage disposal unit is going to be less than 2mm in size, and generally much smaller and liquified. If you're referring to oil or grease buildup in pipes, that is irrelevant to the use of a garbage disposal unit since people can and do pour oil or grease down the drain whether they have a garbage disposal unit or not.

In my opinion, a garbage disposal unit is an under-appreciated and supremely useful kitchen appliance, and extremely environmentally friendly (see the brief Wikipedia explanation[2]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_disposal_unit

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_disposal_unit#Rational...

captainkrtek• 2 years ago

When I bought my house I also asked to keep the old (circa early 2000) appliances. They are stupid simple, reliable, and have no extra features or wifi. Meanwhile the last place I rented had a brand new fridge that broke twice in 6 months..

starkparker• 2 years ago

Bought a dumb white top-freezer Whirlpool fridge 11 years ago (WRT359). No water dispenser, no ice maker, not even a light in the freezer; temperature and airflow controls were just knobs. The freezer drain line ran inside the back panel and was a PITA to clean, and the butter compartment lid squeaked so loudly that it was physically painful, but otherwise it was solid.

Had no issues until the plastic drain pan cracked while moving the fridge to redo the floors. Rather than deal with the repair (a replacement drip tray alone was $120 shipped) we sold it to an appliance flipper and put the money toward a new one. I was bummed, but when the buyer came to haul off the old one he was pleasantly surprised that it had made it a decade mostly intact.

Replaced it with a dumb white top-freezer Whirlpool fridge (WRT318). Both were about the same price, inflation adjusted, when new (~$650 from Lowe's). It was in stock and installed the next day. Only tech "upgrade" in the new fridge is a membrane button to control the fridge temperature instead of a knob.

When my wife wanted a touchscreen in the kitchen so she could queue up Spotify, I got a refurb last-gen Lenovo Duet chromebook/tablet for $120. The tablet back has a strong magnet for the cover that made it perfect for slapping onto the side of the fridge. We put a pair of used Kantos on top of the fridge and charge the tablet off its USB port; Google Keep also handles the shopping list, Google Voice on functions as our backup phone. 100% of our "smart appliance" needs done and dusted.

nolist_policy• 2 years ago

Plus that Duet chromebook tablet gets updates till 2030, which is over and beyond the update lifecycle you'll get for any smart appliance.

gmerc• 2 years ago

Companies creating quality are stupid. Making devices that break sells much better and consumers outside of Japan are stupid/overwhelmed/feature dazzled enough they don't really care. Also, everyone (outside japan) does it, so they don't have a choice.

Capitalism in action

rglullis10• 2 years ago

I do not consider myself a Luddite, but the more I hear stories like that the more I feel validated in my "do not rely on anything that I can not fix it myself" principle.

We are past the point where you can not buy a "dumb TV" anymore or to do so you need to pay an absurd premium. The next in line are our home appliances. Your fridge, your vacuum cleaner, your clothes iron... everything will be built in a way that makes you dependent on the vendor.

I know it is easy and tempting to blame "late-stage capitalism" and corporations' endless appetite for growth bringing up Planned Obsolescence, but have we really made ourselves so helpless that we are unable to say "no, I refuse to accept this crap you are offering me"?

finaard• 2 years ago

Almost 10 years ago - when I bought our current 50" TV - one reason was that large computer screens were unaffordable, bad to look at from angles, or both. I recently checked, and seems nowadays you'd be able to get decently large 4k-screens at similar cost than a TV. Just add a PC or whatever media players you want.

userbinator4• 2 years ago

All my appliances are mid-century or older. Parts are simple and easily fabricated if necessary. Having a restored 85-year-old refrigerator (compressor and refrigerant still original) in active use, it's amazing how efficient it actually is. It's manual defrost, but doesn't need defrosting all that often either.

Reading about the failing condenser fan and compressor reminded me of these items, worth watching again:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462954

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20856036

ThePowerOfFuet3• 2 years ago

All my appliances are mid-century or older. Parts are simple and easily fabricated if necessary. Having a restored 85-year-old refrigerator (compressor and refrigerant still original) in active use, it's amazing how efficient it actually is.

I don't think the word efficient means what you think it means.

Have you ever measured their power consumption?

userbinator4• 2 years ago

A little less than 300kWh/year. For a 9cft fridge, some fancy new ones use even more than that.

sneed_chucker• 2 years ago

You're seriously using a refrigerator from the 1930s?

userbinator4• 2 years ago

1938 Frigidaire. Restored with new door gasket and insulation.

Apparently, I'm not the only one (mine looks cleaner than this, and is a bigger model): https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/13obhfp/my_gr...

sircastor• 2 years ago

I've done more than my fair share of washer repair over the years. I have benefited from Whirlpool reusing the same basic design in a half-a-dozen brands and 40 years. There are some minor differences in the last washer we had and the current one, but it's basically the same wash basin, the same agitator, the same gearing system. I've watched enough videos on youtube that have taught me the ins and outs of that machine. I don't want it to have any more features. I just hope they don't stop making parts for it.

