appliances in 2023

Dryers today use an electronic igniter. Our dryer is probably close to the age of yours. A number of years ago, we had an igniter go bad. I can’t remember the exact repair cost, but it was under $100.00. The problem with Samsung and LG is that you can’t get parts. Two to three months is the average for parts on these brands.

for the tip, I may as well take a look.

The other thing is prior to Saturday, my wife said the dryer seems to take an excessive time to dry, and this may have been happening for a few years? I never really thought about it, i.e. why would it take more than 60 min to dry. Likely it's no longer doing the job....

A common reason for gas dryers to need excessively long times for drying is the dryer vent has a substantial build up of lint. Generally speaking these are easy to check yourself.

I knew about that, but I just forgot. (Guess old age figures into it.)

You did really well with your old dryer lasting as long as it did. The general consensus (e.g. see Consumer Reports) is that major appliances being sold today are not worth a service call to repair 5-10 years out when they're likely to need it. Often key parts are no longer available at a reasonable cost (even in 5-10 years). Sad!

So when I need to replace an appliance, I think in that 5-10 year timeframe: higher-end appliances don't last longer than mid-priced ones, and can have more complicated electronics and features that can be expensive to service, so budget accordingly.

And no, this does not contradict the hard math: service contracts are a very bad buy for appliance owners in the long run.

I have an old freezer which is about 25 years old. When my children got older, we did not use it that much, so I unplugged it and left the door open. Unfortunately, one of my sons closed the door and now I have a mold/mildew problem. As you pointed out, the new appliances are not made as well as the older models and are very expensive. I would like to start using the freezer again (the children are back) and clean it out with a vinegar rinse and use it but I am afraid that the mold/mildew will grow back. Does anyone have an opinion on this.
Thank you.

One of the best things for cleaning refrigerator seals is 3% hydrogen peroxide. That is the strength usually sold in drugstores. Use it straight from a spray bottle. You can sometimes buy it in a spray bottle, otherwise use an old bottle.

The advantage of hydrogen peroxiide over vinegar or ammonia is it isn’t likely to damage the seals. Affter it does its work, dry up the area with a paper towel and allow to dry thoroughly, maybe even speed up the process with a hair dryer. Hydrogen peroxide basically becomes water in short order.

My gas dryer I estimate to be about 50 years old. I replaced a drum belt and tensioner about 5 years ago. The igniter was replaced about 7 or 8 years ago. If I can fix it I will keep it. New does not last. Had a dish washer that needed new racks. The racks cost more than a new dishwasher.

Bleach and water will clean that right up ... use 1/2 cup to two gallons of water.

--

it's the dog's fault

Although bleach appears to do a great job, it can in time damage rubber. This is one of the reasons GE (as an example) states "Do not clean with any products containing petroleum distillates, detergent, bleach or ammonia as they may damage your refrigerator, freezer or standalone icemaker. Also, do not clean plastic parts from your refrigerator, freezer or standalone icemaker in your dishwasher. They do suggest baking soda and water." For the details see https://products.geappliances.com/appliance/gea-support-sear....

I have a Frigidaire refrigerator/freezer that I bought new in 1972 (in Harvest Gold no less! ). It still works fine and the door seals are still good. I have it plugged in in my garage and use it for beer/beverages and garden produce and other overflow items from the main refrigerator in the house. It has an icemaker in the top freezer, but I haven't run a water line out to the garage. I should do that some time just for fun to see if the ice maker still works. I bet it does.

I will try it

My dryer is from the same era as yours. The only problem I've had is the igniter went out. A relatively modest repair cost if I remember right.

Due to age of a refrigerator I bought in 1978, I bought a second new refrigerator about three years ago to replace the old refrigerator as it was getting long in the tooth, so to speak. Plus I wanted a backup fridge in place in case the old one abruptly died. But, like a Timex watch, the 1978 refrigerator takes a licking and keeps on ticking as I'm still using it. The 1978 fridge was a advertised as an energy savings refrigerator at the time I bought it.

the new dryer came and it dries like a you know what. Welcome to the modern era for our family.

You guys called it. The duct had a lot of blockage, and, I even found a sticker/name tag for my son stuck to the inside of the drum where it would exhaust.

I do think a new igniter would likely have fixed it, but, when I looked at the job on youtube, the belt must come out. I replaced it last year.

The belt is simple. Lining up the drum to the door to not have a lot of noise and leakage was 2 hours last time. And, the thing did squeak very badly. So I think it's time. At the same time, I agree that if we have old appliances that keep working, keep them going.

The new one incredibly is lightweight and I hate to admit it, cheaply made down to the control panel (in my choice I stuck with knobs).

