Planned obsolescence made people sad they couldn't have 20 yo appliances .. but 60. When that thing left the store my mother was a few months old.
I doubt keeping a 60 year old fridge running is the cheapest option.
1990 €110 (500kWh)
2000 €77 (350kWh)
2010 €46 (210kWh)
2015 €32 (145kWh)
1 (Dutch): http://www.greenem.nl/wat-kost-een-koel-vriescombinatie-per-...
This makes "do the cheapest thing possible" a surprisingly good proxy for "do the most energy efficient thing".
Of course, if you know something about the manufacturing chain, you can use that knowledge to do something better, but that is usually taking second order effects into account.
Taking cars as an example: buying a $100,000 Model S Tesla instead of a $35K gas guzzler to save $10K on gas is probably bad for the environment, if you only look at the marginal effect of that one car (and ignore subsidizing Tesla R&D, etc).
If the Tesla is only $35K, then you saved $10K of gas and the Tesla manufacturing process had a much lower energy footprint, so it is probably a huge win.
That would be if markets were efficient :).
As it is, the costs of goods are still dominated by middle men - people who have nothing to do with neither manufacturing nor selling the thing to the end customer. Prices today aren't good signals, because they're pretty arbitrary - shaped by supply/demand in long term, yes, but in short term directed by various business tricks (like market segmentation, brand value, contracts, etc.).
Your Tesla example actually shows it pretty well - in order to quantify its environment impact, you need to know at least that a) Tesla is electric, b) where your energy comes from.
Price would be a good proxy for a lot of things, if it wasn't so messed up by various parties trying to profit at each level of the supply chain.
And this is not a mere frugality argument. The economics more or less reflects environmental impact as well. There is a point where discarding a perfectly functioning but inefficient appliance for a newer is the environmental choice.
OTOH i don't sell fridges, so that's all just thinking aloud :)
I'm totally no expert, but any or all of that sounds more plausible than shipping cost issues; I did some quick googling and rough guesstimation (40ft container fits 67 cubic meters, so say 33000$ of goods, at around 1000$ to ship from shanghai to rotterdam), and I guess it's no more than a 3% surcharge; possibly less if you consider I bet I didn't find the best deals. It's not nothing, but neither is it particularly shocking (and you might save on trucking costs because you can pick the port and that port is likely particularly well connected).
We have a small fridge in our small kitchen which will need replacing soon as the door has gone rusty underneath and the seal is beginning to go.
It used to be a standard size of fridge but they're all wider and deeper now (maybe to allow thicker walls for better efficiency - the internal dimensions are often no bigger) and we can't find a name brand model to fit in the space, only cheap budget brands. So it's good to know that a cheap fridge can be just as good.
Meanwhile, our other name brand white goods have needed replacing after 2-3 years each. It's impossible to find anything with a decent warranty. Strange to remember that my parents' fridge, cooker, washer, drier when I was a teenager were all older than me.
The difference between a 3 year and 20 year fridge is usually only a few dollars (maybe 10), and has nothing to do with efficiency.
Case in point: The outer shell of new chest freezers are made of substantially thinner sheet metal and paint. This causes them to dent rapidly, and, in moist climates, rust through. It also reduces shipping and manufacturing costs, since it cuts the weight by a few pounds.
Do you have a source for this? It may well be true, but to my ear it sounds like one of those "everybody knows..." conspiracy theories.
And although I admit I've hated AEG for their crappy fridge, it's probably not AEG's fault. It was installed by an independent installer, and it seems he royally fucked up. Although I think we did have an AEG mechanic take a look at the fridge, and he didn't fix the problems. So AEG isn't entirely blameless.
Still, they're supposed to be good, even if our fridge was basically wasted.
In the end, though, it was really my wife who made the decision. She apparently doesn't hold irrational grudges against manufacturers like I do.
Our house was built in the 1970s, with 8 foot ceilings. Also, in the kitchen area for the fridge, the standard thing was to put a cabinet above the fridge; so we are limited in height. Newer homes have 9 foot or higher ceilings, and recently, new fridges has grown a bit taller. Tall enough, so that while one might fit into our space, it wouldn't have enough clearance around the top to provide proper air circulation for the unit.
So our choices have been limited by what the market wants:
1. Remove the cabinets (which would be really expensive for the small remodelling effort on top of the cost of a new fridge).
2. Get an ugly new fridge (some of the over-unders will fit, but they tend to be much smaller than we want, and have other features missing - though they do tend to be much cheaper).
