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Comment by timcobb | Hacker News Reader

I recently bought a house with what I can only describe as some "zany" appliances. For example:

- An impeller-based washer that doesn't cover clothes in water, even with the "deep water" setting, and soil level all the way up. It frequently doesn't submerge half the stuff during the pre-soak. It's a $1,000 washer and I routinely pour water into it from the sink.

- A fridge with a giant ice maker in the refrigerator, not in the freezer. The compresser runs like 90% of the day on this thing. It's not really obvious how or where it's supposed to exchange heat. I expect it to break any day.

I spent some time on home appliance YouTube trying to figure out what was going on with appliances these days. Can recommend this guy's channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKJgYVhZ6-w. Long story short, it's a total mess out there. Sad times in the world of modern convenience.

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I recommend Speed Queens for washing machine and dishwasher. We have them in our house and barn the prosumer versions not the coin ops. Have survived everything from nails-horse blankets and even a miswired 220 on the dryer.

Yeah that's what that YT channel above (Ben's Appliance) recommends https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmtLeB4ZplU. I've used them in laundromats. Must be fun having them in your house.

> and even a miswired 220 on the dryer

Wow!

We bought an older coin-op Speed Queen set from an apartment complex when they were replacing their fleet for app controlled new ones. Best decision we ever made. Just wired a switch in for the coin trigger. Extremely reliable and seems easy to repair - haven't had to in the 5 years we've had them.

We had that for awhile, until finally the motor gave out and it was "easier" for me to buy a new Speed Queen set than fix the old (and the wife wanted an upright anyway instead of the front-loader).

The whole fun was using the coins! I even bothered looking up how to reset the cost so it was only a dollar, too many coins was annoying.

I just sold an old Speed Queen dryer (20 years old!) for like $200, and the guy who bought it told me that he resells them and it's worth way more than that. I get why it will never break down; it's just a metal box with two resistive coils, a drum, a fan, and a single dial.

But while it will run forever, it also consumes 5,000 watts and pumps conditioned air out of my house the entire time it's running (when my vent isn't clogged, which is never). I replaced it with a heat pump dryer and love it. Yes, it's 1000 times more complicated, and yes, it may (will?) require repair at some point, but it plugs in to a 120-volt outlet, and requires no venting at all. Maybe I won't love it in a decade, but life is short. :D

I second the recommendation. We got rid of a Samsung washer for a Speed Queen. It does a better job cleaning the clothes for less of the time.

Does the fridge have a variable speed compressor? If so, that type is meant to run the compressor more than old-tech binary on/off compressors. Running 90% of the time might be normal if it's variable speed.

I can go into more detail if you want. But to be clear I'm not making any claims on how long it will last.

Don’t compressors generally dislike being cycled on-off (too frequently/quickly?)

I was under an impression that they should ideally run continuously if you want them to last long (and operate efficiently.) Meanwhile on-off cycling was just the only way they could maintain a temperature setpoint before somebody had a bright idea of combining them with an inverter.

Start and stop does the most wear per unit of time, but constant motion also does wear.

Start and stop tends to cost a lot of energy, and high speed also tend to need more power. High speed also does more wear. Overall though, a small compressor on high speed 100% of the time is better than a larger compressor on lower speeds most of the time - but that isn't a realistic option as there are too many variables to allow choosing the perfect compressor size. So a oversized compressor running at low speed most of the time is generally best.

> A fridge with a giant ice maker in the refrigerator, not in the freezer.

We have one of these on our ancient fridge. In a way, it actually makes sense - a lot of the stresses of an ice maker are having all of the mechanics being forced to operate in freezing temperatures.

I'll ask the obvious question: isn't one of the main challenges of an ice maker getting the water to freeze? How does this happen in the refrigerator compartment, where the air temperature is above freezing?

You can have the "cold maker" part in the fridge above the ice maker, and blow freezing air across the water into the freezer.

Not saying it's done that way, but many fridges now keep the fridge part cold by venting freezer air into the fridge (if set wrong, you can freeze things in the right part of the fridge).

I am probably going to lean toward separate freezer and fridge next time.

While one might have existed, I've never seen a fridge that has cools for the fridge and freezer size. They all have one set of coils between the compartment and then some sort of baffle to control how much cold goes to each section. It is a small engineering problem have another baffle blowing cold are to the ice maker.

Ours has a little insulated compartment for making the ice. But most of the mechanics/circuitry/piping are outside of the compartment in the back of the fridge.

The ice maker compartment alone is responsible for a significant amount of cooling in the rest of the fridge, and it's very uneven as a result, but it works okay.

While the maker itself is super happy in these conditions, you will get problems if you do not regularly use ice. If you let the ice pile up it ironically is too good of an insulator and causes the stuff on the bottom to melt and refreeze. So you need to run that auger once in a while and make sure it doesn't dam up in there.

I also bought a house with an ice maker in the refrigerator. I can confirm that it gave us constant trouble until it gave up the ghost. I use ice cube trays in the freezer.

> I use ice cube trays in the freezer.

We'll probably go this route when this thing inevitably dies. This is the way to go unless you're a big ice consumer, which neither me nor my wife are.

If it’s acting weird, just shut it off and kill the water to it. Ours was doing the same thing and one day we came down to probably 10 gallons of water on our wood floor and the ice maker just spewing water. We bought a GE Opal instead and it’s great.

I will say this, too. Opal is amazing. It has completely eliminated any use of our freezer icemaker. The ice quality is superior and I believe that is because it is not as hard since the icebox keeps chilled by the ambient temperature of the ice. There is no going back to typical ice.

The wash machine thing is because water-saving requirements, and the easiest way to do it is the "dumb" way. Speed Queens still have a "soak the damn stuff" feature, but it's almost hidden.

I think the fridge thing is because they discovered that a compressor that runs all the time lets them get a smaller one, and since it doesn't start/stop as much, it lasts longer, so it can be weaker. The ice maker is probably actually doing the work of keeping the fridge cold.

It's crap, in my experience, once it starts not working perfectly. As long as it's working, it's ok.

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