There was one review which said he had this model, it broke after 10 years, he was ok with it, and has bought another. I'd be ok with 10 years.

But I have never in my time living here seen the dryer exhaust look so powerful!

Let me ask one last question if I may.

If we always were to run a dryer with a lint screen in place, how would a duct have so much material in it, and require cleaning? I've always thought that in a furnace, if it were never run without a filter, there should be no build up on say the a-coil or evaporator. My 21 year old hvac was replaced in 2020 so I got to see the a-coil ripped out, and it was clean...

Different design goals, hence the terminology of filter vs. screen. In a heating system the filter might be a MERV 11 rating which is designed to capture 95% of the particles between 1 and 3 microns in size. A MERV 8 traps 90% of particles between 3 and 10 microns. A dryer vent is designed to capture the bulk of the lint prior to the heating element and thus reduce the risk of fire. Not much more than window screening to give some idea of the particle size that can get through.

By the way, the furnace filter and the size of the particles captured is one of the reasons why Consumer Reports and at least one government agency say getting your home vent system cleaned is a waste of money except for perhaps a few special instances.

Good question, but a lot of lint always has gotten past the filter in various the dryers we've owned and it builds up on the inside of the vent ducts. In my previous house, it was easy to clean the exhaust duct and vent port, as it was at ground level with only a 3-foot run to the outside of the house. In my current house, it's a royal pain to clean it as the dryer is on the second floor, in the middle of the house with a 25-foot run of exhaust hose to the outside, and it's particularly difficult to reattach this hose to the back of the dryer. I have to use chimney sweep brushes with extension poles and a leaf blower.

It does need to be done every year or two at the most. It will lengthen dry time, put a strain on the dryer, and can lead to a house fire if neglected.

Makes total sense. And something I had never even considered over the last 21 years.

Again I think two things happened this month. The 1984 dryer stopped working, likely to be the igniter, but also the duct was partially clogged. I'll likely just take the entire duct off in about 12 months and see how it looks. If it's too too bad, I'll just spend $20 for a new one. Otherwise, I'll clean it.

I think the case against fixing the old dryer is the squeaking (can be heard on 2nd floor, when dryer in basement), and from experience, the difficulty in lining up the drum with the door panel and opening. I had only replaced the belt last year.

Agreed, I saw the A coil laying on the basement floor as it was cut out of the old system, and it was squeaky clean. Years ago I told a hvac guy I would like to have it cleaned (thought my AC was performing poorly as a result), and he asked me why? And then pointed out you can partially see it with the humidifier removed and didn't recommend cleaning it which he said would be about $300 (imagine a tech not recommending we pay him for nothing). With a filter in place I would suspect a hvac system is quite clean...

Must be why my buddy said it costs $75, and that price is what his HOA at his condo had negotiated...

Is it hard to reattach to the dryer, simply because of where the dryer sits?

I suspect most of us who have dryers are blowing a considerable amount of fine lint out the stack without even realizing it. The question of whether it builds up someplace has a lot to do with the configuration of the entire path from the dryer to the outside.

I had a problem with mice who somehow got into the interior space and were crawling around inside my walls. The people who redid my roof offered to put screens over all the pipes and such that went up in hopes of blocking mice from coming in. Their mistake was that they put hardware cloth over the dryer vent. That disturbed the airflow just enough to precipitate lint out of the air coming through them, which eventually blocked them. As they were getting blocked the air slowed down farther down so lint also built up at an elbow or two in the path up from the laundry room to the roof. By the time I noticed all of this I had to get jointed extension things to get the lint out of the main line, most of which I think would never have built up at all had it not been for the mistaken placement of hardware cloth at the outlet on the roof.

Any fluid that is carrying particles tends to drop some of them when it gets slowed down.

My dryer pushes into a utility closet. Fortunately the outlet of the dryer lines up pretty well with the port on the wall, with no awkward 90-degree turns. (A run of PVC pipe goes from the closet wall under the floor of an adjacent room to outdoors.) I use this flexible duct material to make the connection between the dryer and the wall port:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-Appliances-8-foot-Flexible-Met...
The metal duct is considered safer than the vinyl duct material with the metal coil running through it:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dundas-Jafine-FD420ZW-White-Flexi...
Using the vinyl duct leads to the same issue below in my setup, anyway.

I had to trim the aluminum dryer duct down. The gap between dryer and wall port is just a few inches, but I have to be able to pull the dryer out two feet or so, far enough from the wall with the flexible duct attached so that I can get behind it and work, which is why the material has to be expandable/collapsible and be able to stay attached to the dryer when moved.

