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Comment by BbzzbB | Hacker News Reader

> white goods are mid-century if not older

Unless I misunderstand the meaning of mid-century ('50-'70), sounds over-board, no? You're unnecessarily paying for a second-hand 10 year-old Energy Star fridge many times over in electricity costs. Inexpensive of an upgrade too, got mine for 100 CAD, as well as a perfectly functioning and clean kitchen stove (ballpark '05) for 50 CAD (tho for this I doubt electricity or gas consumption is an issue even if you go older).

You don't need antiques to avoid mic'ing up your kitchen.

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You didn't misunderstand at all.

You're unnecessarily paying for a second-hand 10 year-old Energy Star fridge many times over in electricity costs.

Actually, my fridge is probably the oldest appliance --- it's a '38 Frigidaire I restored (reinsulated and rewired - it still has its original compressor and refrigerant) that consumes <300kWh/year. With fridges, 70s-80s were probably the most inefficient (very thin insulation to allow for extra interior space).

You're right that the energy consumption of a stove doesn't matter much, since all the energy goes into heat anyway. I just like the styling of that era, and they are definitely more solidly built and simpler to service.

Efficient fridges these days use 90-125 kWh/y, so that's still terrible. But as I understand it, that's par for the course for fridges in the US.

https://www.mediamarkt.de/de/product/_siemens-kg39e8xba-2710...

https://www.mediamarkt.de/de/product/_samsung-rl-38-a776asr-...

I can't read German and the page requires JS, but I could see the models in the URLs so I looked those up, and those are both not cheap[1] and don't seem to be available in the US. I'm not sure if the differences in numbers are due to different testing methods either --- if you leave the doors open on those I bet they'll also use a lot more than 90-125kWh/y, compared to basically never opening them at all and seeing what the energy use eventually settles down to (insulation losses only). I'm averaging around 280kWh/y on mine when it's actually in active use, where the door gets opened a few times a day and it's used to cool things from room temperature.

[1] From what I could find, the Samsung RL38A776ASR costs over £1200, or a little over $1600 US. That's enough to pay for 40 years of electricity on mine.

Those were just the first two I could find in efficiency categories A and B. Here's one for 317 EUR that's rated at 118 kWh/a (with a C efficiency label). The rating is supposed to reflect typical usage.

https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/amica-kgc-384-110-e-a212...

>Efficient fridges

those look like... really small fridges? The top selling fridge on bestbuy.com is this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-20-2-cu-ft-top-freezer-refri..., which has 572L (20.2cf) in capacity and is 50% bigger than the samsung fridge you linked. It costs much less: $800 USD vs $1357 USD for the samsung fridge (after factoring in currency conversion and VAT). It does seem to be much more efficient (60% less energy after normalizing for storage capacity), but it's doubtful that you'll ever break even on the purchase price disparity.

Then I suggest buying fridges that are smaller in addition to being more efficient... SCNR. The average US household is larger (2.5) but not that much larger than the average German (2.0). I'd guess a typical fridge is more like 300l (but I don't actually know).

but you forgot that 1960s appliances lasted about 80 years. 1970s were almost as good and lasted about 60 years. 1980s were noticeably worse and last about 25-30 years. 2005 appliances were dead 10 years ago.

So I can get a 1960, 1970 or 2015 appliance for about the same price and they are all about on their last legs. Except the old ones can be repaired!

If you can find a good or rebuilt 1960s or 1970s appliance, the lifetime electricity costs are dwarfed by not having to buy another one every 5 years. You can hand that old mixer down to your grand-kids and that is no exaggeration.

You're also looking at selection/survival bias: only the good appliances from 1960 survived that long.

Likewise, some 2020 appliances are likely to survive 60 years, though not most.

Every 2020 appliance you find in 60 years will be built robustly, probably in a serviceable manner. And it may last much longer.

Time is a nice tool to select robust artifacts that… stand the test of time. I certainly hope old survivors help guiding design choices. If you look at buildings, that's usually the case.

