Appliances are so cheap these days

We bought our current washer and dryer in 1995 and so far, so good. We've had a couple of issues but DH has looked things up on youtube and managed to fix them up and keep them going. When I have to replace them, I'll look for the simplest models possible; fewer whistles and bells means fewer things to go wrong!

Our "backup" fridge in the dining room was purchased in 1998. We don't have the ice maker hooked up (no water supply in the dining room) but it's working well. I have no idea how old the fridge in the kitchen is, as it came with the house (that we bought in 2005), but it was made by RCA; that should give you some idea as to its age! It, too, is running well, but the runner for the veggie bin cracked, so you have to do some fancy balancing act to get the drawer to close and hang properly. I know I should replace it, if for nothing more than the energy savings!
 
I had a gas stove in college too and now I'm scared of them. I left to go take an exam at college that was a few hours long. When I got home, my entire apartment reeked of gas. I freaked out and knew I had killed my cat. I was in pure panic. I had accidentally hit a knob a bit with my backpack. I found her burrowed in the closet, thankfully she was alive, just groggy. I immediately threw her in her carrier and put her on the balcony for fresh air.
Some neighbors paid to have a gas line pulled into the area after the one year in 34 years we have lived here that I can remember where electric rates were up and gas rates down. I had just replaced my heat pump and water heater (literally 2 months before), so didn't think it made sense to spend the $1,500 hookup fee and throw away thousands of dollars of brand new appliances. That was 26 years ago. The house on the east side of me paid the $1,500 to have the line pulled to the house. They moved long ago, and the 4 subsequent owners have never paid to have the house plumbed for gas.
Neighbors on the west side signed up, and replaced everything with gas. Furnace, water heater, stove and pool heater. I gave them a gas meter shutoff wrench that Christmas. 37 year of listening to police and fire scanners, the first thing firefighters do when they arrive on scene of a building or house fire is find the gas meter and try and shut off the gas.
 
Spending the weekend shopping for a new washing machine. Our "old" one (just over 3 years old) will cost us $550 to fix. >:(>:(
I am thinking we will just buy the cheapest one we can find and if it lasts more than two years it will be a bonus. :headache:
 


I recently had my kitchen remodeled last month in my apartment. Previously, I had a stove and dishwasher from the 1980's (late) per the guy who always came to fix them. They were pretty ugly, and the burners sucked on the stove, but they ran well and felt very heavy duty.

Now I have new appliances and they feel so stinkin cheap! The disherwasher doesn't dry like the old one did. I even use heated drying and they are still pretty wet. It feels super lightweight and not sturdy.

Its no wonder why things don't last these days.

We must be in the minority! We've had very little issues with appliances over the years. We stick with GE and Samsung - don't think we've ever had a repair call. When ours die, it's time for a new model which I'm usually ready for, so don't do repairs.
 
We have a gas stovetop and electric wall oven. The heater and hot water heater are also gas. I would love to convert those to tankless at some point. We went solar a few months ago and it has saved us a good chunk of money so far. The air conditioner uses a lot of electricity and that runs easily from April thru October. Gas is cheap, plus our heat doesn’t run that much, only when it’s cold for a few days in a row.
 
We must be in the minority! We've had very little issues with appliances over the years. We stick with GE and Samsung - don't think we've ever had a repair call. When ours die, it's time for a new model which I'm usually ready for, so don't do repairs.

We just bought a Samsung wall oven. It has so many great features including the flex duo which is 2 ovens in one.
 


Some neighbors paid to have a gas line pulled into the area after the one year in 34 years we have lived here that I can remember where electric rates were up and gas rates down. I had just replaced my heat pump and water heater (literally 2 months before), so didn't think it made sense to spend the $1,500 hookup fee and throw away thousands of dollars of brand new appliances. That was 26 years ago. The house on the east side of me paid the $1,500 to have the line pulled to the house. They moved long ago, and the 4 subsequent owners have never paid to have the house plumbed for gas.
Neighbors on the west side signed up, and replaced everything with gas. Furnace, water heater, stove and pool heater. I gave them a gas meter shutoff wrench that Christmas. 37 year of listening to police and fire scanners, the first thing firefighters do when they arrive on scene of a building or house fire is find the gas meter and try and shut off the gas.