When the flexible duct piece is trimmed, it gets rough, sharp enough to cut skin, and you have to pull an inch or two of the trimmed aluminum out at one end for the clamp to attach it to dryer or wall port. The clamp has to be tightened just enough to keep it attached while it's moved, without deforming or breaking anything. It's hard to do. It often takes me several tries of tightening, climbing out over the washer and dryer, pushing in, seeing it come loose, pull the dryer out again, climb over the appliances, repeat and rinse until the clamp stays on in the right position. It's not fun.

I also have to get up on an extension ladder to the second floor to remove the vent cap to do the cleaning. Otherwise I'd just be pushing and blowing lint inside the long run up against the inside of the vent cap. It's amazing how much lint comes out of this long run, and I clean it every year or two.

…that Biden administration in all of its infinite wisdom is looking at putting new standards on gas furnaces, central AC units, dishwashers, and clothes washers. It makes one scratch your head in wonder at the stupidity of it all!

That the ac condenser that I got in 2020, which had a 16 in the model#, is now a 15 in the model number (it closely matches the SEER which is not the condenser alone but also the furnace/evap it's matched with, so ours was 16.5).

Our SUV has 115 cu ft of cargo. The newer model has 98, and GM claimed it's the same size as the standards of measurement had changed.

There's no way that is true, the new model is small on the inside. Our friends got a 2023 only a Chevy, and I can see the cargo is what I would envision 98 to be.

In a couple of years we're planning on stepping up (or not) to a 6.2 Tahoe, which now has 123 cu ft, rather incredible. That's about the same as the previous gen Suburban.

I would argue numbers don't lie, but of course, if we don't understand what they represent, then they are often misapplied. I think the govt. loves to do that figuring we can't understand anything lol

to be honest my decision was mostly cost driven when I went with a 94% instead of a 95% or 96% furnace. Marginal cost needs to be < than marginal benefit, or rather the other way around. But this doesn't apply when it comes to the Federal govt. it would seem.

So are you going to tell us about these 'new' standards, or is this just a political rant?

I thought so.

A new DOE efficiency standard has increased the price of a new furnace by $1000.00 or more. And climate change measures coming from the EPA in 2024 will both raise the cost of refrigerates needed to repair existing systems while further increasing the price of new systems. Also, the new climate friendly AC units will come with increased flammability risks. (My son who is an HVAC Technician has verified this and I just put in a new system which cost me a couple of thousand more this year than it would have cost last year.
Washing machines have had more regulations put on them. Regulations were added in 1994, 2004, 2007, 2015 and 2018 to make them use less water at the expense of not cleaning clothes properly. Some people have even started adding water to the machines so that they have more water in them to clean clothes better.
And then they are looking at condensing vs non-condensing furnaces. Condensing furnaces are more expensive to buy. Of course, they are more efficient, but not everyone needs a condensing furnace. Older houses that were built with a non-condensing furnace can be quite expensive to convert their venting systems over to a condensing furnace system.
And, dishwashers are known to not clean dishes as effectively as the dishwashers of 15-20 ago. They use less water but they take longer to run a cycle. A lot of times you have to rinse the dishes before and after the washing cycle.
So, no political rant. Just quoting facts!

They are also part of the plan to be more efficient. Less water means they don't clean as well so you have to run the washers 2 or 3 times. Gas stoves supposedly create CO2 and are bad for the environment. What will happen especially in winter people will freeze in a power outage. The powers to be want to outlaw propane as well.

I did see that the AC system I got in 2020 (may have been the best time), prices have skyrocketed.

But to others' points, the "number" which we as man often use to measure goodness (look at cars, long ago 580 meant 5.8 liters--the most obscene example is the C63s AMG, which once implied 6.3 liters, is 2 liters for 2024), has gone down. My "16" is now a "15," because the 2023 model is less efficient.

On the hef washers and the entire concept. Why don't marketers make the detergent so concentrated that an eyedropper is used? Human nature is whatever someone says, add a little. How much waste has there been with liquid laundry detergent over decades. The cap has multiple amounts well let's use the highest gradiation and add 20% which likely doubles the amount needed. cha ching!

I often wonder what's for the environment, and what's sheer marketing genius and profits for shareholders and executives!

Because years ago my kid started taking a school bus, did I get curious about how much energy natural gas, propane, and unleaded gasoline had, and their various costs.

With that exercise being completed, I'm planning on getting a 6.2 liter V8 in 2025/2026, and I would never convert a gas grill to natural gas like I've seen some do.