My oven on the other hand - it's a GE Cafe slide-in dual-oven. I'm very happy with it. And I know how much people here rail against it, but I like being able to preheat it, turn it off remotely. Of course, baking is a hobby for me, so I wanted the extra oven.

acd• 2 years ago

I had the same experiance after a automated home espresso coffee machine broke down.

I compared many machines to that of a mocca spanish/italian espresso maker. Simple design as simple can be.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot

Advocate US navy KISS design principle.

Are a smart phone smart when it distracts you from close ones?

Smart devices can get hacked Dumb devices much harder. Which is more secure old CRT or new smart tv?

Same goes for IT shiny new complicated thing or simple kiss thing.

Aryth2• 2 years ago

I wonder where the "French door" moniker came from. Lived in France my whole life and never encountered one.

Aryth2• 2 years ago

I wonder where the "French door" moniker comes from. Lived in France my whole life and never saw one there.

cassepipe2• 2 years ago

It's been addressed somewhere else in the comments. Search the page and you will find a the answer

JimDabell• 2 years ago

This is something I’ve specifically noticed in relation to televisions. Televisions used to be primarily hardware-driven. The functions worked reliably even if they were limited. Then things changed so that televisions are now primarily software-driven, but the software still seems to be written by developers working in the hardware industry, not the software industry. They have terrible quality problems.

Before, it didn’t matter because the feature set was so limited that software bugs were make or break. If you can’t decode a signal or change a channel, it’s not getting shipped. But now, where there’s an entire OS, GUI, applications, network access, etc.? Now there are vast areas where a million mistakes can be made and shipped. The software industry is (relatively) well-equipped to deal with this. The hardware industry is not. So they ship garbage quality over and over again.

That’s not even covering the perverse incentives vendors have to make their products cheaper and make up for it with spying, adverts, etc. That just compounds the problem.

mosselman• 2 years ago

I first felt impressed by the note taking, but the more I read, the more I felt it is not very keeping it simple. Thinking back in some shitty fridges we’ve had, I have a good feeling about which ones were shit and which were good. I don’t need to keep notes on this.

For other parts of life this is great though: keeping track of what is going one with some friends I don’t often see or distant relatives.

Impressive.

willbush5• 2 years ago

I'm basically this guy once I sit down at the computer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcL86UpqZc

So I've invested more times in Emacs than I'll probably ever get back in timing savings from ripgrep'ing through my notes.

However, they're nice to have when I need them.

_kb• 2 years ago

The descent into feature laden, landfill destined shite is a seemingly universal trend. It's the same across appliances, TV's, computers and wider 'consumer tech' and extends to cars, footwear, and (at least in Australia) homes.

Minmax'ing cost and marketable shiny features over literally every measure of quality, usability, repairability, and longevity is abhorrent. It's an accelerating arms race to the bottom.

I can only hope we reach point where the market segments and opens space (with sufficient demand) so that more people and companies can focus on making sane, well designed, simple things again.

NullPrefix3• 2 years ago

Tried reading the article, but couldn't figure out what's the difference between side by side and french style. Tried looking online but it didn't help me either

pimlottc2• 2 years ago

See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39238010#39238589

tl;dr: side-by-side = one side freezer, one side fridge. french door = freezer on bottom, fridge on top with two doors

NullPrefix3• 2 years ago

thanks

riffraff• 2 years ago

Are french door fridges "not simple"?

I've had one for ten years and it didn't have any issues, and I didn't buy a premium model either (no ice machine on the top door tho).

But a friend of mine has a new one and it has the issues of the heat exchanger freezing due to bad insulation or something.

I feel it's not that these things are very complicated, as much as the fact that it's a market for lemons.

issung• 2 years ago

He seems to note that the fridge is french-door a hell of a lot, does this actually impact the cooling mechanics, making them more complicated and prone to break? Or is it just a coincidence all of the overly complicated fridges happen to be french door because they look "fancier"? Fridge experts please weigh in.

berkes2• 2 years ago

I've never owned a refrigerator with odor removing, ice makers, or double doors. Is all this fancy stuff typical American?

Because over here, northern Europe, only the high end refrigerators have ice makers, for example.

Why would one ever want that?

omnicognate2• 2 years ago

My fridge craps ice and I never again want one that doesn't. It eliminates faffing with trays/bags (or buying the stuff) and ensures you'll never go to make a G&T and discover, horror of horrors, you're out of ice.

I need my fridge to connect to the internet about as much as I need my oven to operate as a fax machine, though.

(Also Northern Europe btw.)

berkes2• 2 years ago

The two reasons I never want an ice-dispenser, is that one, it's rediculously expensive. I would never pay hundreds of euro's for a standalone machine that makes ice: for that price I'll gladly keep fiddling with trays in the freezer or just drink my drinks without ice. Why pay that markup when it's embedded?

