Yes please!
Yes please!
Comments
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There is a nonprofit org called Open Source Ecology that is aiming to create what they call the "Global Village Construction Set", a collection of basic industrial machines required for modern living, designed in a way where everything can be built DIY by a single community (Including modular generators). I imagine that they have a plans for home appliances, I think as of now they're still working on construction equipment.
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That's so cool. Yeah I've been thinking a great design strategy would be to build exclusively out of commonly accessible parts. Like, even repurpouse car parts if they're more accessible, or use arduinos as the microcontrollers.
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The thing about, say, a washing machine is there's not a ton else that has a hefty spider/shaft/tub combo like that. The forces involved in spinning a few kilos of clothes isn't trivial. I've been harbouring thoughts of open source appliances for a while.
What I kind of feel might be viable are modular, generic controller boards for dryers/washing machines/dish washers.
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Love the concept but doesn’t seem to have many plans.
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It does seem to have fizzled out a bit, sadly. They need to collaborate with other established groups doing similar things, IMO.
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I think this is the way you have to do it. Open hardware designs. If you make a product that's so reliable that it never breaks, it's a product where you never get repeat business. If it's a super simple thing that doesn't need or get new features, you can never sell someone an upgrade. That's great for the consumer, but not great for the appliance maker. So, there's always an incentive for them to enshittify.
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There’s a huge demand from consumers for that. Just not from investors.
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Investors need not be shareholders, to be fair.
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But does it have AI?
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My washing machine and dryer likes to throw about AI. The model came out around or just before the current LLM craze started, and I'm guessing they wanted to capitalise on the buzzword.
AI in the case of my washing machine means that it keeps track of the time and day of week, and what washing programmes I tend to run within a certain timeframe. It then suggests that programme when you turn it on. For the dryer, AI means "suggest the programme matching what the washer just washed."
Lately the washer has taken to flash "AI Cycle Complete" on its stupid little screen whenever it completes a wash, even if I keyed in every single setting myself. Such AI.
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Nothing has Ai. Everything that does refuses to explain what their use of that term means. It's like buying the name brand cereal over the generic because someone slapped an "asbestos free" sticker on it.
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"No enshitification" is the new top tier marketing strategy.
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Although intense marketing is a sign of enshittification 🤔 Perhaps looking at the ownership structures would almost be a better startegy. AFAIK enshittification predominantely affects publicly traded corpos.
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100%!!! Gotta feed those shareholders pockets!
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these exist, see speed queen
the cost is going to be higher, though, because "smart" widgets can offset their initial costs through the projeted sale of the data harvested over the life of the widget
most people being ignorant to this and to the inevitable issues with corporate-built "smart" widget infrastructure, the cheapest option will generally be the most popular
my inner doctorow says that the twiddlers did this on purpose to undermine competition, especially considering the attempts to keep those widgets from being liberated
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ding ding ding
there can be no (valid) competition against capitalistic cronyism.
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The same thing is happening with cars. Good luck trying to get a new unconnected vehicle, and good luck to the company who plans to sell them.
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I think the price difference has more to do with scale than it does data. The main reason good, simple products can't be cheaper is because the small companies who make them can't put in the same gigantic bulk orders of raw materials, nor do they have the specialized manufacturing processes or assembly lines.
The data is damn near an afterthought. Putting a touchscreen on a fridge is a great way to pretend a piece of shit is a premium product. If they can scrape your data too, then for sure they'll go for it, but the main reason the screen is on there is because most people are still buying that shit.
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This kind of anti-enshittification marketing is starting to gain traction I think.
A big part of Valve's launch was saying stuff like "of course you can run whatever you want on it, it's yours!"
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thats just the first step of enshittification!
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Unshittyify and Reshittify. Back and forth forever ))<> ((
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I think you're being down voted because of Valve being used as the example and they have been seen as the exception to the rule.
Your point, though, is valid.
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So if that happens install a different distro.
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Until private equity gets their grubby paws on the company.
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Make that shit a self-funded slow growing cooperative.
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Or at the very least steward ownership
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The Sims did it first, except the brand was called "Justa". Justa dishwasher. Justa fridge.
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Ahead of their time.