In the not so distant future, a gallon of milk will actually contain 3 quarts..... They already do this with ice cream and a number of beverages. Yet, pricing remains the same or higher as before.

It's called "shrinkflation" and legislation is currently being discussed to regulate it.

^^What's there to regulate? They'll claim this is all result of inflation. This will continue until more competent leadership is in place.

A lot of shrinkflation is just pure greed, using inflation as an excuse to raise prices. The idea is to identify these corporations and tax excess profits.

The president addressed the issue in a press conference earlier this week.

Your guess is as good as mine as to how the government will implement such a plan.

This thread is rather appropriate for me right now. Our 44 year old wall oven gave up the ghost on Christmas day. Luckily, the family dinner had already been prepared. It's so old, parts are no longer available. I've spent almost a week now trying to find a replacement.

I installed the wall oven when I built the house in 1979 and it's the last of the original appliances. Back then, the standard oven width was 24". Now, almost everything is 27" or 30" wide.

To complicate the issue, it's a combination conventional oven with a built in microwave. So far, I haven't been able to find a suitable replacement.

Replacing the oven cabinet with a wider unit would require a major kitchen remodel which we don't want to do. It appears my only option is to get a 24" single oven without the microwave and do some carpentry to fill the empty cavity above. A recessed shelf for a countertop microwave and some shelving for the wife's cookbooks might work.

Looks like I've found my winter project.

I of course don’t know the specifics of what you want but eBay seems to have an assortment of 24 inch units. See https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=24+inch+wall+oven&_sop=...

Thanks for the suggestion.

There are many 24" ovens available, but no name brand 24" combination oven / microwave units.

Investigate what you consider “name brand”. I see for instance some units by Haier. I’m generally in favor of buying American but wiki says Haier by 2020 had been the world's number one home appliance brand for 12 consecutive years. One of those brands included some General Electric appliance offerings.

It's not so much the brand but more about service. I live in a rural area and getting service for many "lesser known" brands is impossible. Even Samsung, which is sold locally by Home Depot, will not provide service here.

I think this is highly unethical. Don't get me started!

we've done over 10 loads and loving the new dryer. Set it a h).air before less dry, and it will stop on its own at the proper dryness (optimum spins for a while while already dry).

Who knows if the "knobs" are the difference haha

Outside on the grass, there is lint. This clearly means lint gets past the screen. Now I know. I will check that duct in 10-12 months. It's 8' and I can completely remove it. I can even spend the $20 to replace it if needed.

As I see it, you have something that doesn’t work, or the ability to consider some other well known and established brands in the USA. I mentioned Haier and although I have no personal experience I believe they have a decent service network in the States.

You’ve mentioned Samsung as having poor service where you live. In my area (Philadelphia) Samsung took a major hit during the pandemic due to supply chain issues. “Independents” would provide service but a part might take six months. The service provider got the bad ratings (as opposed to the real cause) so moving forward they chose not to work on Samsung Products. LG is another in our area where service is virtually unattainable.

These days, and with many products, it’s a crapshoot. I’m blessed with a parts place nearby and they tell me the brands to buy. Their general advice is to buy a brand where thousands of units have been sold. That concept is mainly because of common parts used across many brands.

I bought a Haier chest freezer a few years ago. It lasted about 15 or 16 months before it died. I didn’t buy another one! However, with that being said, I understand that Haier makes a decent window air conditioning unit.

A Hotpoint (not sure who really makes it but I googled and the brand is British?) chest freezer.

It's been more than a year and never has been defrosted...I cringe at the thought. It's 9 cu ft.

I learned with it that chest freezers are different. Ours is 10F at best. It takes time to freeze items.

Whereas the normal refrigerator/freezer is -5F to 3F, and it freezes things very fast. I do have much more of an appreciation on how and that warm items place a load on the devices...

It's amazing how much laundry my wife likes to do but that dryer is hanging in there, and brings so much pleasure in how fast things are dried now. I also saw lint on the grass so lint clearly makes it past the filter.

Hotpoint, unless old, is probably made by Haier which is Chinese.

On the freezer only getting down to 10 deg F. frost on the coils INSIDE is a very common reason for this. The 2nd most frequent cause is dust collecting on the coils that are OUTSIDE the freezer. I’m not familiar with the Hotpoint but the outside coils are sometimes at the very bottom of the unit behind a grill but sometimes are on the back. There are special brushes for cleaning those coils. They are long, relatively small in diameter, and sometimes are tapered. You use the same brush on the refrigerator. I clean mine about 2X a year. I used to have to do it about 4X a year when I had a pair of beagles.

Said from his experience chest and upright freezers are totally different.