Our subdivision finally got gas a year ago and we were all thrilled! Hate, hate, hate heat pumps that just blow cold air below 40*. Our line/hookups were free initially so we paid for a furnace for our lower level, kept the heat pump upstairs.
We also converted our gas logs from propane to gas (had an underground propane tank just for fireplace). The last two winters we have actually been warm! So happy!!

If, or whenever our appliances need replacing we will then replace with gas ones.
 
I had a dream about appliances last night, possibly inspired by what I read of this thread yesterday.

Some store had a combination stove/oven/washer/dryer. The cooking elements were on top as normal. Right below was a front loading washer. Below that was a combo oven/dryer. I don't remember if the bottom was restricted to one type of usage at a time, or if I could dry my panties and roast a turkey simultaneously.
Doesn't that actually exist in England? Pretty sure I've seen it on some BBC show I watched on Netflix. :rotfl2:
 
Our subdivision finally got gas a year ago and we were all thrilled! Hate, hate, hate heat pumps that just blow cold air below 40*. Our line/hookups were free initially so we paid for a furnace for our lower level, kept the heat pump upstairs.
We also converted our gas logs from propane to gas (had an underground propane tank just for fireplace). The last two winters we have actually been warm! So happy!!

If, or whenever our appliances need replacing we will then replace with gas ones.

Are your heat strips not kicking in on your heat pump? While we normally only have a few weeks below 35 degrees here, never had an issue with the heat pump not keeping up. I grew up with gas heat, the last 34 years with a heat pump, we have never had an issue keeping the house warm.
 
Are your heat strips not kicking in on your heat pump? While we normally only have a few weeks below 35 degrees here, never had an issue with the heat pump not keeping up. I grew up with gas heat, the last 34 years with a heat pump, we have never had an issue keeping the house warm.

Yes, the heat strips did kick in, but still seemed to run constantly - and suck the electricity like crazy!! :crazy2: We tried to keep it on heat pump mode as long as possible.

Our unit here was 15 years old, but every home we owned with heat pumps was the same. Now, our bills are much lower, and as I said, we are 'toasty'!! :) No one we've ever talked to liked them (heat pumps) when they were really needed - like when it was really cold! LOL

We are no strangers to heat pumps as we 'had' to have them in areas that we built without gas available. Our neighbors here that had gone with propane furnaces were 'toasty' but oh, the price!!! We all converted when we had the chance and no regrets!

Had our units been newer, we may not have converted, (although DH says we probably would have) :) but now we'll replace other appliances as they are needed.
 
I lived with a gas stove for 3 years in college, and the pretty much was my experience, a lot of burned food.

But to be honest, both my wife and I had safety issues in the past with gas. And here, electricity is so much cheaper. We live in a subdivision. that was built as an all electric subdivision, and that was marketed as an advantage. And we put solar panels on our house 3 years ago, so our energy savings would be much smaller if we had gas.
Solar panels are awesome.
 
We have a gas cooktop. I'd never cooked with gas before and now really like it. I don't have any problems with burned food or dead pets. I recently replaced our old Thermador dishwasher with a new Bosch one. The previous one was loud and barely cleaned the dishes. Our Bosch takes longer but the dishes come out clean and spotless. It also has 3 racks so I can fit a lot more in it and is really quiet.
 
Yes, the heat strips did kick in, but still seemed to run constantly - and suck the electricity like crazy!! :crazy2: We tried to keep it on heat pump mode as long as possible.