3. Move to a new house (not a reasonable option at this time).
4. Purchase an older fridge that'll fit.
So right now, we're "nursing" our current side-by-side along; it still runs ok and keeps things cold, but the ice maker no longer works, nor does the water on the door. We've considered getting those fixed, but it would likely cost several hundred dollars, and the fridge is closing in on 20 years old anyway.
One other option we're considering is going with a commercial unit; unfortunately, from what we've researched, such units are not sized properly at all for a consumer kitchen (too deep, too tall, too narrow, or too wide).
So our only real option is #4 - unless we want to spend a big chunk of change in one manner or another.
1. modern fridges are more complicated, thus more things can break
2. The manufacturer wants it to break after about 5 years so you buy a new one (planned obsolescence)
3. Old fridges did indeed break as much as the ones today... and the ones we see now are just the survivors (Survivor bias)
In my electronics/audio experience, the market twist the design toward shittier components that provide acceptable function with a few marketing buzzwords (HD audio, 24 bit audio) that will make people buy something; where their old gear was clearly superior in terms of quality. It's a reflex to think economies of scale provide improvements and progress.
- The manufacturer doesn't so much want it to break, but rather, they expend no effort avoiding short lifespans, even where trivial. With enough components the chances then of including one or an interaction of two that happen to last not much beyond your guarantee grows rapidly.
- smaller/lighter/simpler or in some other way less durable components are cheaper (due to lower waste), or possibly more efficient (due to less unnecessary mass to move/cool/heat/whatever), so there's a tradeoff that leads to more easily visible and testable attributes being prioritized even if the tradeoff wouldn't be worth it were everything transparent and all customers completely informed.
- throwaway items actually are more efficient, because small savings accrue from not worrying about longevity, and repair has costs and wastes of its own (i.e. the premise is misleading)
- some combination of all of the above.
Personally, I suspect the difference between planned obsolescence and unplanned is in practice nil - you need quite the dysfunctional organisation (and possibly planned dysfunction ;-) ) to get everyone involved to so completely disregard longevity.
Imagine a situation: Investors say: give me investment returns! People in charge say: give me profits! People making decisions say: profits or quality! People conducting day-to-day operations say: worry about regulations first, then profits, then quality! People doing the work say: this quality is poor, but I need my job and don't want to rock the boat!
Maybe it's just anecdotal evidence, but that's generally been my experience over the past 10 to 15 years of doing things
No, old gear was definitely constructed better. I've repaired many appliances over the years and stuff from the 60's was built to last with a noticeable degradation in quality over the 70's and the 80's, since the 90's it's pretty much a constant. There is absolutely no way that a household appliance made after 1975 lasts for 60 years.
I suppose at some point there were business people who noticed that planned obsolescence creates repeat purchases, and that pricing is an arbitrary thing so they can sell the same hyper-optimized crap on different price tiers and people mostly won't notice - but I think the main driving force wasn't malice, just the usual thing that happens in the market economy.
In this way, I see the period of 1960s - 1990s as a time of discovering new ways to cheap out on materials and construction. After all, optimizing for manufacturing costs takes time and lots of smarts. Barely working crap doesn't happen by default (conversely, and this reminds me of the discussions around Juicero teardown, the initial design of any working appliance will likely be heavily overengineered).
Is there no market for a refrigerator produced with high-quality components? or does higher-quality component price outpace the gained longevity?
What about so-called "commercial grade" appliances — surely they should have a longer lifespan?
Commercial is different. I'd guess things like serviceability and a local repair network to be the most important qualities there. And although mean time between services are important, commercial also disregards stuff like noise.
There's certainly many more but those are some of the most common ones he runs into.
This is not only about electrical stuff, but also, say, simple mechanical kitchen tools: they break easily today. Like a cheese grater. The one my mom has is 50 years old and almost as good as new. Stained a bit, maybe, but works perfectly. She got it from her mom as a present. It's sheet metal, relatively cheap stuff, but still decent enough quality made to last long. They tried to make it simple, durable, and affordable.
Today, you can choose between cheap things from plastic, which will break soon, or fancy polished shiny stainless solid steel with bells and whistles, which are really expensive and which may last a wee bit longer than their plastic siblings, but these things are still made to look good, not to last long. You can bet there are small plastic pins hidden somewhere that break off soon, probably due to some unnecessary bell or whistle. This is the pain of today's products.