I said well with the chest the oldest stuff is on the bottom, very inconvenient. He said true, but when you open the lid, things stay cold, unlike the upright.

The way I see it is say you load up a chest freezer to 80% full at room temp, and start it. It's gonna take way more time for the things on the top center to reach their frozen state than if you place the same items into a freezer where there is a fan blowing over the evaporator.

On the gas dryer, I did not know our sensor was by temp. the other model is by moisture. I thought we had the latter. The price I think was a $20 difference.

I think the big complaint about trouble fitting condensing (high-efficiency implies condensing) furnaces to older houses very much depends on the details of the house. In our house built in 1985 by good luck there was negligible trouble finding a condensate line routing for either of the two furnaces. We very much enjoy how much better the furnaces heat.

Unless I am mistaken, the BTU rating is actually for input consumption, so when you get higher efficiency in actual service you actually get more net heat into your house for a given rating. On our case our original furnaces could not heat the house up usefully fast on a cold morning, and the news ones can, so on this point color me a fan.

See below for content from the Hotpoint website. Note that I've added the bold to some content to distinguish between chest models not having a drain tube but they do have a drain plug. Perhaps it best to check the manual for your specific freezer. I have found when doing mine I put all the stuff on the floor (concrete) and then cover it with some furniture pads. The stuff remain frozen for the roughly four hours the freezer needs to fully defrost. I do have to be around in that the pan I use has to be emptied several times.

"GE and Hotpoint chest freezers are manual defrost models. They do not have a defrost drain tube or a drip pan underneath.

For manual defrost chest freezers, the freezer has a defrost drain plug. The defrost drain plug pulls out (it is not a screw type plug). On some models, the drain plug has a drain hole and you just pull the drain plug out about an inch (you do not completely remove it). Defrost water will flow out of the drain plug. For other models, the defrost drain plug is completely removed and the defrost water flows directly from the defrost drain.

Got into this 2020 when we got the 94% furnace and new AC. When our houses use the space in between joists sealed by flashing, as the returns, it simply cannot be that efficient for airflow.

If you look at our houses, we have shared driveways going in between single family homes (built 1952).

This means one person's condenser is on the left, one on the right.

The homes themselves are reversed, position of each room, the way the doors swing open, etc.

So, my AC condenser is installed on the west side of the home, imho the worst possible place as far as the sun being able to shine on it. The neighbor is in the best case, the east.

But this has to do with where the furnaces are in the basement, and having a short line set from the evaporator to the condenser. With high efficiency sealed combustion, there must be limits as well on the pvc going to the outside.

Does this translate to dollars? I really don't know but would suspect not really. The coils are still shielded by plastic and metal.

Honestly it's darn near impossible to compare using just utility bills year over year because the conditions were different. But I love the idea of 94% efficiency over 78%. In the real world, it got over $200/mo to cool the house, and I've never seen over $120 with the new system. I've seen heating to $300/mo, but have never seen over $220. Again, the numbers are not reliable but they are valid.

You could actually say, those monthlies are high for such a small home. Yes, because it's not efficient as far as being insulated from the outside.

Our chest freezer has a plug, but after one year of use, there is virtually no frost. It's set to 4 (again with numbers pretty useless I know) and I don't want to touch it. I believe that the temp at the edges and bottom, will be colder than at the top where I have placed a thermometer. imho it will take a huge amount of work to make that thermometer -5F like the upstairs freezer below the fridge.

forget if I mentioned it here or not, but I never even considered Costco for the gas dryer, yet I am a Costco fanboy.

Costco would have been $35 cheaper (about 5%), would have earned 2% rebate (another $15), and they would have automatically extended the warranty to 2 years.

The only disadvantage, is if you were gonna pick it up yourself, dispose of the old yourself, and install yourself. Because Costco includes all of the above, it's not a la carte like the other big boxes.

So....

I own Lowe's stock but always shop The Home Depot.

Now, I will use HD's website to look up product info, and buy it from Costco...

We were given an old Inglis gas dryer and they had had it for 15 years.We got it and other than replacing a belt,drum rollers and drive motor all for about $75.00 we finally replaced it about 4 years ago.The new one is a Maytag gas and has just the basic settings and works great so far.The electronic ignition is a much improved feature than a pilot light and no pilot flame blowouts.

still working fine.

Ours has a temp sensor, not a moisture sensor.

Some of the logic still unsure about. Say the cycle stops on own, but isn't dry.

From what I can tell, if setting using sensor, and started again? It won't stop when it should. Timed dry should be used at this point. Not sure what the logic is.

But overall, the sensor dry is approximate, and does stop on its own.