Our unit here was 15 years old, but every home we owned with heat pumps was the same. Now, our bills are much lower, and as I said, we are 'toasty'!! :) No one we've ever talked to liked them (heat pumps) when they were really needed - like when it was really cold! LOL

We are no strangers to heat pumps as we 'had' to have them in areas that we built without gas available. Our neighbors here that had gone with propane furnaces were 'toasty' but oh, the price!!! We all converted when we had the chance and no regrets!

Had our units been newer, we may not have converted, (although DH says we probably would have) :) but now we'll replace other appliances as they are needed.

Climate makes a huge difference with heat pumps. When we remodeled 3 years ago we beefed up the insulation in the attic. That seems to make a big difference. I guess another issue is how warm you like it inside. My wife and daughter have sinus issues and can't sleep if it gets above about 65 in the winter. The flip side of that is in the summer, they can't sleep if it gets above 65 so summer is when my largest electric bills come, about $200 combined from my electric company and from my solar provider ( I don't own the panels, I just pay for the power they produce, and sell the surplus to my electric company). Winter can be down to $85.
 
@tvguy, we have lots of night time in the teens, but we like to sleep cool - 60* - but in the daytime it's automatically switched to 72* from 7am - 10pm.
 
Doesn't that actually exist in England? Pretty sure I've seen it on some BBC show I watched on Netflix. :rotfl2:

I think having the washer/dryer in the kitchen is fairly common in England and Europe, according to House Hunters International.

But I've never seen a combo stove/oven/washer/dryer anywhere.
 
Oh please with all the fancy computer boards and such, they don't last long at all.
Its so annoying, we had issues with Frigidaire and Samsung, thankfully we had extended warranties.
Now we have Whirlpool lets see how long they last......

We put an old Whirlpool(1998) in our garage when we bought a new one, the old one had no fancy gadgets it was still going when we sold the house 2 years ago, never had one issue with it. The new Fridigdaire lasted 8 years and was replaced by a Samsung in 2013, that was aggravating us before we moved out, was only 2 years old. Thankfully Lowe's let us transfer the warranty to the new home owners, so they didn't have to worry about paying for repairs for 3 years.

I hate appliances.

That's the thing. The #1 cause of appliances going kaput is the computer board going bad. I just replaced my dryer after 22 years. I got a cheap model with ANALOG controls. Dials, buttons, and switches. No computer board. Same goes for the washer when its time comes.
 
That's the thing. The #1 cause of appliances going kaput is the computer board going bad. I just replaced my dryer after 22 years. I got a cheap model with ANALOG controls. Dials, buttons, and switches. No computer board. Same goes for the washer when its time comes.
That's what happened to our last dish washer kept it going for a while resetting motherboard every other week but finally wouldn't take resets anymore. Was probably 11 years old so wasn't to upset. Seal looked so bad was shocked it wasn't leaking yet. It use to just start washing for no reason so we would always fill soap thing in case it started.
 
I am frustrated with dishwashers. They never actually dry the dishes, even with Jet Dry. So I have to leave the dishwasher door open for them to air dry, just hoping that a child, cat, or dog doesn't decide to stand on the door. We've done pretty well on fridges, but we look for quality in that. Our washer and dryer are fairly new. The washer was purchased two years ago, the drier one year ago. The drier that we originally bought two years ago was recalled so we had to replace it. They take a lot of use from our big family, so these we replace about every 5 years. At this time I actually have a back up drier in the garage from our last set. Not sure what happened to the washer? We might have given it away when we moved.
 
We must be in the minority! We've had very little issues with appliances over the years. We stick with GE and Samsung - don't think we've ever had a repair call. When ours die, it's time for a new model which I'm usually ready for, so don't do repairs.

We're in the same boat - we remodeled our kitchen 16 years ago and replaced all our appliances then, and they're still all going strong. Never had a repair call - the few minor things that have broken DH has fixed.

I did replace my 16 year old washer and dryer about a year ago, but only because we were two people when we bought them and now we are five people, and I really wanted larger ones. So we sold the old ones and got new ones.
 

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