And second, it's the single point of failure of the entire fridge. Everything else, from the rubbers to the pump will last longer and be easily repairable. I'm convinced it's mainly there because producers of fridges know it obsoletes the entire fridge faster. That without these fragile "addons" the machine might just last for years or decades. During which this family does not buy a new one.

sunpazed• 2 years ago

After our fancy fridge died, we purchased a “dumb” Mitsubishi Electric WX Series fridge. No LCD panels, no wifi, no time.

It’s tiny at only 470L, however it’s designed for maximum storage in small Japanese apartments, so we can fit heaps of groceries and frozens. It also has a chilled compartment specifically for sushi meat!

Also, 10 year warranty on all parts.

zvmaz• 2 years ago

Whenever I have to buy a microwave oven, I always choose the ones with the simplest user interface possible: Two knobs, one for the timer, one for the intensity. They have served my parents and myself well.

tussa• 2 years ago

Ah good old planned obsolescence.

Some people argue it's just incompetence, not PO. But if you've been in the business of making the same type of hardware/appliances for more than a few years then it's definitely planned obsolescence.

zubairq• 2 years ago

Good article on devices that are simple to use. I definitely think twice when I see appliances that need Wi-Fi or an app to work

coldtea5• 2 years ago

The title should have Kiss capitalized as KISS

willbush5• 2 years ago

It is all capitalized. What client are you using?

coldtea5• 2 years ago

I posted it 11 hours ago, when it wasn't.

sys_64738• 2 years ago

Widgets like fridges need to be minimalist as the manufacturers are all incompetent. Less tech means less things to break. No French doors and no ice makers. Always problems right there. The only thing you guarantee with a fridge is more hassle as the complexity of its design increases. These things are NOT built for reliability but are designed as the original subscription model: regular repairs.

mgaunard• 2 years ago

The only appliances I ever had that failed on me are those that I inherited from a previous owner or tenant.

Having a good reliable appliance is just a matter of buying good stuff and caring for it properly.

pfdietz• 2 years ago

The Internet of Things I Won't Buy.

revscat• 2 years ago

Enshitification of all the things, thanks to growth-driven product decisions. There are self-destructive aspects of capitalism that are endemic to it.

RajT882• 2 years ago

My fridge is not pretty, but it has been running for 20 years straight with the only hiccups being power outages.

I really do not expect that a newer fridge will last as long. I may try and find something in brushed aluminum off Craigslist which has been sitting in someone's garage since 2000 when this one eventually goes.

I have an aunt who has had a fridge running without issues since about 1962. It is all white ceramic over stainless steel and a thing of beauty.

This is the kind of product engineering modern companies seek to avoid.

I seem to recall a Heinlein novel about inter-dimensional travelers who wanted to take over the world by destroying the economy. The first thing they did was found companies which made products which never wore out (razors and cars).

grogenaut• 2 years ago

There are still simple models. I got a whirlpool about 2 years back. All it has is a water dispenser and an ice maker on the inside. Other than that it's the same as my late 80s Frigidaire. Still seems to be mostly mechanical.

It's a lot more efficient than my old fridge though and a lot bigger. The old one had issues with it's design and defrosting as well that the new one has fixed esp being a lower cold drawere model vs the old one with freezer on top. I can't block the vents on the new one and they can't freeze up, but it does use a blower. The old one could ice over the vent and I had to modify it with a extra passive heating wire to keep it from freezing up.

kd913• 2 years ago

They may run, but the power consumption your old fridge freezers are wasting would cover multiple brand new fridges many times over.

Anything over 10 years really should be replaced.

A bit like leds vs incandescent at this point time. Especially problematic given a fridge freezer runs 24/7 and is the largest contributor to your energy bills.

Also isn’t this a classic example of old things that survive are likely more expensive and well made. However, the cheap stuff back then likely got replaced sooner. Probably a similar thing applies where an expensive modern fridge will last ages too.

madaxe_again3• 2 years ago

The longevity and the power use are connected.

Modern appliances use a very low viscosity oil in the compressor pump, and as a result use less power, but also wear faster. The old ones use a much more viscous oil which gives decades of use at the expense of higher power consumption.

api2• 2 years ago

Real world control systems need to be able to scale up and down. Our financial and corporate systems only know how to scale up, middle along, or fail catastrophically. There is no mechanism in the world of capital and corporations for scaling something down gracefully if a market is mostly saturated but we still need some of something.

One solution could be to side step the issue by getting really good at flexible just in time manufacturing. This lets you decouple the company from products. When someone needs a fridge, a fridge is made. The companies running the factories could be big build to order companies that could make a huge variety of things and the plans could be for sale by “fabless” appliance companies or open source.

This is sort of how chip and electronic parts manufacture works.

In this model making something with a really long life span is fine. You might run low on fridge orders, but that just means your factories are free to make e-bikes or server racks or heat pumps or whatever the thing with demand happens to be.

RajT882• 2 years ago

We're heading this direction. There's a number of industries which technology has enabled them to move closer (or completely into) a manufacture-on-demand model where it's economically feasible to have small production runs (sometimes of even a single unit).