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It's the Linux philosophy in appliances. I'm down.
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I want to produce boxed recipes under a product line named "Jamaican"
- Jamaican a pie
- Jamaican mac and cheese
- Jamaican chicken with mushroom gravy
I also wanna make a perfume line named "Eureka," following the same general idea but with awfully generic scent names
- Eureka flowers
- Eureka citrus
- Eureka chicken with mushroom gravy
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What Jamaican?
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I just want everything with a heating element to use a heat pump instead. Electric heating elements are so horribly inefficient and wasteful in comparison.
I have a ventless heat pump combo washer/dryer. It takes up half the space that two machines would, plugs into a regular 110V outlet, gets HOT (way hotter than I expected a heat pump has any right to achieve), drains all its drying water into the drain, vents none of my indoor air outside, doesn't require changing laundry from one machine to the other. Practically and mechanically it seems brilliant and I can't imagine why I would ever buy a traditional machine ever again. Except...
It's chock full of horrible apps and shit that I'll never use. It's way too "smart", and those "smarts" are not there for my benefit. After a month or two it finally gave up trying to pester me to connect it to a network and install the app, which I'll never, ever do. It's never going to see an update or new firmware if I can help it, but I'm afraid that if/when it ever breaks, I'll have no choice. I know it's going to do things like eventually refuse to work until the computer has been "updated" to be "compatible" with new parts. And it's not even just that it's going to be expensive. It's that I don't trust it, and I don't trust it to remain functional in the future, even if there are parts, that they won't let me install the parts, or will require me to agree to play by their "rules" before I can.
Right to repair needs to be a thing, and people need to be able to break the ridiculous amount of both legal and practical control these manufacturers have over their devices after they've left the factory. We cannot and should not trust the manufacturers to support it. We need to allow independent repair.
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Heat pumps require a line to the outdoors, which may not be possible to create for existing use cases.
Also, if I recall, hot water heaters that use heat pumps can’t actually get hot enough to completely heat the water and rely on electricity a bit. Therefore, I’m not sure everything with a heating element (ie. stovetop, oven, espresso machine, etc.) would work for that.
Edit: for those downvoting, please link me where I can buy a heat pump oven and stovetop. Would really like to install one.
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Incorrect, no connection to outdoors is required for these appliances. In the case of the ventless combo, it literally hooks up to nothing other than the standard washing machine hookup. 1 normal 15 amp power outlet, 1 hot water hose, 1 cold water hose, 1 drain hose. No dryer vents, no other tubes or hoses, no drilling or cutting, no changes at all required. It is literally a drop-in replacement for any washer, but it also dries, with a heat pump, powered from the same circuit the washer uses and the same drain the washer uses.
Also, let me blow your mind a little bit: theoretically, the cold water main running to your house contains enough heat energy to completely heat your house all winter on its own. It is cold to us, but thermodynamically it's a goldmine and you have an extremely generous supply of it. Water represents an enormous reservoir of heat, and you can play some really fun games with latent heat of evaporation and condensation (which is exactly how heat pumps work in the first place). Dehumidifiers add as much or more heat to a room than a space heater does, using a fraction of the electrical power. That's the power of the heat contained in water. I'm not saying that a heat pump dryer is doing this with your water supply, simply pointing out that once water is in play, it becomes way more of a complex issue than performance figures on paper actually represent.
Obviously, clean drinkable water is also a scarce resource, so using it directly for any form of heating would be wasteful in its own way, but the point is that it would be technically possible. Including water in the discussion adds a lot of really interesting possibilities to the way we manage heat and energy, and we will eventually need to start understanding how much heat we literally throw away down the drain and how wasteful that actually is. And in the process we'll learn to save some money and maybe even make our lives a bit more convenient.
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Heat pumps absolutely do not need to connect indoors and outdoors, every fridge and freezer is just a heat pump connected to a box.
Ive had a ventless heat pump clothes dryer, about 5 years ago, maybe 6. Technically it made the room it was in slightly colder while it ran, but that heat from my house was just concentrated inside the box and then allowed to escape back into my house.
I also think there have been advances in heat pump technology either with the refrigerant used to transfer the heat or with cascading systems that run multiple loops with different heat capacity so that one loop takes room temp water to "warm" temps and a secondary loop takes the "warm" water to hot.
