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“…I am also the size of a dorm fridge”
And it will use as much energy as everything else in the house combined.
I wonder how true that is. Does it come down to effective insulation? I also thought the old refrigerants were more efficient but really bad for the environment. The only other factor is motor/pump.
Here’s a good article. From 1970-s to 2014 power use of refrigerators decreased by 4 times. My modern European fridge only uses 270Wh per year, which is even further decrease.
You really do not want to still use a fridge from 1970-s.
Nooo, thats a couple of mW, no way. Maybe its a typo and you neant daily with a bit more than 10W power, even that is fairly low. The last time I measured ours it was about 30W average… (also europe, about 10yo)
I think you meant 270kWH instead of 270WH.
Yes, my bad.
Compressors are variable and much more efficient. More efficient and variable speed fan motors along with more efficient blade design. Insulation now is drastically better than glass wool of the past. Electronics are able to be integrated in order to provide more fine grain control and overall design has been improved just due to efficiency standards being placed on a bright yellow sticker. In the past design and component choices never really considered efficiency, while efficiency doesn’t always win out it’s a weighted factor and influences the overall engineering and design in ways that just didn’t happen before efficiency regulations came about.
Nice, it’s super interesting how far we’ve progressed.
Insulation tech is better, yes, but also the insulation of a 40 year old fridge is by now totally fucked.
Please explain how fridge insulation degrades with age.
I would assume it’s made of something chemically stable and protected from the environment by the fridge casing.
The doors, rubbers, etc definitely degrade very fast. The walls probably not so fast, but the casing also gets beaten up.
Survivorship bias
Contemporary appliances actually do fail more often, and earlier, than their predecessors. They have added a bunch of extraneous things to what was a very simple, stalwart, design. These additions have drastically increased the complexity of their designs and created many fold more points of failure than there used to be. It isn’t so much that the manufacturing is sloppier, or that the materials aren’t as good, though in some ways that is a contributor, just not the main one.
If you by a recently manufactured fridge like the following, you will get a fridge that will last decades if you do the minimum to keep it in good condition. However if you buy one that has an in door ice machine, lcd touch screen, complex lay out that requires the basic mechanical devices, to keep the fridge cool, to have a bunch of extra tubing, wiring, connections, etc. it is much more likely to fail because of all the extra points of failure you added.
Only available in harvest yellow, burnt sienna, olive, and white. Upgrade yours with some simulated wood grain accents to match your station wagon for a reasonable price. Don’t leave it outside in your vacant lot where kids might play inside. Be nice to the Sears appliance department salesperson. They really want a promotion to the vacuum cleaner department so they can buy their kid a high-fidelity 8-track cassette this Christmas.
I’d keep waxing nostalgic but it will never buff to a nice sheen these days. My parents got a toaster as a wedding gift and it was still in daily use when I went off to college. Appliances nowadays are junk.
How much of that is also survivorship bias. Why is it that if appliances were better back then people ended up buying new ones? Most people tend to only buy new appliances and furniture if the old one breaks regardless if there’s a new model. At least that has been my experience with the vast majority of people I’ve known at more than an acquaintance level. Most people aren’t privileged enough to be able to afford new stuff just cause.
Yeah, growing up we had a harvest gold Frigidaire from the 1970s. It didn’t leave us, we left it.
(Don’t miss the gallons of ice water in the freezer that had to be defrosted every few months.)
I guess one could make the claim that an automatic defrost system is a luxury, lol
That fridge, in that color occupied a similarly wood paneled kitchen for me growing up. I got a little sweaty when I saw the picture, wondered who’s been in my old house.
Moreso, the fridge will stop working in two years cause that is when their subscription cloud service to access your fridge will be updated with firmware that is no longer compatible.
Also the required app will no longer be supported
My fridge doesn’t have a TPM chip and won’t upgrade to FridgeOS 11.
I used to rent this tiny little house from an elderly couple a little over a decade ago. It was their first house when they got married in the late 40s and they’d been renting it out since they moved to a bigger house in the 50s. In all that time the refrigerator has been replaced ONCE in like 1968 and that fridge still worked perfectly when I moved out lol
Remember, friends don’t let friends buy Samsung or LG appliances!
(Also, long lasting appliances still exist, you just have to be ready to pay the price, otherwise get something from the Maytag family)
citing Rossmann?
There’s some appliance breakdown vids (idk if Rossman is one of them) but the gist is Samsung and LG like to put cheap plastic parts in high wear locations which inevitably fail.
Fridges are dead simple appliances. A compressor and evaporator coils with a temperature sensor. There’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t outlast you and everyone you love.
It’s insane these “premium” brands are built to fall like they do.
Real premium brands do last, but not everyone wants to pay 10k for a fridge
Checking what a fridge cost you in 1980 in an old Sears catalog, you’d be paying $4000 today accounting for inflation.
