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A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

mstdn.social

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Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#231

Post by oliwarner »

I think people are taking exactly the wrong things from this.

In demonstration, this fridge full of drawers and runners looks great. In practice, as soon as those metal slides, bearings, runners, etc get cold, normal household air will condense on them. They get wet, they rust, they're suddenly the worst and need replacing. Bearing runners in fridges are just the absolute worst idea.

In the opposite vector, this is why older laundry machines were great: they were simple, powerful machines that never failed because they were just a motor and a rubber band.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#232

Post by photonerd »

taeric wrote: post #90
marricks wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do to your fridges??? I'm in my 30's and have never had to replace a fridge. Never had a "modern" fridge except as a kid. All looked like low budget fridges from the 80's or 90's.

Quality of power supply to your house will almost certainly be one of the bigger factors in how long things last. Combined with standard stochastic behavior, I'd expect anecdotes of both kinds.

I’ve had that kill HVAC for sure (capacitors get fried if you have power issues).

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#233

Post by photonerd »

low_common wrote: post #114
photonerd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had 8 fridges in 22 years, up until my latest I’ve they were all from this supposedly better age. All failed, in some cases disastrously. The only one that’s survived longer than a few years for me ? The new one. Going 6 years strong. Not everything on my new one is perfect—I managed to break the built in water jug—but I feel a lot of the replies here need to take into account survivorship bias.

My parents have lived in their house for 28 years and had to replace the fridge like two or three times. 8 fridges sounds like your house might be part of the problem.

Did they buy them new?

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#234

Post by photonerd »

jy14898 wrote: post #94
photonerd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had 8 fridges in 22 years, up until my latest I’ve they were all from this supposedly better age. All failed, in some cases disastrously. The only one that’s survived longer than a few years for me ? The new one. Going 6 years strong. Not everything on my new one is perfect—I managed to break the built in water jug—but I feel a lot of the replies here need to take into account survivorship bias.

7 fridges over 16 years is crazy, do you live in a hot climate?

Not when they’re old

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#235

Post by adolph »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #79
idlewords wrote: post #8

My girlfriend's mom has a teaching oven (used in home economics classes) from the 1950s. The 'teaching' part mostly means it has a more accurate and detailed temperature gauge. This gas oven is so heavy that light in the kitchen gravitationally lenses around it, but it's still going strong and the best oven I ever used.

On a serious note, how heavy does an object have to be for gravitational lensing or bending to be noticeable with a naked eye? s/visible/noticeable s/noticeable/noticeable with a naked eye s/lensing/gravitational lensing

> On a serious note, how heavy does an object have to be for lensing or bending to be noticeable with a naked eye?

22 grams. That is how heavy my glasses are.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#236

Post by Phrenzy »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #206
ilyt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a level where you don't care about more improvements. Fridge is a box of cold stuff. I don't need much more than that. Sure it could be slightly more efficient but even 20 years old ones are pretty efficient, and I'd rather just slap an extra solar panel or two on the roof rather than replace whole fridge and junk the old one.

> Fridge is a box of cold stuff. I don't need much more than that. The entire premise of TFA is essentially that you're wrong.

I would rather not require the use of my FIDO key to obtain an ice bream sandwich.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#237

Post by kjkjadksj »

bombcar wrote: post #49
ljf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also do entirely plain units that last well with no 'extras' - their commercial units are also great and easy to repair. But most people want to spend as little as they can so avoid the commercial units.

This is it - high quality stuff is often still made, but it's expensive and/or has other downsides that you really do need to be aware of. For example, commercial equipment is often bullet-proof and long-lived, but it can be louder than you'd want in a home kitchen. Commercial dish washers have no noise insulation, get hot, but can wash dishes so fast they can crack them from the temperature changes. Commercial ovens…

I can’t imagine even worse insulation than a normal oven. Whenever I open my broiler door and pull out the drawer I can see the kitchen floor getting the 500* blast straight on.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#240

Post by topspin »

ethbr0 wrote: post #142
marricks wrote: post #5

Some of those fridges are refurbished and still around[1]! It's my dream to own one someday when my fridge from the 90's dies. Every couple years there's a HN link to a blog post about how those appliances were built better in the day. Couple highlights I remember were: - Parts were dipped in paint rather than sprayed leading to fuller and thicker paint coverage - Motors had some changes so were actually built to las…

There was a motor teardown linked on HN at some point. Essentially: electric motors from the 50s were vastly over designed, which meant they were extremely robust to physical failures The larger point about stuff now vs then is likely the use of capacitors. And specifically, cheap capacitors in consumer electronics. Absent electronics, you're talking an order of magnitude longer lifespan.

An anecdote...

Bought a Sony receiver around June 2021. The thing has barely had time to get dusty and its never been over ~20W. It's already dead, or dying at least. The power supply caps are bad and it power cycles itself when it tries to drive the speakers.

It's not a high end model; I'm not an audiophile trying to get 0.001% THD at 10KWs. But lunching itself 25 months into a 24 month warranty... wtf.

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