T-Shirts are probably the first one I am aware of which got there. But strangely enough, Guitars are moving that way. It used to be to get a signature series you had to be a pretty big artist. These days, there's players from cover bands getting signature series! You look through all the lists of signature series guitars, and quite a lot of them have been released in just the last ~12 years. PCB's are going there now too - I've read on HN itself hobbyists talking about how cheap it is to get individual custom boards printed for them for projects shipped from China. Manufacturers taking production runs of less than 100, and happy to do it.

It's worth noting - production on demand doesn't provide any guarantee that the products will have good longevity. In fact, many printed-on-demand T-Shirts are pretty crap and you end up tossing them after a couple years.

nickt• 2 years ago

It could be worse. At least the spares aren’t VIN-locked (yet).

zbrozek• 2 years ago

It's increasingly difficult to get high-end performance with a simple device with a good user interface.

Incidentally, I happen to have almost the same refrigerator as the author (same thing, but without the hot water dispenser). My only failure so far has been the condenser fan after seven years of operation. It was clearly an electronic failure of the onboard motor controller, which honestly has no excuse to fail.

I also have a more-recent Kitchenaid 48-inch-wide side-by-side purchased in 2020. It's a remarkably simple appliance given the year of manufacture. Yet the interior lighting is horribly unreliable. The freezer killed three lighting modules in its first three years. They inevitably go high impedance, usually emitting zero light. One of the three was still emitting a tiny amount of light post-failure. The lights are all in series, so when one fails the entire chamber goes dark. I've even had one of the replacement lighting modules fail already. This component is clearly flawed and I'm tempted to design my own replacement.

mlrtime8• 2 years ago

It's increasingly difficult to get high-end performance with a simple device with a good user interface.

It's actually not at all, but people [in general, not here] want Cheap + Features. There are expensive "prosumer/consumer" level no-feature refrigerators but people don't want to pay for them.

alwa3• 2 years ago

Are there particular brands or manufacturers that you look to for this quality, or do you look more to the price or “commercial-grade” positioning as a signal?

em3rgent0rdr• 2 years ago

If you want to keep it simple, don't even bother with filtered water and just drink out of the tap. It is safe in the developed world. If you are concerned about germs, which can get through the filter anyway, you should boil the water instead.

beebeepka2• 2 years ago

i don't want my water to have metal taste, so i use filters. if you care about germs, it's easier to drop some silver in the water. boiling uses too much energy

mlrtime8• 2 years ago

The problem isn't safety , but taste. I'm 100% onboard and don't have any problems drinking tap [in the US].

However, most people now base how water tastes from bottled water. So the preference at home is to not drink off the tap.

brabel2• 2 years ago

The taste depends on the quality of water and what sort of chemicals they deliberately put in the water to keep it "safe" for human consumption.

Here in Sweden and many other European countries, the tap water is indistinguishable from bottled water.

bluedays• 2 years ago

I live in an area with high levels of PFAS in the water, so this isn't always true.

SteveNuts• 2 years ago

I’d be shocked if home appliance filters are capable of filtering PFAS anyways.

fauigerzigerk2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't be so sure:

The Royal Society of Chemistry is calling on the UK Government to overhaul its drinking water standards, after new analysis reveals more than a third of water courses tested in England and Wales contain medium or high-risk levels of PFAS, more commonly known as forever chemicals.

https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2023/oct/pfas-clean...

snazz• 2 years ago

Is an activated charcoal filter like in a fridge or Brita or something enough to filter out that kind of contaminant?

thsksbd6• 2 years ago

That really isn't a good assumption. The West is undergoing a bureaucratic collapse where incompetent or out right maliciously corrupt people are subverting regulators.

I dont trust regulators and have a five stage reverse under the sink filter. Result? In the last five years in my little section of the midwest:

- I've dodged Pb poisoning when my local water authority switched corrosion inhibitors (note, this is after Flint MI)

- I've dodged vinyl chloride poisoning from the Palestine OH fire that Federal regulators pretended was a nothing burger until dead cows started showing up everywhere.

Not to mention the countless times the lines are fixed and the water comes out brown (this is "safe" because it's iron oxide. Except it is only mostly iron oxide plus all the crud that has caked onto the pipes.)

Best case scenario I trust the regulators. Even then F- ups happen and Id rather have a filter I keep myself.

startupsfail• 2 years ago

Yes, and it’s a good idea to not trust bottled water as well. You could have some grandpa in Nevada having his own ideas how « Real water » should taste. And then its gets grandfathered and sold at WholeFoods.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/jury-awards-229m-to-v...

PaulDavisThe1st2• 2 years ago

You could move to my small village in New Mexico and join the water board. There's about 70 of us on the water system, and we could use more people to help provide oversight. The well itself is about 500 yards from my front door, and the water tank and pump house are right up the hill, I go by them on most morning walks.

crazygringo3• 2 years ago

The West is undergoing a bureaucratic collapse where incompetent or out right maliciously corrupt people are subverting regulators.

I don't know where you're getting this from. Generally speaking, regulations and enforcement are tighter than they've ever been. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but you're going to have to show some evidence it's getting worse.