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I think they mean appliances that don't necessarily heat an area but heat is a function of their purpose.
In the example given, a combo washer dryer, it is not necessary to have a link to the outside it merely uses the ambient air as it's source of heat, The same is also common among heat pump water heaters.
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I thought electric heaters were 100% efficient? All the electricity you put into it becomes heat yeah?
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Yea but heat pumps have a coefficient of performance of greater than 1 cause you're moving heat instead of generating it.
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Yeah my heat pump is something like 2000% efficient. It can cheat because it doesn’t convert electricity into heat, it uses electricity to move heat from the outside to the inside (or vice versa).
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So, 1 kwh electric energy to an electric heater produces 1 kwh of heating energy.
So to give you an idea how a heatpump would do: looking at my heat pump's data registers right now, it says it used 3.6 kwh electric energy in the last hour to produce 12.7 kwh heating energy (air to water).
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What brand is it? I want a heat pump dryer, but I don't like "smart" stuff.
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GE Profile PFQ97HSPVDS. Not a sponsor, and not even a recommendation. It feels icky even admitting it. The only reason I am mentioning it at all is because I did manage to get it to (eventually) stop aggravating me about installing the app and connecting it to wifi and now it just works without annoyance as it should have from day one, and I recognize the possibility of having access to that feature alone may be valuable to someone. I can't guarantee the one you buy now will even act the same way, as these things can be and are updated without notice.
I found some third-party home assistant stuff for GE smart home products on github if that's important to you, but I haven't even tested it for this as it still involves the appliance phoning home and everything is still gatekept through GE's website and like I said I refuse to ever let this thing touch any form of internet connection or wireless.
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For maintainability heat pump dryers are shit though. You can't take the heat pump condenser out and thus you cannot properly clean it 😐. If you get lint stuck in there it starts reeking. The old condensers you could just take out and rinse.
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A total absense of tech would be bad for a washing machine. With a really simple conductivity sensor (basically just two electrodes on the sides of a plastic pipe) and an opacity sensor (an IR LED and an LDR on opposite sides of a clear pipe), you can measure how much stuff is dissolved in water and how much insoluable stuff is suspended. That then means that you can keep circulating the soapy water until it stops getting dirtier, then keep rinsing it out until it stops getting cleaner, which then means you can have the cycle times adjust themselves to how soiled the load is, instead of just making them as long as the worst case scenario might require and wasting energy, water, and time on an average load.
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My husband loves building elecronics. And there's a lot of cool low-tech tech. I feel like basic circuit board stuff should be allowed, as it can be easy to repair if you know how. Just have the schematics available.
The problem for me is when it needs an Internet connection for remote access on top of a lot of flimsy parts that wear out too quickly.
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My parents had a washer/dryer combo(LG I think?) that required internet to work at all. They just connected it when they first got it and didn’t realize connectivity was required until there was an internet outage. They promptly replaced it with separate Maytags that’s so far seem to be pretty hardy.
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as it can be easy to repair if you know how
i think this is a typical "just install linux" situation. While to you it might seem simple, you're vastly overestimating most people's affinity to tech.
It really reminds me of this meme:
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I think ive never seen a washing machine that doesnt do a pre-determined amount of cycles. That exists? And I thought I had a rather sophisticated washing machine.
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I think the way it normally would work would be to do the existing steps for a bit longer if necessary or stop them early if possible, but the washing machine I've got at the moment sometimes gets its timer all the way to one minute and then adds an extra ten and starts rinsing again. In theory, that should be less likely to happen if you're separating the washing by soiling levels like the manual says, but some of my family don't believe the manual.
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And easier to repair, too.
A GE washing or drying machine from 30 years ago has easily removable panels, about 4 to 6 screws each and large easily identifiable parts, but one from a couple of years ago requires the top to be propped up or secured and the panels removed in a specific order such that you can them remove the internal plastic panels through which wires need to be dismounted around the drum with like 8 or more screws each of varying sizes and when it comes time to put it back together I hope you've got more than three arms because fuck you thats why.
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There's tradeoffs - simplicity, repairability, efficiency.