But people compare their reliability to 1000$ fridges today
Premium brands are not industrial brands. Goal of premium brands is to be as expensive as possible.
Sub Zero, Thermador… Looks industrial to you?
That’s the problem. A lot of those high-end, expensive appliances are built just as shitty as the low-end, basic models. The difference is just some bells and whistles and a higher price tag.
I have no problem paying extra for a higher quality, better built appliance. But the challenge is differentiating those from the low quality, built as cheaply as possible appliances that have just been marked up with a premium price tag.
At least when I buy the cheap, shitty model, I get what I paid for.
An insulated box with a decent compressor does not cost 10k. Making a compressor that fails after 2 years is actually hard to do, something both LG and Samsung spent time and money to achieve.
Consider, for example, that nearly every car manufactured with an AC. Which is exactly the same tech as a fridge. Yet you rarely end up needing to replace the compressor on your car. You might need to recharge it or clean it, but not replace the compressor. 10k of your car price isn’t the HVAC.
Just saying, that’s the price for premium brands like Sub Zero or Thermador, but they have their reputation and it’s very very good
I mean, having to replace a fridge every few years because it constantly breaks in a way that’s uneconomical to repair will cost you a lot more in the long run.
That’s the thing, it’s more expensive being poor.
You’d be better off getting a 2nd hand quality brand from a wealthy suburb when they remodel their kitchen every 5ish years or so.
Sure it costs more in the long run, but the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck, do you think they want to go and pay 25k for a full set of appliances just so they’ll save money over 30 years when they can barely afford to pay for their basic needs?
Even second hand, they’re still way more expensive than the basic shit from economical brands…
Bit of a straw-man argument there: firstly you don’t need to spend that all in one hit; the break even point is a lot sooner than 30 years; and lastly, paying to replace cheap shot that breaks quickly with more shit that breaks quickly is one of the traps that keeps prone living paycheck to paycheck.
My two examples below:
Samsung dryer died after 3yrs, out of warranty, broke in our 20s, couldn’t afford to replace it. Lucked out finding an ANCIENT Miele condenser dryer on Marketplace for $50. Not only did that thing last us another 3 years before it started tripping the circuit breaker, it was cheaper to run than the old unit and ended up saving us enough money that we were then able to invest in a brand new Bosch unit that’s still going today (7+ years).
LG refrigerator died in a little over 3 years, due to a known compressor fault; uneconomical repair even though it was still under warranty, so we got a full manufacturer’s refund. We bit the bullet, did our research and went with a Made in Japan Hitachi model. It’s always outlasted the LG, and is again more energy efficient that we’re saving a few bucks a month on electricity.
I will reiterate; it’s expensive being poor. Buying a better quality second-hand unit rather than a new ‘commodity brand’ appliance is just one of the small ways to make things a little less expensive.
So “You live paycheck to paycheck? Just find cheap stuff until you decide to bite the bullet and get a loan to buy something that will last!”
78% of people in the USA live like that.
I’ve got no idea who that is so no, I wasn’t knowingly quoting them
he’s involved in right to repair and has youtube channel where hem mostly talks about how brands try to avoid questions on repairability and sustainability
Honestly I don’t get why Rossman cry so much about “he expected that his $2000> LG TV would not track him or at least have the option turned off by default.”
Why shouldn’t they? Why would anyone expect in the first place that by buying a more expensive product they are going to care about your data? Obviously it benefits them to sell everyone’s data, from Rossman’s point of view it sounds like people who buy cheap products deserve to have their data sold because the company is making a loss by selling them the product.
I usually agree with Rossman’s points, but this one in particular sounds ridiculous to me.
from Rossman’s point of view it sounds like people who buy cheap products deserve to have their data sold
I watched him and it is obvious he is against “You bought from X? Lol, screw you!” mentality.
Yeah he’s really upset about LG, but it seems like everything tracks you these days. Seems a bit shortsighted to just shit on LG and no one else.
He shits on everyone all the time. It’s not exclusive to LG or even Apple. It’s just whatever happens to come to his attention. Which is basically pick a company and they’re doing something horrible.
If you open his channel, you will see how he shits on all anti-repair crapufacturers.
No idea who that is
My bad, I was answering another user in this thread.
I like our used Samsung dryer. For basic drying. It has all those other bells and whistles that I don’t care about, but it’s done well for years. That damn finished drying tune though…with the option to turn it off or…not turn it off. omg
I like the washer and not the dryer. Had the set for 4 years. No issues with the washer but the dryer literally leaks lint. The trap doesn’t catch it and it gums up my vents in 2 months.
Anything from BSH group is good from what I’ve heard online from other netisens
Which is
- Bosch
- Siemens
- Neff
- Gaggernau
Miel are also good especially for vacuum cleaners
All of this information I remember from reddits buy it for life subreddit which really should have a lemmy version
*Miele ;)
And yeah, mid level is very good too!
