We had our kitchen done 17 and a half years ago, with Neff units. Dishwasher has been replaced, although with hindsight it might have been a simple repair. Washing machine motor has been repaired, fridge/freezer replaced a couple of years ago and I've replaced the oven fan heater element three or four times.
It is mostly down to upbringing. My father was rather like me, he would have a go at fixing absolutely anything. Uncles would bring me lots of scrap electrical and mechanical items as toys to explore. Things like altimeters from Lancaster bombers, those battery powered shockers, accordions. Toys would often be electrical or mechanical. What it taught me was to have an enquiring mind, to study things and have a desire to know how things work.
These days everyone has the massive advantage of the internet as a source of information, repair manuals, plus lots of forums some quite specialised, to seek help from others.
I now far exceed my father's abilities and capabilities, when he was alive.
'Built in' is the problem. The reason we've kept 35+ year old machines going is the particular flavour of built-in, being a control panel where the drawer front would go, and a fascia panel where the cupboard door underneath would go, is obsolete. These days 'built in' means the whole front is a door fascia panel. But of course we don't have any spare fronts so we'd have to go for a non-built-in machine, which would look ugly.
The moral of this story is to avoid built-in appliances and have a white kitchen, wherein 'white goods' should fit right in...
There's quite a bit of skill and experience that can go into knowing whether a job is simple, and when it isn't. If you don't have that background, any job can potentially get you into a pickle you don't have the skills to get out of.
Ease of access is a big thing. This dishwasher has the leak under the front shelf bit about 7" off the floor - although that seems to be the point where the water escapes; it could be coming from anywhere inside.
With my knees it was very hard to get down and up again to locate the leak.
Back in the day the white free standing stuff just wheeled out on castors and you could take all the panels up and see inside. You had to make sure that the water and waste pipes and the power lead were long enough for you to pull it out, of course. I haven't dared look at this one in detail so far but it should be the same general principle - slide it out on the adjustable feet and look for panes with screws.
I think a call for an estimate for a repair is in order, followed by a cost/benefit against a replacement.
I am less enthusiastic about repairs these days because life is too short and I could be out enjoying myself (in a limited and specific way, of course).
We've replaced our built-in dishwasher and fridge freezer and been able to use the original fascias.
I balked at Curry's charge to install the dishwasher (think it would have got me two bottles of malt whisky) and said I would do it myself. Great, said my wife, and promptly spent the saved money upgrading to a more expensive model :(
Both the upper and lower grill elements went in the X-years old Whirlpool double oven which was here when we moved in. That was after 5 years of our use.
What interests me is /why/ those elements failed. They have no moving parts and are effectively just wire resistances. Any idea why yours failed? It seems to me the elements must be designed that way; is there something they do to the (nichrome?) wire which almost guarantees it will fail after a few years?
No idea. The failed units sometimes have a bulge or a roughened patch where the failure is. I imagine it's a pretty hard life they get. I sometimes see it glowing bright red through the back panel.
We never use the conventional (non-fan) heating so their elements are still original.
Been thinking back, some appliances must have been questionable quality in the past - say from the 1950s to the 1960s. Or did we just not have materials of adequate resilience?
The Hoover man would visit houses to maintain vacuum cleaners. Replace the rubber band. Replace "headlamp", if needed. Clean it all out and, for good measure, pop a new bag in.
The Morphy Richards toaster got taken round to the local electrician's shop to have the element(s) replaced. Yet again.
The kettle had a new element from time to time.
The iron needed a new cable quite regularly.
No microwave, washing machine, or dishwasher, just a simple Kelvinator fridge, and old-style spiral element hob.
I assume it's the same reason lightbulbs fail. They run at high temperatures. Eventually the material ages (in the case of lightbulbs due to filament evaporation - not sure of the mechanism of a ceramic element but possibly some kind of migration into the substrate) and a positive feedback loop causes thermal runaway and catastrophic failure.
But oven grills run at a lowish temperature - a dull red heat (around
700 - 800 deg C), e. which is about half the melting point of nichrome. They are also supported along their length, unlike an incandescent filament, which runs at yellow-white heat at around 1300 deg C. It also seems to me that toasters run at a higher temperature, but they seem to burn out at a much lower rate than oven grills. Our toaster, for example, is around 25 years old, and is used much more than the oven grill.
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