Take washers, for example. I was looking at Speed Queen washers to replace mine. On paper they are great, more durable. But it turns out that while they have physical knobs and switches, newer models still hide a circuit board inside, so the gap between commercial and consumer models is shrinking (and not in the direction we want.)
The Speed Queen washers also have nearly half the capacity of off the shelf consumer washers, and use twice the amount of water and electricity. I did the math, and at the current utility and washer prices I'd break even replacing the washer every 5 years.
Furthermore, the local appliance repair shop that I trust told me it could take them weeks to get replacement parts for Speed Queen. For a laundromat that's not a huge deal when it's one washer out of twenty, for a single machine home it's a problem.
Yes, I do wish that consumer appliances were more reliable. But barring that, the next best thing is easily and quickly repairable, and on that matter there's brands that are qualitatively and quantitatively better in that regard than others.
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I also want to point out that for some products (such as smart phones) there's an additional trade-off between repairability and quality:
When you have screws in your phone instead of having everything glued together, that means you have additional moving parts and probably gaps between the parts, where water can enter and cause corrosion. If everything is glued together, it's not repairable but it's also less likely that it needs to be repaired because there's fewer problems to begin with.
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There's a supermarket in Canada, that has a brand like that. It's bright yellow and black and only has the product name in bold writing on it.
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Loblaw's and their subsidiaries. The brand is literally called No Name (Sans Nom). It always gave me a chuckle when I lived in Canada.
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Obligatory fuck the Loblaws, but the No Name thing is a neat concept and certainly very recognizable.
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Great marketing from a terrible company
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and sometimes it's actually good value!
I still don't buy it because fuck Loblaws, though
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Fuck Loblaws.
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Maybe not only just work for 15+ years. But allow parts to be purchased and easy manuals to read for at home repairs.
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It's now required by law in Europe that spare parts needs to be available for at least 10 years.
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That's been a law in the US for cars for ages.
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This specifically makes me so much more likely to buy a product.
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seriously, being able to fix the washer/dryer ourselves has saved us so much money
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I'd go even further and say, release documentation that shows how to DIY new parts from scrap you got laying around or can find in construction debris and junkyards.
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Deshittification
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50/50 chance it sells at a premium compared to other models, making the entire idea useless
Source: Like every project that pretended to do this with their respective market
Why the hell is a light phone more expensive than a mid to high range model smartphone. I'd rather just buy that and swap the ROM if I want to remove google.
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Economies of scale and not capturing data as part of your profit model
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Yeah I know my sample size is pretty useless, but this was just a dumb excuse to complain about light phone because even SMB manufacturing cost wise, it should be almost comically cheap to produce.
There are lots of other hardware accessories in the same range that cost much less to buy as a consumer, that are produced by more expensive vendors.
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Where do I sign up?
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He'll be out of business in a years time!
Seriously a great idea though. I'd buy all their stuff.
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The reason is that they will be so durable that you buy one and it'll be an heirloom for multiple generations.
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Since it would make small quantities (at least at the start) and with better materials, I bet it would be also more expensive so maybe it evens out.
I would also buy it, I'm tired of household items that randomly break and the manufacturer doesn't care.
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If you want this today, SpeedQueen has decent models that last forever and are very simple.
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Great idea for a quick cash grab but then you will lose growth. You will run into insta pot problems where the product was too good and lacked room for innovation. But someone should do it anyways.
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I would be totally cool with running a business like that. I don’t need to be making more and more every year if I have enough money to be comfortable, and I’d feel way better if I was in charge of a company making products that respect their user.
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The unfortunate truth of modern business is that if you’re not growing, you’re on the path to failure. If we weren’t societally so fixated on profits, I could see lots of companies making “forever” products, but this sadly isn’t the case.
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So what are you doing with your employees when your company is done selling products to users? Just lay everyone off?
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Maybe treat it like a business instead of a "quick cash grab" like instapot did? They should have used those early profits to diversify into other product areas. When demand for home cooking equipment predictably fell after COVID, they weren't prepared.
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Is instant pot losing money on their product? I just got one last month and it’s been amazing for making meat tender and making bone broth.
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That's their problem: their product is very good and very reliable, which means once everyone who wants one has one, there's no more demand.