I really don't think you want to go back to the 1970's and 1980's, or the 1940's and 1950's.

I mean, I totally believe you about your water -- I just don't know where you get the idea that it was better in the past. If anything, you as a consumer just didn't have the ability to detect it or filter.

crazygringo3• 2 years ago

It's not about germs, it's about the taste -- it's about removing chlorine.

I personally don't like my water to taste like diluted swimming pool. After the first time I tried a blind tasting of tap water vs. Brita-filtered at home, I never drank straight from the tap again.

hstan4• 2 years ago

“Safe” by the EPA’s standards

rpmisms• 2 years ago

I don't want the chemicals they add, so until my well is put in, I use a countertop carbon filter.

jart• 2 years ago

Haha you've never been to San Francisco. The tap water there is this nasty opaque sludge. It comes out of the faucet looking like bathwater after the bath has been used. Knowing the way things go there, they probably turned their water treatment facilities into Roman style bathhouses that could serve as shelters for the homeless.

inferiorhuman13• 2 years ago

That sounds a whole lot like a you problem, presumably due to old pipes in your building or whatever. Most SF water comes from Hetch Hetchy and is clean enough at the source that it's not required to be filtered. My experience over a few decades is that San Francisco's tap water is about the best tasting in the nation.

https://tappwater.co/blogs/blog/can-you-drink-san-francisco-...

Cthulhu_2• 2 years ago

It should be safe, but a lot of areas have aging infrastructure and related problems (think Flint). Other areas mess with the water, in some areas of the UK the water is fluoridated, on paper it's to improve dental health, but a conspiracy theory is that it's cheaper to use humans as cheap filters instead of dispose of excess fluoride in a managed fashion.

Also, "the developed world" is a very polarising statement to make.

hprotagonist• 2 years ago

the more this goes on the more i think i should buy home goods at restaurant suppliers.

https://www.webstaurantstore.com/avantco-a-23r-hc-29-solid-d...

looks great!

drsopp• 2 years ago

Probably noisy.

speed_spread• 2 years ago

...and power inefficient. The metrics are just not the same as those for home use.

Also, like military hardware, industrial appliances rely on a long chain of logistics to keep going. They generally will however degrade more gracefully and be easier to maintain - because they're designed to be maintained.

HumblyTossed• 2 years ago

How long until we can’t get ice because we let our water filter subscription lapse? I feel like that’s where we’re headed. Gotta get that MRR.

jvolkman• 2 years ago

I wish it was as easy as continued payment. I can't get ice out of my GE Cafe unless I hit it with a hair dryer every two weeks.

fredsmith219• 2 years ago

We had similar problems with a Samsung fridge and the same solution. And I won’t buy an another Samsung product again.

bell-cot3• 2 years ago

Radical Idea: "Landfill" taxes on appliances. Manufacturers of basic, last-forever stuff pay ~0%. Manufacturers of breakdown-o-matic junk can end up paying 100%. And the ability to pay has to be backed by tightly-regulated insurance policies - so CrapCo can't just vanish into corporate shell games or bankruptcy when the tax man comes knocking.

Nifty39294• 2 years ago

It's very fun to get angry at appliance makers - but if they actually made the appliances that we think they should, they would go broke because nobody (except a few of us) would buy them. This is how these newer "smart" appliances started taking over in the first place.

As evidence, check out some of the manufacturers that do make higher-quality dumb appliances, like Subzero and Speed Queen and notice how little consumer market share they have. Of course they are more expensive, but that's where the supply and demand curve cross. But where people like business owners WILL pay more for quality and longevity, they do have a major share of the commercial market.

jfengel• 2 years ago

I suspect the manufacturers get stuck in the race to the bottom. Customers want to spend as little as possible, but that makes it hard to choose one low-end device over the other. So they add features that cost very little but attract attention -- even if they make the actual experience worse.

Nifty39294• 2 years ago

Yes, I think this is exactly it.

ben_w• 2 years ago

That sounds like an argument in favour of[0] centralised planned manufacturing — we can't get good stuff, because short-lived shiny products outcompete boring high quality products.

[0] this doesn't mean it's a sufficient, let alone universally applicable, argument in favour; I'm well aware of many examples of central planning failures.

switch0072• 2 years ago

Right. People seem to not want inflation to apply to appliances.

E.g. a decent toaster in 1984 in the UK was about £18. That's £72 now. Only posh people spend £72 on a toaster. Most people I imagine want to pay no more than £40.

Microwaves were around £200. That's £805 now. Nobody is spending £800 on a microwave.

class3shock2• 2 years ago

Don't forget though that that toaster may have been made by people being paid a living wage, maybe even in the UK, and probably in the tens-hundreds of thousands, not millions of units produced as cheaply as possible by slave labor.

nytesky• 2 years ago

The old Kenmore was probably built by Whirlpool in a US factory. GE cafe is a rebranded Haier fridge from a Chinese factory.