For people interested an extensive report by French appliance store after sale service. It gives the reliability of each brand. There is a note for the reliability, ease and cost of repair.
It’s only in French unfortunately : https://www.darty.com/achat/services/barometre-sav/barometre.html
Buy it for life is on lemmy! Idk how to link it, but search for it and it should pop up
@x4740N@lemm.ee @FrowingFostek@lemmy.world @@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
The Community on slrpnk.net seems to be the biggest and most active, the second biggest is on sh.itjust.works.
and for linking you can do
\[Name of the link](https://nameoftheinstance.net/c/nameofthecommunity)or you can just do !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net so you can visit using you own home instancehave a nice day! :-)
I second this motion.
Today’s products are built to just barely cross some finish line and not a day longer. It’s bad for you, and bad for the environment.
I moved into a dated house that came with dated kitchen appliances 70/80s. I’ve updated the floors under, the water line and gas line to them. Mostly everything around them. I’ve still kept the appliances. Still work great.
I’ll keep my money and the fridge that still does what new fridge does, keeps shit cold. And the stove that does what a new stove dies, make shit hot.
But why? Like what is failing so often in new fridges?
Shitty solder in wiring. Plastic for things that used to be aluminium, aluminium for things that used to be steel.
Just cost cutting by value engineers. I remember reading that the 3rd year of a cars model was probably the best, as they’d worked out the kinks in the design and hadn’t watered everything down much… I couldn’t back that up if you wanted a source, however
Source: I work in/with electronics manufacturers
Tl; dr - a mix of value engineering and consumer preference. You wanna buy a $3k TV, or a $700 TV? How rock solid does your automatic sprinkler really need to be, compared to a satellite radio in the Sahel?
Per IPC industry standards, there’s three classes of electronic workmanship/quality control used:
- Class 1: It works, just about. Shoddy soldering is okay as long as connectivity is maintained. Passing a QA test may be as simple as “it runs when powered”. This is where most consumer grade stuff lives: calculators, watches, flashlights, etc.
- Class 2: Better built with generally more QA. Testing usually involves actually checking for function and different modes. Generally used only on commercial/civil government stuff like traffic lights, power controllers, heavy machinery - anywhere where reliability and longevity is worth paying more for.
- Class 3: Complete process control and 100% coverage function (and almost always) burn-in/stress test cycles. Top quality and cost, typically only used for military, aerospace, or medical - where stuff failing means people die.
Thanks, that’s really interesting
We bought our current car used years ago with a similar philosophy - it was the first year of a new change, and they hadn’t changed or recalled anything in the few following years. Combine that with a one car owner locally, and it obviously was a good buy at 17 years old running strong.
But I will say even the best car makes, models, and years have their lemons. You have to look hard at each car’s history and evidence to really win. We got pretty lucky.
Compressors fail way too often nowadays. The higher priced old ones were built sturdier and if they didn’t fail in a year because of a defect they run almost indefinitely.
The idea that they never fail comes from survivorship bias.
All the control boards are always a popular thing to fail. They always cheap out on the components and out the board where it’s done get moisture damage.
Yeah, but can you survive a hydrogen bomb blast in a 1980s fridge? No, you need a 1950s fridge for that.
Thnx Indiana
We called the dog Indiana.
It’s the lead lining.
Remember in Australia, if you’re persistent enough, you could get this replaced under Australian Consumer Law, if something breaks in an unreasonable amount of time (outside of warranty, even). Considering fridges can easily last for 10 years, anything well within that should be fairly easy (but require many, many emails and threatening to taken them to your local small claims) to get replaced.
That is if you can do without a fridge in the meantime 😅
This is not legal advice.
While consumer laws in the US generally suck, there are a few stores that have amazing return policies and go out of their way to please customers, Costco being one of them.
I know a guy who brought back his 10-year-old broken plasma flatscreen TV without a receipt. They replaced it with a new model, no questions asked.
Costco no longer has those return policies on electronics specifically because people abused them.
Yeah. That’s why we can’t have nice things. The US should consider extended warranty rules similar to the EU. But that’s probably too “socialist” or whatever.
Cuts in to the bottom line profits. Can’t have that. The shareholders are more important than your 91 day old bricked TV.
My TV came with a five year warranty - two year manufacturer, two years Costco, and one year from my Costco credit card.
My washer and dryer got seven. Same deal, but Costco was offering an extra extended warranty plan for free.
The best part is that they design their warranties to run consecutively instead of concurrently. Unfortunately, Citi got rid of the extended warranty with the Costco credit cards about a year and a half ago.
In 2016 my parents bought a new microwave oven and gave their old one to me. That new microwave is broken now and the one I got is still operating the same as it did in the 90s.