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No, but investors tend to treat companies as either growing or dying. If you have a boring and reliable product you're going to saturate the market at some point, which means that revenue will fall. Arguably there's still a lot of value in sticking around selling replacements as people break things, but this is nowhere near as lucrative as the growth phase.
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A government should do it, then share the designs so that repair shops can do their jobs better. People should be employed by repair shops, not that much in factories that produce disposable crap. After spreading the product to the population, the factories should slow down and produce repair parts, while the workers move to the repair shops.
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Just Uncomplicated Socialist Tech
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My refrigerator is still going strong at 22 years
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45 years here. It's loud as fuck but it still keeps things cool.
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That's like Ali G saying he invented the PlayStation 2 because he thought about it when the playstation came out.
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I was annoyed as a kid when I independently came up with the idea of a flying car then found out that the world beat me to it.
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My million dollar idea is a teleporter.
You walk in and get teleported.
Gibe moneeis nao plz
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That happened to me a few years back, a friend just had his clutch fail in his car. I started thinking how to make a better way to transfer power from motor to wheels.
Turns out I just reinvented the fluid coupling used in automatic transmissions.....needless to say my idea wasn't that impressive after that.
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Someone didn't have a childhood where they only watched the Jetsons and the Flintstones
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I thought about this too. People are sick of this shit.
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Gonna have to rebrand all that to Just A Dream, unless you have a plan to secure the capital to start that all up, and also somehow not be beholden to short term profit crazed investors who will change that business model.
Hooray! Hypercapitalist Realism!
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IANAL but somehow I get the feeling that entering those industries as a new guy would be a real pain in the ass at the patent office.
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Just commenting that you said IANAL and "pain in the ass" and I'm still laughing
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They might not be a lawyer, but they still know what they are talking about
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Patents tend to last 20 years. Most major appliances probably don't have any currently valid patents that are likely to get in the way unless you're trying to make them "smart."
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For what do they need a patent?
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It's more "whose patents will they inadventently end up using?"
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No technology huh?
So a bucket, washboard, mangle, and piece of string for laundry.
An ice box or cellar for refrigeration
And an open fire for cooking.
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bucket, string, washboard
No. Just a pond you have to jump into. We said no technology.
ice box or cellar
Exfuckingcuse me?
an open fire
Nothing penned in. Has to be wild and burning down the village.
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Pretty sure all of those could as technology too, except maybe the fire.
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I thought multiple times about resurrecting this: https://www.lincrevable.com/en/
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What happened to it?
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The story section page 1 more entry in the French version than in the English version: project was suspended in Feb 2020 because they couldn't find an industrial partner. 🙁
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Ooh a company that sells refrigirators that don't suck. Call it "suckless."
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Terrible vacuüm cleaner range though
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Just can't branch out into vacuums. Unless sold as the Suckless Sux-a-lot
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Still a great dad joke for any brand of vacuum cleaner: "This thing sucks."
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you could call them "anglo-sucksons". would also be a cool name for a gay bar
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"only stuff that sucks at our company are the vacuum cleaners"
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It would be more feasible to de-fang modern appliances.
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That’s a legit great idea. Create a new firmware for smart TVs too.
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People always call me crazy but I buy commercial displays. You can get them cheaper if you do it the right way. So speakers, no tuner, no smart functions, usually only 1 or 2 inputs, and basically no bells or whistles.
But that's how I like it, so I don't care if it makes me 🤣😧🤣😧
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There might be some liability concerns if you run a open source firmware on your washing machine and it decides to never shut off the water inlet...
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Similar to my idea called to make a clothing brand called “brandless”
No logo, no graphics, no distinguished designs
Just plain basic clothes in basic colors, using fabrics that last.
No itchy washing label either. All product information in detail available on site. At most a product number printed or sown on the inside.
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I mean Uniqlo is kinda like this. No brand (at least in most of their basic stuff, I‘m not counting their new shit), long lasting and not expensive
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Their new shit isn't long lasting either.
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Muji does this. The name basically means no brand in Japanese. Check them out
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There already was a company called Brandless that tried to do the same thing with basic groceries like ketchup and paper towels. Looks like they're in the process of getting back to market, but seems like they had the same mindset.