We bought a Samsung (would have preferred LG) fridge 4 years ago and have not needed a single repair. But it is pretty bare bones — French door and in freezer ice maker — no water dispenser or door controls.

alwa3• 2 years ago

One of the happier things I’ve done for myself lately, at the advice of this forum, was to get a rock-solid, dumb, black-and-white Brother laser printer. It sits there and just does its job and I never have to think about it.

Does anyone have any tips as to the white-goods equivalents? Fridge, freezer, laundry machines, that kind of thing?

cmiller1• 2 years ago

A commercial fridge and a chest freezer.

EasyMark5• 2 years ago

I bought a chest freezer and regretted it. Not because it failed but because it's too easy to bury stuff. Sold it to a buddy after 3 years for 1/3 the original cost. He's still using it, but he's a hunter/fisherman, going on 10 years now.

EasyMark5• 2 years ago

buy the simplest devices you can. I believe whirlpool still makes some models in the USA. Evidently (according to reddit) never buy a Samsung or LG kitchen appliance. Whateve r you do get online (reddit and other places) and look for the specific model you're looking at, never buy on a whim, do research. You can eat out for a couple nights if the fridge goes.

taude2• 2 years ago

I had an LG refrigerator that was a nightmare. I've had better luck since upgrading to a Bosche.

I second Whirlpool, though, when I remodeled, I donated my working whirlpool washer and dryer that I inherited that was from circa 1980 or so....

the_snooze• 2 years ago

Exactly, simple is good. Software is not simple. Internet-connected software is definitely not simple. If you want anything to work reliably long-term, avoid devices with remote dependencies that the manufacturer will deprecate as soon as they get bored of maintaining them. Anything you want to last more than 5 years should be able to work completely offline.

ikari_pl• 2 years ago

Samsung fridge, oven, microwave, and washer-dryer user here.

Only the washer dryer was able to get online, and it's the only appliance that had to be replaced after 4 years, but not because of that. The build quality was so-so, it had problems drying and repair was considered unreasonable (leaky hot air ducts, fast wear on the bearing).

The microwave spontaneously loses screws in the door though

baking• 2 years ago

Best Buy always has a low-end unit for rental property. They usually last for a good long time.

I have a 30-year-old fridge that I would seriously consider getting repaired if it ever stopped working before I would buy a replacement.

taude2• 2 years ago

I didn't get the advice do to this, but this is where I landed with my home printer needs, cheap Brother wirelsss B&W Laser Printer.

Unfortunatley for appliances these days, to get fewer options you actually have to go up in price. It took me a long time, for example to even land on an oven that was minimalistic with knobs that you turn to set the temperature and turn it on (overall the oven isn't simple enough, because it still has too many logic boards that were replaced three times in the first year, until they got it right).

I gave up my old gas stove that cost $400 new, worked for 25 years, without fail.

Even when I was at the new appliance store, looking at the fancy stuff, the sales guy was impliying short life span, and repair contract needs, etc...

__loam2• 2 years ago

Also if anyone knows a good brand for dumb TVs.

naravara4• 2 years ago

I think they’re basically extinct on the high end. Your best option will be to get a smart TV and never set it up with a network connection.

You’ll maybe want to do firmware updates now and then, but you can plug it in temporarily for those. It’ll still do more than you strictly want it to, but the most invasive behaviors will be off the table.

Alternatively you can get a huge computer monitor and use that as your TV. But there’s some issues with that approach. Monitors are designed for sitting closer up and may not have as good viewing angles.

vraylle• 2 years ago

Maybe a decent short-throw projector?

noirscape• 2 years ago

Gonna sound very short through the corner, but german brands usually are pretty no bullshit. Also filter out anything that seems like it has a screen (or a more complicated screen than a simple LED panel) and doesn't need it.

Your fridge and freezer don't need any more screens than a LED panel telling you the current temperature and the laundry machine can make due just fine with a LED panel + some buttons and turning knobs.

CPLX• 2 years ago

If you can afford it get Breville. I was really shocked at how much better quality their appliances were when I got my first one. The microwave controls for example are 10x more intuitive and thoughtful than anything I’d seen before.

inferiorhuman13• 2 years ago

Ehhhhh. I got one of the fancy Breville toaster ovens because the (gas) oven in my apartment was so janky. If that's best in class, I'd hate to see the competition. The controls take 1–2 seconds to wake up, it makes the most horrendous beeping noises, the convection fan causes some funky resonance occasionally, the nonstick coating means you have to be careful cleaning it, the preheat timer is overly optimistic, the door spring is way too strong, etc, etc.

It works but I definitely don't love it, and I'm left wondering how hard it would've really been to remedy most of the annoyances. For the price (and given the reviews) I was definitely expecting better.

billfor• 2 years ago

Speedqueen washers and dryers are simple and made in the US. Built like tanks. Double the cost of the cheap imports though.

Der_Einzige• 2 years ago

Big note on this - Only the top loaders are available in the old-school "ultra-reliable" version that I think many want. Top loaders are more rough on clothes than front loaders. Many reputable repair techs claim that LG makes very solid and reliable front loaders which are more gentle on clothes than the speed queen front loaders.