[edit: language]
Isn't it possible that the complexity that makes something energy efficient also causes it break sooner?
However if making something more energy efficient causes it to break more often, you have to expand the scope to include the energy costs of manufacturing a replacement copy. Even if the marginal costs of manufacturing an appliance are so low repairs no longer make sense, I still doubt that e.g. more efficient washing machine that you have to replace 3 times over 10 years uses, in total, more energy than one less efficient washing machine that doesn't break for 10 years.
If anything, managing the additional complexity by skimping on the engineering work is what causes the failures--that is, engineering a more complex device with the same or smaller engineering effort.
The ideal situation when engineering a new device is that every part of it is likely to break simultaneously, the day after the warranty runs out. If that happens, you know that your device was made as cheaply as possible, but no cheaper, and that you will never need to repair such a device, because buying a new one will always be cheaper.
Repairs are only an issue when different parts are likely to break at different times.
Huh? I have owned the same stainless steel cheese grater for probably at least a decade, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. It is also just sheet metal after all. It's totally beyond me how you think you're going to break a "shiny stainless solid steel..." grater like this [1].
The point grandparent was making is that the "deluxe" models often use the visible metal parts to provide the appearance of durability, when the internals are identical between models. It applies more to refrigerator doors than to box graters. That stainless steel fridge is going to have the same crappy plastic blower fan as one with a painted door, but may sell at a higher price, because it looks more durable to anyone who doesn't own a screwdriver.
The usual implication is that that the manufacturer didn't cut that specific corner, so there may be other corners that were not cut. It's like replacing the hood ornament of your VW beetle with one made from solid gold. It will then be the only part that doesn't rust all the way through.
My grandma fridge was 30 years old.
So yeah 60 years is an exception, but one that could just not happen today.
Edit: I went to an antiques market in Long Beach a few months ago and there was a vendor displaying meticulously restored, and fully functional, fridges from the 50s-60s along with similar era stoves and ranges. They were fairly expensive, I assume the resto work is quite labor intensive, and since the target market is people who are restoring mid century homes in Socal and want a period correct kitchen, but it was great to see them continuing to function.
Much of our machines have tiny motors that can be reused in about anything you want. Fridge compressors too.
People do it on cars all the time. It would be harder on something that isn't designed to be disassembled but it's nor hard.
What else is there in a fridge that could stop working except for the cooling system?
All in all, if house appliance were designed to be modular, you could keep a piece and use another one with it.
Alas I don't want it to end up like the computer world where standard competes and forces other problems.
Maybe a middle ground with blocks that aren't too coupled/soldered and more modder communities to discuss how to adapt etc
Those non-standard Dell cases and power supplies will go into the trash.
And on a less frivolous note: the rubber around the doors can perish/tear.
I recently did it. The biggest issue was that the first one the company sent was dirty and poorly made.
I suppose if you're chucking the old one out anyway, it's worth trying to fix it yourself for a bit, but I've always got time constraints (I'm a serial procrastinator), and I never do.
Fridge issues are often caused by software bugs and are fixed by reprogramming the circuit board with newer firmware, or just by reinstalling the current version. This also applies to other house appliances with programmable parts, including washing machines.
Apart from the looks, why the hell would you want 60s kitchen appliances? Clunky, loud as hell, inefficient washing machines and dishwashers are something that people not only actively search for, but are willing to pay premium for?
I'm pretty sure the main reason is aesthetics. And to be clear, I only saw fridges and stoves/ranges, no washing machines or dishwashers.
There are actually quite a lot of very nice smaller MCM homes in the area, Long Beach specifically has some great ones, and they are becoming fairly popular to renovate while keeping the original design. Some are quite small, by modern standards, and I think maybe the smaller size of the appliances are also attractive, but I haven't been appliance shopping much and I've never done a kitchen renovation so don't take this as gospel.
Edit: messed up formatting
I just think that if someone has the money then a company like AGA makes cookers which I'm sure have looked exactly the same for the past 60 years - so you get the vintage look but modern efficiency:
On another note, I can definitely see that modern appliances like dishwashers or washing machines/dryers would be much better and more effective than older versions. I do wonder if there's any noticable difference in comparing something like an old cast iron gas stove to a modern gas stove?
But in general, a gas stove is a ring of flame. There's not much to it. You need enough flame and you need to be able to control it. If you have those two things, an old stovetop is fine.