In any case, don't just throw these away! At least donate them to a nonprofit.

I've considered that - and it's true in a way - the ones you see are the survivors. But it's surviving the trends and whims of size and style. And people wanting ice-makers and automatic defrost cycles. Not that like only 5% of the 1960 refrigerators were somehow built far better than the rest and they kept working.

I'm 100% certain that all 1960s refrigerators need repair eventually - but it's a simple compressor and that's it, one part probably fits dozens of models for 20+ years too. No sensors, controller board, ice-maker, fans, touch screens, seals, pumps, valves, etc. The difference is that you can't, at least economically, fix the newer appliances.

> every 2020 appliance you find in 60 years will be built robustly, probably in a serviceable manner.

true - but that number will be very close zero. Because there is not a single brand or type that is built that way today. If there is, it's some $10,000+ professional kitchen equipment. Sure some are better than the rest, but they are all essentially un-serviceable. We can mandate right-to-repair and force the vendors to sell parts for 3 years, we can't make them sell them at a reasonable cost. But in 20 years, somethings going to break that isn't worth fixing and nobody is going to stock specialized repair parts for your exact model.

> In any case, don't just throw these away! At least donate them to a nonprofit.

Have you ever tried donating a broken appliance? they don't want them and won't take them. Because they can't economically fix them either.

> 2005 appliances were dead 10 years ago.

What a sad truth. I have a refrigerator I bought 8 years ago that's on its last legs. Barely cools, ices up constantly.

I am actively avoiding replacing it purely out of spite.

It's 30+ year old predecessor is still kicking in the basement. I'd probably just move it upstairs if it weren't a horrible shade of yellow-green.

Sounds like a leaky door seal, easy to replace.

My understanding is that it’s a design flaw of the defrost heater in that generation of Samsungs. That’s at least what the warranty repair guy told me.

Yep, Samsung defrost heaters suck. Also the seals in the ice machine suck, a slow drip will eventually cause the freezer door to not seal completely, which causes a larger drip, which will over the course of a long day with overtime and a night out and going to bed without opening it cause it to leak enough to damage the subfloor.

The fans are crappy, the lights are crappy, the drainage and evaporative system is crappy... But I guess, technically, when everything is perfect, it does keep frozen stuff frozen. It won't stop spoilage in the fridge as well as literally any other brand, though, even when set to the lowest temperature.

Samsung is forever on my "do not buy; and mention the personal boycott every time the brand is brought up as an option" list, just like Nestle.

> if it weren't a horrible shade of yellow-green

You may try any of different methods of making it white again: https://www.howtocleanstuff.net/how-to-whiten-yellowed-plast...

Looks really neat using Peroxide method: https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feature-learn-how-whiten-you...

You misunderstand, that’s the factory color of the exterior of the old refrigerator. It looks a lot like the following

https://www.automaticwasher.org/TD/AWJPEG/SHP/2013/ovrphil++...

It can be painted.

I recently donated a three year old Samsung to my neighbor for his beer because it would not stop icing and leaking inside the refrigeration area. Supposedly a revised part fixes it. The revised part was installed...still crap. $2000 POS

I replaced it with a new frig using an old basic design from GE. $800

I should have known better.

If 1960s appliances lasted 80 years then I'd see many homes with 60s appliances still (as the 1960s was only 60 years ago). I don't see that, the appliances I see day-to-day in the wild are modern. I don't know a single person (including my grandparents when they were alive) that has appliances that old at their house that are still functional.

My parents owned six rentals for almost 20 years from 1980s-1990s. They had to replace at least one appliance in all six rentals during that time, and they only bought second hand appliances for their rentals for many, many years (they stopped doing that when an oven came complete with roaches once).

They often get replaced for reasons other than "not working"; the most aggravating of which is "it's old".

Oh, come on, no they don't - I've been observing the reason people replace appliances for four fucking decades.

You really think my parents are replacing working appliances because they are "old" in their rentals? Come on.

Wouldn't be HN without something bikeshedding the most insignificant of shit in a post.

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