Exploding refrigerators?

but they make the coils and fins so closely spaced you can't get in there with any kind of a cleaner, and a vacuum doesn't suck it out except from the front face of the assembly. I usually just wait for a hot day, open the windows and back door, put a big box fan in the back door to exhaust the dust, and use an air compressor to blow it all out. Makes a huge mess...and you need a gas mask...

 

Configurations vary, but on my current refrigerator, it is not difficult or all that messy. Remove the back cover, use a damp paper tower to wipe the mat of cat fur off the front of the heat exchanger assembly, then use a few wet cotton swabs taped to a pencil to reach between the multiple rows of coils and spot-welded wires, not really fins on this one. Also wipe clean the plastic fan blades, the leading edges collect extra dust.

Not perfectly clean, but 90% removal seems plenty good enough. Sop up the moisture in the condensation collection tray too. Repeat every couple years.

I don't have an applicable compressor, and blowing by mouth doesn't produce much dust. What little does come out, is soon scrubbed by the home-brew MERV13 air filter boxes I made during the Pandemic, just after wildfire smoke season demonstrated that such home-brew filters can be beneficial. We have virtually no dust floating in sunlight rays streaming into the house anymore. Not even cat fur, though a bunch does collect on the filters.

 

My whirlpool has broken at least 4 times in about 20 years. I repaired all but the Ice/water on the door since they wanted $200 for the repair.

JeffD

 

i can't remember them all, but a few have been door seals, fan, circuit board twice iirc, along with broken crisper drawer wheels, which are molded into the drawer, so the whole thing has to be replaced.
fortunately, i bought the 5 year warranty because we had the same amount of trouble with our last one, an amana.
when they said the compressor was going to be $800. we bought the frigedaire.
honestly, when i tell most people our tale of woe, they say they never have trouble with their refrigerator.
maybe we're jinxed. stoves and dishwashers haven't been that great either.

 

We got 22 months out of a GE dishwasher recently. Read it again.

The house came with a nice Bosch dishwasher and it ran well for a few years. Eventually something expensive went. We ordered another nice Bosch. Then the pandemic struck.

They showed up to install it, and declared that there was no chance it would fit. Told us we would have to order an ADA-compliant model made for shorter vertical spaces, due to the way the tile was laid.

We were given exactly one option, this GE. It cost a lot less than what we'd ordered.

And it worked great in terms of cleaning the dishes, truly worked great on that front. But it was noisy.

Then one day it stopped cleaning. We called in the warranty guys, and they noticed a crack in one of the spray arms and arranged to have a new one sent. They did not notice that the main motor was jammed or siezed, and couldn't come back for 45 days to confirm that. Total pain to deal with them. The machine ran less than two years total.

So this time we found a Bosch, ADA-compliant model that fits, cleans well, stays mostly silent, and has a real chance of lasting to double-digit years.

And the Frigidaire chest freezer still has not blown up.

 

we're on our second bosch dw in 15 years. the pump went on the first one after about 10 years

 

I'm thinking about a whole-house surge suppressor. After a recent upgrade we have enough space in the panel to consider one.

Have you got an opinion of them in the context of appliance protection?

 

Curious about the difference in height between the two types of dishwashers as I seem to have a similar issue. Could only find one that was the required 1/4 inch shorter. Odd as the cabinets are all standard height as far as I know. Don't recall it having anything labeled ADA compliant and the height of the racks and tub certainly didn't seem different from the prior one that was a Kenmore. This an LG.

 

A normal dishwasher needs a 34" vertical space.

An ADA-compliant unit can fit into a 32-1/8" vertical space.

 

I used to have a Maltese colleague in Hong Kong. He was a lawyer, and, among other clients, represented Bosch. He took great delight in telling me that Bosch is the worst swear word in Maltese and his mum was really offended when he told her he was working for them.

----

When we moved into this house, it had a Smeg dishwasher. I don't know how old it was, but it lasted another three years and then did the whole Italian-engineering thing and died.

I thought we should replace it with something of decent quality, so we got a Bosch one. It was hopeless. It never cleaned dishes well (although this did improve when we switched from Finish tablets to Aldi's own-brand ones), and it was noisy. And it died after two years - almost the same as your GE one - about a week after the warranty expired. It was going to cost A$400 to fix it, so we thought it made more sense to pay A$800 to replace it. We got an LG one, and it's brilliant. Quiet, efficient, and cleans the dishes really well, and (fingers crossed) it hasn't put a foot wrong in its first 18 months or so. It does play some Korean folk song about how a woman's work is never done at the end of the cycle (ironic, really considering who loads and unloads the dishwasher, and does the cooking and the cleaning and everything else), but that's my only complaint.

 

For my money, this always depends on your local water supply. Use whatever the locals say to use. Usually a big difference.

 

@ChapmanF Thanks! That's a really informative post. The last two outages we had here involved the entire 7200V?? 3phase overhead come crashing down, so you can imagine some impacts. I have nothing to record what might have made it through the pole-pig feeding our house and a couple others.

I am familiar with comon consumer metal oxide varistor based surge suppressor devices, particularly in the context of lifecycle replacement.

How often do you replace each stage in your multi-layered fortress of power? Do any of these others have a schedule like the MOVs?

I'll talk to my electrician about these possibilities, thanks!

 

I wonder whether that's it. It could make sense. I'd just assumed it was because Aldi stuff is often better than branded stuff.

For a while, we bought Finish from a local chain called The Reject Shop. They'd often sell grey-market imports meant for other countries (they always have lots of British chocolate, which is good). For a while, the Finish they were selling was specifically for the Easternmost of the Nordic countries, and instructions were in Suomi.

Yes, it was Finnish Finish. I liked that.

 

I've installed whole house surge compressors in power panels twice. My Square D Q0 panel accepted one and my Daughter's Bosh panel (in a high rise condo and it protected her neighbors as well) did as well. They both have proven to provide good protection.

We installed an Asko dishwasher 20 years ago. It is also very quiet (like the Bosh) and has given us no trouble to date.

JeffD

 

I read the PDF for that SDSA1175 and it pushes the same deal: best used in a layered defense. Adding that unit upstream from the main breaker is beyond what I'm going to try on my own, but I think I'll pay my sparkies to install one next time I need them here for anything.

On the other hand, receptacles with integrated surge suppressors sound easy.

Somewhere in between would be the plug-on style 2-space panel module. Looks like there's at least one that fits our recent Schneider/Square-d panel.