I was dead set on a speed queen top loader and then my wife started showing me this stuff (specifically detailed tests showing speed queens top loaders being rough on clothes)

cereal_cable• 2 years ago

We bought a Maytag set because it's capacity was larger than the Speed queens. I've never been more angry at a company. We threw in the towel and junked them they were so bad. Literally couldn't give them away bad. Apparently everyone I knew either already knew or trusted my experience so I couldn't unload them.

Now, we have speed queens and I no longer am using buckets to fill our washing machine, don't have to babysit it, it doesn't randomly jump in the air suddenly as it's gotten out of balance for the 4th time in the day. I would never willingly wish that upon someone.

rzimmerman• 2 years ago

+1000 for the B+W Brother laser printer. I've had it for years and it always prints when asked, no drivers or weird software, works from any device on WiFi. I've never replaced the toner.

inferiorhuman13• 2 years ago

That's going to vary by appliance. The appliance sales and repair shops that have youtube channels are a pretty good resource (Ben's Appliances and Junk, Yale Appliance, Boulevard Home, etc). But so is intuition.

Buy whatever you can get service for. This rules out Samsung and LG, but in a smaller area this might rule out some other brands. In general avoid LG unless you want a front loading washer, and avoid Samsung in general.

There aren't that many manufacturers. Bosch, Thermador, and Gaggenau; Whirlpool / Amana / KitchenAid / Maytag / Jennair; Electrolux / Frigidaire / Zanussi / Westinghouse /; etc etc etc. Ikea's all Frigidaire these days, and Kenmore you've gotta check the part number (typically Whirlpool or LG).

Dishwasher – pretty much the universal opinion is Bosch. The quiet part is that their current lineup has design decisions you may not like (no heating element, no grinder). And they definitely feel cheap. But they're quiet and USA made.

Washer – Speed Queen for a top loader, but again read up on the caveats. Whirlpool's commercial lineup is basically their consumer lineup from 20 years ago. They may be cheaper/easier to buy and service than Speed Queen. Lots of folks seem to love LG front loaders.

Fridge – top freezers with no ice maker are about as simple, efficient, and reliable as you can get. But Whirlpool's current top freezers are junk. Supposedly Whirlpool's more expensive fridges are still decent. Other designs (e.g. bottom freezer) are more complicated and will be less efficient. At the higher end Bosch's big side by sides with the dual compressors are supposed to be pretty solid.

Ranges – figure out what you want and go from there. Samsung is reportedly pretty bad with gas ranges, and obviously electronics aren't their strong suit either. Induction ranges will typically have more assemblies and fewer individual components to replace ($$$ to service). With induction the low end Frigidaires don't have any WiFi bullshit, but only the higher priced brands (and Samsung) will eschew the touchscreens.

Microwaves – American kitchens tend to feature those big hulking units hung right over the stove. But counter top models are waaay cheaper and all mostly the same guts.

syntaxing• 2 years ago

I don't quite understand why the author didn't stick with with Maytag since his washer is still going strong? My family owned a couple of Maytags growing up and I thought it was a budget brand. But recently, I used the Maytag "commercial" washer, dryer, and dishwasher. I was really impressed and follows the KISS mentality closely. No frills, just works.

Dig1t• 2 years ago

WRT washers/dryers it makes more sense to buy a refurbished one from Craigslist. There are folks who buy and fix old units as a side hustle and the ones I’ve bought from them are wayyy cheaper and run so much better than any newer unit I’ve owned.

1auralynn• 2 years ago

Yeah my current washing machine is a refurbished old school top loader. Easy to install, wash cycle is 45 min, gets clothes super clean. It's definitely not water efficient but at least it doesn't take 3 hours to actually clean your clothes. Who's got time for that? I can get 6 loads of laundry done leisurely on a Sunday.

WaitWaitWha• 2 years ago

Let me add my gripe to over-automation.

Ceiling fans that can only be controlled using a remote. No way to wire at switch.

I am very much into local home automation, that is where no internet connection is required or allowed (HomeAssistant anyone?).

One thing I always watch out for is the automation must allow manual interaction. These fans have no pull chains, or switches when the remote breaks or more likely get lost.

gangstead• 2 years ago

I'm in the process of replacing the remote+canopy module in my hands with Lutron controls. With those you can control from both the wall and the remote.

bpye• 2 years ago

I am also a proponent of this idea. I bought a Sharp R21LCF microwave last year - it’s a commercial microwave and the single control is a dial to set the time. It’s great!

ltbarcly3• 2 years ago

Buy appliances at costco, max out the extended warranty. You get 5 or 6 years of warranty. Some devices will last 20 years, others will fail multiple times under warranty, and eventually be replaced as a lemon, under warranty. It gets you out of the bathtub curve and you don't have to have a part time job repairing appliances.