Would be really nice to have something similar for clothes.
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There's the unbrandedbrand.com that does this for denim.
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I'll invest in this guy today.
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I've been pondering if one could make open source controllers to replace the "smarts" in these with something that actually just does the job, and even customizable. With different sensor addons/adapters for different makes and models.
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"no tech"
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I've been thinking about this for a while now, how I just want a basic removed electric car. No centre console, no futuristic screens, no sensors, no cameras. Give me a normal fucking car with dials, a speedo, some padles on the steering wheel to adjust power output to replace gears and no driver assist. Sell it to me for cheap and let me drive my car. That's all I want.
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You can join me with outsized expectations for the Slate pickup that will inevitably be dashed.
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I haven't seen speedometer shortened to speedo before. I was wondering why you wanted to get a speedo (like swimwear) along with the rest of your normal car accessories.
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some padles on the steering wheel to adjust power output to replace gears
What? The foot pedal adjusts power. You don't need a replacement for gears.
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I would very much like a manner to manually adjust how hard the regenerative coasting works, which would sort of be a replacement for gears. If I'm going down a steep hill I'd like to be able to adjust the regen to maximize energy recovery while also managing vehicle speed.
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Simpl, It's that simple
Now available near you, the Simpl refrigerator!
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So simple, we got rid of the 'e'. Don't need it! Get that outta here.
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I don’t usually fanboy for brands, but I’m a simp for Simpl!
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It looks like they're available, but labeled under "cheap." They seem to be just dials. I'm sure a spyware version has crept into the list though. https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/g38757143/best-cheap-washing-machines/
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None of those are particularly long-lasting, and definitely not built well. 4 out of 5 of their "best" are all whirlpool family appliances, which have been getting so cheaply built in the last few years that they feel flimsy. The list is basically an ad for whirlpool.
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it is. these lists are likely pay for play and run by a pr firm in tandem with the brands' pr teams
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Are the spyware ones long lasting? They're much harder to fix as well. You might be right about the ads, so here's more:
https://www.amazon.com/Pataku-Portable-Washing-Function-Apartment/dp/B0C7V5B59G?
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-WA40A3005WPR-White-Washer-Dryer/dp/B0BDMQNBCJ?
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With TVs, which have had a smart version for a longer time than appliances, the dumb, spyware-less versions have actually become somewhat more expensive. Nothing stopping other devices from going the same way.
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Its not easy to find durable/high quality cheap machines.
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who the hell pays $1000 for an appliance?
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They're top pick is only $500
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People who want it to last.
That's a large part of why "things aren't built the way they used to," is wrong. People don't want to pay a lot for appliances now, so they get built with cheap parts to meet that price point.
There were cheap garbage appliances in the old days too.
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The problem is that you think that would make the 'just' products cheaper. The reality is that the data and advertising subsidize the costs of the existing options and make them cheaper then what 'just' could sell for.
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Case in point: Smeg already does this, and all their products are considered upmarket. They're just really solid normal appliances.
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Noone said it would be cheaper
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I'm never going to buy a fridge with a tablet embedded in it, but I don't really think they are making that much money from that. You can buy cheaper equivalent versions of appliances that don't have the ability to display ads or collect/send data anywhere.
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Not for TVs you can't. And other appliances are following suit.
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Cars too!! Just a basic car, without too many bells and whistles. Electric windows and central locks are nice but unnecessary. Just more things that can break. Defo no screens or 'smart' stuff.
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What about all the safety tech?
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https://frame.work/ kinda does this for computers, it would be nice to more manufactures follow this lead.
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Yanks those things are expensive. I get the repairability aspect but I'm not sure I'd want to sell my kidneys just so I could have a user replaceable battery.
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Just sell one, that's why you've got two!
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Whatever happened with one of the higher ups there? CEO maybe? Got into some nonsense online?
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I'd just build my own, like I did for my water purifier. It ain't that hard.
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So, right now you have like a modern Samsung fridge with a screen and app, or something, but if a company produced a nicer simple one, then you'd finally decide to build your own?
