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The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

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Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#71

Post by jacknews »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #45
moandcompany wrote: post #14

It's hard to maintain a revenue stream if your product is good enough to last, so the products are engineered to either be part of a subscription, to be replaced far sooner than necessary, or both. They're worried more about their revenue sustainability than they are actual product "sustainability." The "buy-it-for-life" brands ran into this problem because once you sell someone the classic product, they aren't going…

> It's hard to maintain a revenue stream Appliance manufacturers survived most of the 20th century making reliable products for a smaller global population. On the other hand, it's hard to have never ending quarterly profit growth without planned obsolescence to create extra demand that normally wouldn't exist.

Indeed, the root of the problem is financialization.

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#72

Post by pvdoom »

rglover wrote: post #48

The downstream reality of globalization and JIT. Push domestic labor overseas to eek out more profits, the products reduce in quality, and you get the surface-level appearance of making more money. Really, though, you're just long-term increasing the cost of everything else because what you save in labor, you lose in shipping costs, returns, customer support, and inflation of your national currency (more money printi…

Its not really the move overseas itself that reduce in quality, its the conscious choice to both use cheaper materials and provide less training to that cheaper labor.

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#73

Post by b112 »

NackerHughes wrote: post #68
ptek wrote: post #37

The annoying thing is that you see arcticles in paper and clips on tv that you have to upgrade all your old equipment from the 60s so you can "save energy". Who wants some iFridge/iOven when the equipment made in the 60s was built to survive two zombies apocalypse and one nuclear war and won't connect to the internet for a firmware update. Also the CIA can't hack your fridge so you get salmonella from your chicken be…

I am very curious as to whether the money you save in energy bills from today’s more ‘energy-efficient’ appliances outdoes the money spent in replacing the things so much more frequently. Older appliances may cost more to run but it’s possible they pay themselves off by virtue of not having to re-buy them every few years. Speculation, of course. I wonder if anyone’s done the math on this.

I'm not sure if you meant this, but I wonder too.. from the perspective of:

- energy loss in resource extraction and refinement (steel, aluminum, plastic, etc, etc)

- manufacturing energy use

- shipping energy use

- disposal energy costs of old device (including recycling costs)

- all the pollution in the above, versus pollution from local energy sources

It's entirely possible that an energy efficient fridge that lasts 2 years, could cost more energy than a fridge from the 60s that keeps on running.

So outside of "cash cost" even the energy cost may be higher!

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#74

Post by nolist_policy »

jacknews wrote: post #60
Freedom2 wrote: post #59

This is why I manufacture a lot of my own appliances these days. The parts are all available online, and I trust my engineering moreso than manufacturers these days.

Fridges and washing machines and so on? Have you documented any of the builds? I would be very interested in open-source plans like this, and joining (or helping form) a community around the idea of appliances built to last, or more importantly, using modular standard parts and designed for repair.

Didn't know the Finger is active on HN :)

https://www.fingers-welt.de/gallerie/eigen/maschine/kaffee2/...

With hilarious quotes like:

> The first test produced the following conclusion: perfect fountain. The valve distributed the coffee perfectly outside the cup, the inside remained completely dry. So a “coffee deflector” had to be installed around the outlet.

> Somehow the thing is starting to look like a construction site compressor... Well... In the meantime I've brewed my first coffee on the moped. Tasted like crap. After some optimizations to the software, the second cup tasted better, but not as much as I thought it would.

> An increase in the pump pressure resulted in the hose bursting from my boiler and I was suddenly standing in a white cloud. GRMPF!

There is a video too.

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#75

Post by trashtester »

quatrefoil wrote: post #53
giantg2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years," That's the point - only junk fridges would need to be worked on in the first 5 years. I know if a freezer from the 80s and a fridge from the 60s that have never seen a technician in their lives. At this rate, that one from the 60s will probably have a longer lifespan than I will.

Appliance repairmen existed in the 1980s, we probably had more of them per capita than we do now, and they had their hands full. The idea that it's often easier to toss out an appliance than to repair it is a newer trend...

Actually, from my personal experience, the biggest decline in durabilty for many types of appliances happened during the 1980s, and may have started in the late 70s.

Btw, half of the problem was that repairs really started to require more specialized knowledge and equipment around that time, due to a sharp rise in the use of electronic components to control anything from a hair dryer to a car. To some extent this was the cost of progress, but it's pretty clear that manufacturers saw the benefit in either preventing repairs to force customers to buy new or to profit from "authorized" repairs in various ways.

And as both salaries and income taxes went up quickly in the 80s where I lived, qualified technicians went up in price much more quickly than the machines they repaired.

There was perhaps one thing pulling in the opposite direction during that decade, though, and that was the high interest rates. If you had to borrow money to get something new, repairing the old one (whether it was a TV or a car) still made sense

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#76

Post by petra »

iio7 wrote: post #51

I have a friend who works in production. I cannot remember exactly what his education is, but it's a type of engineer. If you want something produced that you have invented, he can get it done. He has mentioned that they have software that can calculate the average lifespan of the finished product by entering the different components that goes into the product (like this piece has this amount of iron, this amount of…

That software sounds great! Can individuals or small organizations get access to that software ? How ?

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#77

Post by larsrc »

quatrefoil wrote: post #49
dryanau wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This day and age, the knowledge is at our fingertips. I don't feel this way at all. I don't know how to access information about products that I know to be unbiased. I can certainly find comparison websites and blog posts, some of which I'm sure are unbiased, but it's not clear to be how to reliably ascertain which is which.

Have you honestly tried? Product reviews were never the right place to look, because they don't get published after 10 years of use. But unlike in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s, you are one search away from appliance repairman forums that lay it bare. I confess to not having done this when I first bought my LG appliances, but that's on me. And then when they broke and I called a number of SF Bay Area appliance repair sh…

I always try to research my appliance purchases, but longevity info is decidedly not at my fingertips. Had not considered appliance repairman forums, that's a nice idea (until it gets commonly known and then abused).

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#78

Post by larsrc »

fhe wrote: post #17

on the other hand, my 10 year old mac mini still runs fine, although it no longer supports the latest OSX and many of the more recent APP's. But as a media/entertainment device, light duty file server, and even coding the occasional throwaway program, it comfortably holds its ground.

We just got a new Mac as our fourteen year old iMac is not getting Chrome security updates any more. Otherwise runs fine. Kudos to Apple there.

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#79

Post by distances »

quatrefoil wrote: post #53
giantg2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years," That's the point - only junk fridges would need to be worked on in the first 5 years. I know if a freezer from the 80s and a fridge from the 60s that have never seen a technician in their lives. At this rate, that one from the 60s will probably have a longer lifespan than I will.

Appliance repairmen existed in the 1980s, we probably had more of them per capita than we do now, and they had their hands full. The idea that it's often easier to toss out an appliance than to repair it is a newer trend...

It's a straightforward outcome thanks to dropping prices of household electronics. If a new car was the price of a new dishwasher, that would signal the end of car repair shops too.

Re: The lifespan of large appliances is shrinking

#80

Post by larsrc »

Freedom2 wrote: post #59

This is why I manufacture a lot of my own appliances these days. The parts are all available online, and I trust my engineering moreso than manufacturers these days.

That probably voids any kind of accident insurance. One house fire and you're homeless. One injury to another person and you're facing millions in bills.
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