BooneJS• 2 years ago

Timely read; we’re in the process of replacing our $12k Thermador refrigerator 4 years after we bought it, and 6 months and a dozen trips by the repair guy.

killthebuddha• 2 years ago

Related, thinking out loud:

Why is the following timeline counterfactual (as far as I know) for basically all household appliances:

  1. it was invented
  2. it was commercialized
  3. some decades of varying modes of specialization, advancement, innovation
  4. reach technological maturity/saturation
  5. open source designs with idiot-proof manuals emerge
  6. everyone uses the open source versions
  7. maybe a freelancer market emerges
  8. it's no longer commercially viable
  9. it becomes a near-zero-cost improvement on the baseline human condition
  10. focus on new technology

The hopeful view (IMO) is that we're just at a point historically where things like washing machines and refrigerators are still at step 4 and people like me are starting to wonder why we're not further down the road? In 10-20 years maybe we'll be at 6 or 7?

The cynical view (IMO) is that the capitalist system operates by pulling a bait and switch on the average consumer. As technology becomes commercially viable, we use the slack it creates to pump everyone full of skittles and pretty little liars and then sell refrigerator-television-vending-machine appliances until the Decadent Society collapses under its own weight.

Maybe a more moderate view (IMO) is that it's naive to think that everyone could possibly have the time or desire to maintain their own refrigerators? FWIW My take on this particular view is that we should be trying to develop a society where it's not naive, where the average human stands on top of centuries of innovation rather than cocooned inside of it.

/idk

ongytenes3• 2 years ago

I have a Whirldpool that quits cooling about every three years. I've fixed it each time. The problem is a inverter/frequency shifter keeps burning out. The compressor, an Embraco, is a 230 vac, 3 phase requires a inverter to convert 120VAC single phase to three phase 230VAC. The inverter does double duty as a frequency shifter to control the speed of the compressor while keeping the voltage constant. After the third time it burned out I plugged the refrigerator into a large surge protector. It has since died again. The other refrigerator from the early 90s is still working without any problems. The amount of energy the three phase compressor saved was more than canceled out by the cost of the parts to repair it

steve-atx-7600• 2 years ago

I am only on my first fridge from 2014. It’s a Samsung French door with freezer on bottom. I’ve replaced the mother board, the ice maker, applied silicone sealant to the ice maker housing, and installed a drain heater in the main coil compartment to augment the defrost heater (saw this on you tube to prevent ice over). After all this, it’s been working fine for a couple years. Hope I don’t have to buy another fridge for a long time.

astrostl• 2 years ago

Our ancient basement fridge died. We replaced it with a Best Buy Insignia SKU 6472692. It's currently $500, and we paid $550 plus a bit more to take away the old one. Its primary features include having two doors, staying cold on the bottom, and staying really cold on the top. We love it.

conductr2• 2 years ago

My first home (~2010) had no fridge so I bought a new Samsung it was about $3k, nothing smart about it, it just looked nice and had a freezer at bottom and an ice dispenser on the door. Within the next 3-5 years I had spent another $3-5k on repairs and eventual replacement with another similar looking/capable fridge by another similar manufacturer. It followed same similar timeline to its end. The ROI and reduced hassle factor of just buying a Subzero made sense for me on the third fridge. I know several people that have 30 year old ones that just don’t fail. So far so good but we’ll see how it lasts.

ploxiln• 2 years ago

Ice dispenser in the door is apparently a huge risk factor for fridge failure. The ice making machinery either being in the non-frozen section, and/or having some mechanical components passing through the insulating door, makes it struggle. People love it, but bad idea.

The fridge that was in my house when I bought it (recently) has an ice maker fully contained in the freezer at the bottom, you have to open the freezer section fully to get at it. Apparently that can work fine.

Just some tips for the future :)

conductr2• 2 years ago

Yeah I agree, when I bought the subzero they didn’t even offer ice in the door on any models. Likely to maintain their reputation of low maintenance

Unfortunately in my house the kitchen appliances are on display and so “need” to look nice. If I were to build a custom house, I’d just hide all the appliances and buy the $500 basic white fridge like I have in my garage.

chrsw• 2 years ago

Engineers are under more pressure to cut costs than make things long lasting. Imagine if businesses were in control of evolution.

class3shock2• 2 years ago

If you read this and thought, "I wish I knew where to buy a good xyz" I recommend you check out Ben's Appliances and Junk on youtube and the BIFL (Buy It For Life) subreddit. Both have helped me.

It often seems impossible to buy things that are quality or free of extraneous features no matter what you are willing to pay. It's frustrating.

RecycledEle• 2 years ago

Appliance makers could build the simplest possible appliance, then build a simple monitoring system (like OBD2 in cars) to tell us what is wrong. They could even agree on a standard interface so anyone with a computer or phone can see the live data and diagnose bad sensors. They could make that OBD2-like system relatively secure by having it only sense and report without being able to make adjustments or screw things up. They could make it so you can tell the appliance to ignore a bad sensor, so we do not get OBD2-like problems where bad sensors are more common and more expensive than real problems.

Nobody has done it, yet.

I have hope for the Chinese to figure this out and create a national standard.

Goodbye non-KISS appliances

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