Ovens are more complicated and I'm not generally a fan of gas ovens.
Which is unfortunate - they are awesome looking and very functional units; there is nothing on the market like them today.
And if it hasn't been restored yet, just convert as part of the refurbishment process.
It would probably be more efficient (from an economic as well as an environmental standpoint) to force manufacturers to design appliances that can be fully disassembled and recycled with a minimum of effort (in terms of labour and energy). That way the raw materials used stay in use with minimal loss, and buying a new one won't be a waste at all.
Restoration is purely a design/aesthetic choice for a rarefied high-end market.
We even asked with a two doors large fridge was the same price as vertical-stack slightly thinner one, the salesman ended up admitting that it was because it's designed to be more practical (better volumes).
So...22 years and counting? What I mean is that it doesn't prove absolutely anything. Our electrolux fridge might survive another 40 years. Or it might break tomorrow.
I would lean on the side of that 60-year old fridge being an extremely weird exception, rather than a rule or proof of longevity of old stuff.
But I've got a dryer that was old when I moved into my house 20 years ago. And everything except the washer--which also was in the house when I arrived--was installed shortly after I moved in. I think all my dad's appliances, except for the microwave, are at least as old.
Probably between lower prices in general and more delicate electronics the situation is worse today but major appliances really do last for quite a while most of the time. (TVs have been far worse for me but, then, there tend to be reasons to upgrade them over time.)
The fridge I had before that was my parents' old stand-alone fridge which was 20 years old when I got it, and was still working perfectly fine 8 years later when we replaced it because we bought a new kitchen with built-in fridge. It never had any problems.
I recently came across a recommendation to replace old fridges because they were energy inefficient, but I have my doubts. I do think stand-alone fridges are probably always going to be better than built-in ones. Easier access, easier to repair, and no issues with somebody installing it incorrectly.
How these built in fridge done ? how many ? (I guess a standalone is made in more numbers so they have more know-how and mileage)
Also brands are deceitful after some time. At once they meant skills (say 60-90s SONY) but after a while, on mainstream product it's mostly a tag. For instance I found an AEG beard trimmer and was thrilled because AEG means gold in my eyes, when opened, it was a generic chinese PCB / assembly with a cute and sexy AEG case (you pay for the rubber).
Motors are simple. My blind guess is that it's a mixture of improved insulation and improved heat flow.
Though speaking of heat flow, stand-alone fridges always come with requirements that they need a certain amount of space for the heat to escape the rear of the fridge. Builtin fridges don't have that heat. I now find myself wondering whether builtin fridges can ever be as efficient as standalone ones.
And you're right that it can be advantageous in the short term for quality companies to cut costs by cutting corners while coasting on their reputation. Who knows, AEG might be doing that right now. Your AEG beard trimmer makes me regret we didn't go with Bosch or Miele after all.
I also read about people plugging water circuit on top to tranfer heat into a hot water container, it's probably useful for a hot shower..
There are a ton of Asahi Pentax cameras that come with a classic 55mm Takumar lens for $20-30 on Yahoo Auctions (Japan) right now.
Actually, 1980s consumer microwaves weren't much better than today's microwave ovens as far a quality is concerned. They were roughly comparable.
If you want a microwave that will last - then or now - get a commercial unit. Not only will it last longer, it will be much easier to use (most have a single knob, and a single temperature - high), and much easier to clean (stainless steel, wipe down interior and exterior with few places for gunk and crumbs to hide, no turntable with gaps and parts that can break, etc).
The two main brands in this arena are the Amana Radar Range, and the various models Sharp makes.
The best way to figure out what to buy is to talk to restaurant managers about what they use, and ask them how theirs have worked out. You'll want to look for the regular sized microwaves (they do make commercial units that scale upwards of 10 kilowatts with multiple magnetrons for large-scale cooking/reheating - these are not what you are interested in for a home).
Another option to look into (if you have the counterspace and don't mind the commercial look) is to get a TurboChef; I don't know how to explain these machines, other than that they are something of a combination broiler, convection oven, and microwave system designed to cook food in record time, but without the downsides of the individual units. For instance, you can have the equivalent of a nice seared and grilled steak in a few minutes (from cold) - versus what it would take conventionally. If you eaten at a restaurant, chances are high that you've eaten a meal made with a TurboChef.
A few more years and it would have entertained a fourth generation, but I think lasting 4 decades and surviving long enough to play N64 games was quite an achievement.