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Right now I have a dumb fridge from the 2000s that works just fine, thank you very much. A company could produce a nicer, simpler one, but given the state of similar products and their adoption (fairphone, pinephone, framework, ecogeek), they'll never reach a market share and price point that makes them competitive as compared to me putting together an insulated box, some copper coils, and a compressor. I already made a fridge as a college project, after all. Which is exactly what I plan to do once my current fridge croaks.
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I have never seen someone build their own washing machine or refrigerator. It's intriguing. A whole new level of diy
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Probably better than my idea of just starting to wash my clothes in a bucket
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Shut up and take my money.
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And I will sell it in a store called "in stock" because we have these things called "computers" that can reorder a product once one sells so the shelves aren't empty. Because American companies have never heard of that concept.
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Some of these products already exist. They are expensive. If you go back and look at the long-lasting appliances of the past, they were also expensive.
One example is Speed Queen washers/dryers. Also Bosch dishwashers.
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Many of these become enshittified. Bosh is an example. My sister kitted out her kitchen with many Bosch appliances when she renovated, like 10 years ago. All have had issues.
The fridge has peeling faux chrome handles, the microwave button/wheel/control had to be replaced, the washer had the drum bearing fail, and the drum housing is sealed, so you have to replace the whole drum assembly, which costs as much as an entire budget washer...
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We need him
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Get ready to make no money
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It's Just money, though!
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Id buy their stuff, some of it at least
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I would buy just enough.
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He’d get unalivened within a month.
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Murdered. Killed. Assassinated. Victim of criminal homicide. Flayed alive. Burned at the stake. Killed, raped, boiled alive, his house and family burned down in arson and pedophilic murder.
We do not need to use the word "unalived."
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But also, you can use it if you want.
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This often actually exists still, but those companies dont do big marketing and their products will cost 3x that of a "normal" one.
As I've heard it:
and Mielemake the best stoves and fridgesAnd yes, they are all very expensive. But I want to get me a Speed Queen so bad.
Miele was sold to a private equity firm and they've been reputation-fracking, so their recent stuff is supposed to be pretty mediocre but priced as if it's top-end.Speed Queen IPOd recently. Make of that what you will.
Is Asko stil good? Owned by Gorenje since 2010
It's kind of crazy that like heating air is not perfectly mastered in every stove, heating and pumping water in every dishwasher and laundry machine etc. It's very simple stuff after all.
How fuckin cheap du you have to be to make a non perfect machine 🤷🏻♀️?!
I bought a Bosch dishwasher because of this reputation, and I hate it.
The drying function is a joke. Everything plastic comes out with water still all over it. My Maytag (which admittedly died) used to dry everything perfectly.
Also the racks on the Bosch are poorly organized. It's always a challenge to find places to fit everything.
Miele is the GOAT. Love our Miele appliances. All of them are now 15 years old and not a single problem. Buying the 10 year warranty was a waste. Buy once, cry once. Only appliances I would consider are Miele and Bosch Benchmark.
Got links?
Anything made for commercial kitchens.
Speed queen is one for washers and dryers
Speed queen washing machine
If it'll run in a Laundromat for 30 years.. it'll run in your home.
Speed Queen for washer / dryer.
https://speedqueen.com/products/all-products/
Vzug. Sadly only 2 year warranty
Yeah I was gonna say you can do this today by looking for the company that only makes whatever it is you're trying to buy and costs double what you expect to spend on it based on the competition.
If you want something that lasts, you generally need to pay for it.
(Though if you get the opportunity, ask someone who repairs the thing you're trying to buy what the best brand is, they're the people that know)
Adding to this: just call around to different repair shops for the product you’re shopping for and ask them. Not only might you get some great advice, but you’ll also get an idea of who to call when you do need their services. How they respond when they know you’re not spending any money is a pretty good indicator of their true customer service.
Yup, the whole, "They don't make things the way they used to," thing is part survivorship bias, and part people not understanding that appliances used to be very major purchases.
If you spent the equivalent of what they cost back then, you'll get an appliance that lasts decades.
For groceries, Hofer (Aldi Süd) kinda does that where i live. They sell very basic, barely-processed food from no-name brands. Stuff typically costs about half (or at least it feels like it to me) of what you'd spend in other supermarkets, where they sell highly-processed foods (think fast food and such).