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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

They still make durable appliances - the irony is that they are often the cheapest models.

In 2024 you can still buy a new dishwasher with a mechanical dial control that will last you forever.

The Maytag Centennial series of washers and driers sell themselves on being simple, robust designs that last forever.

Gas appliances are generally have dirt simple mechanisms - they are cheaper and last forever.

Part of the problem is that people have insane requirements they demand out of their appliances now - freezers on the bottom but ice makers up top, dishwashers with hidden control panels, washing machines that can do 16 pairs of jeans, etc.

The trick is to think like a landlord - there is still a market demand for longevity if you are willing to live with the tradeoffs.

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Part of it I think is people end up in lines of work where they have a lot of excess cash. They think, "why not trick out the kitchen I use every day now that I can afford it," and end up with these fridges that can post on instagram with a compressor that breaks in three years. Of course this class of buyer also doesn't care about durability since they can trivially afford maintenance and replacement. The thinking infests the real estate space that targets this class of buyers (increasingly these are all home sales in some markets) that attempts to "keep up with the joneses" gutting walls of dwellings and swapping out the old top of the line stove with the new top of the line stove every time the title changes hands.

Who wins? The appliance companies surely. The owners who appreciate the convenience of a sink built into a stove that allows them to fill a pot for pasta water with one less trip to the sink (next decades model will include a drain I am sure but we aren't there yet). And the rest of us bear the costs of real estate priced to get a profit margin on the expenses of these "upgrades" the previous owner's real estate agent prescribed for you, in addition to a diminished supply chain of regular old appliances that work fine for 40 years.

Modern washing machines, fridges and appliances come with other advantages - especially in terms of efficiency and lower water use.

We have Maytag Centennial dryer and washing machine - they may be robust but they're quite inefficient compared to "modern" washing machines both in terms of water use and cleaning performance (our last known-unreliable LGs lasted 5yrs until we moved). Same with our old Whirlpool dishwasher that seemed to have been tuned to the olden detergents with phosphates and barely cleaned dishes, you often had to rerun some of them vs our millenium Bosch that cleans the same dishes with 1/4 the detergent.

But it's not quite as bad with appliances imo. I have had good luck getting the higher end models without _all the unnecessary bells and whistles_.

It's probably like new cars, efficiency gains come with complexity, so efficiency/reliability might be a trade-off. I, personally, can buy a used replacement board online and replace it myself after 5-10yrs but that still means someone else threw out their machine for parts.

And then on top of that, at least here in CA with $0.4/kWh, a 300kWh/y fridge costs $200/y less to run than an 800kWh/y fridge. That's $2000 over 10 years and might cover several repairs. I wouldn't generally prematurely replace a machine just for efficiency but I'm also not sure running that fridge from 1935 is really monetarily efficient, even if your newer fridge does break more often.

I once rented an apartment with a modern 2 in 1 washer dryer and it was easily the worst appliance I ever used. Bar none. The whole ordeal would take like 4 or 5 hours because using very little water means you need a 90 minute wash, and the dryer is of course too anemic to be much better than just setting the clothes out to dry on every available piece of furniture you own.

I'll take a little bit of inefficiency on my end as a consumer. I am the little man after all my footprint is small enough compared to what globalized industry is wreaking on the planet. I shouldn't be made to feel bad to have a washer dryer that is actually a time savings compared to a washboard and clothes line.

FWIW in CA your rate also depends on your provider. I am paying like 16 cents a kilowatt hour.

That's a bit of a strawman - I'm sure there are old washer and dryers that were also terrible, it's not inherently a property of all modern washers and dryers.

I'm sure there are, just on my anecdotal experience I've never dealt with one. And considering the simplicity of the old washer and dryer its hard to imagine you even get much of a lemming. Simple machines tend to work well for a long time no matter what they are or what they do.

So dry your laundry manually if you prefer.

IMO dryer is for when it's impossible to dry indoors/outdoors because of cold/humidity.

I often did. Of course I had three other roommates at the time so it was not a sustainable solution to have four loads of clothes dispersed across the apartment if we happened to run into eachothers laundry schedules.

> I am paying like 16 cents a kilowatt hour.

wow, that is so low.

PG&E charges from 29-50+ cents per kwh and the average is 35.

I couldn't imagine 35 cents. Here in the midwest we're paying 8-11cents. My water bill is billed quarterly and I don't use much over the base amount you get included with the service charge. We're talking 100$ for sewer, garbage, and water per 3 months. I have 4 bathrooms.

Municipal power, baby.

more like "regulatory capture, baby!"

re: washing machines. it is nice that machine can wash using less heat and water. it most likely does it by using more mechanical friction. There are no standards I know of that require machines to wash clothes so they last for N cycles. Are not these efficient machines basically shredding fabric much faster than the older machines?

> The Maytag Centennial series of washers and driers sell themselves on being simple, robust designs that last forever.

> freezers on the bottom but ice makers up top, dishwashers with hidden control panels, washing machines that can do 16 pairs of jeans, etc.

The bottom end of the market for the most part doesn't look like either of these. Maybe that Maytag line is an exception.

The bottom end of the market is cheap junk made of low-quality plastic parts, with junky levers, hinges, and buttons, and questionable UX around those buttons. Dishwashers with plastic tubs that warp in the heat and dish racks where the coating wears off and they start to rust after a few years of use. Refrigerators with plastic trim that cracks and isn't replaceable except without ordering a $50 all-in-one shelf unit. Etc.

And there is no middle tier of anything anymore: it's all bifurcated into "cheap junk" and "luxury".

Maybe that's true if you buy no-name appliances from Wal-Mart, but most major brands still mostly offer no-frills budget lines that are aimed and marketed at home builders and landlords.

If you go look at the lowest price GE appliance in most categories it's almost certainly going to outlive their high-end stuff.

Don’t forget the marked up cheap junk at luxury prices segment.

Dishwashers with hidden control panels?

Seems pretty low on the list considering the number of people I know who can't get theirs to keep water inside.

I have to load mine just right or it'll throw a ton of water on the floor. Once I figured out where stuff has to go I can make it work, but I don't feel like I should need to.

I know a guy with a pan under the door as a drip tray just in case.

This isn't wear or an old seal, they have been like this since new. They aren't fancy by any means.

The hidden control panels aren't that special: the controls are just on the top of the door instead of the front of the door. Also they are only on higher-end dishwashers made by higher-end brands, which also tend to get the basics right (metal tub, proper seals, good buttons).

My brand new Kitchenaid (rebadged Maytag or Whirlpool identical to 3 or 4 other brands same exact model), has that, looks great, very quiet, doesn't leak (maybe because I installed myself), but just doesn't wash worth a damn, even on the "tough" and "high temp wash" settings.

If you never had another dishwasher in your life, you'd probably think it was fine, because it does wash.

But this replaced a 20 year old low end GE, that had a plastic interior that the only reason I replaced it was the tracks would no loger hold the upper rack and there was no practical way to fix that the way the wheels were attached to the inside walls. And the door latch would fail to register the door as closed and stop running in the middle of a wash. It ran for so long that I had repaired the drain hose twice from simply getting hard and fragile and cracking open, 10 years ago.

It was starting to fall apart from pure age... but one problem I never had with that thing was weak ineffective washing. It washed twice as good as the new one the very day I removed it.

And I did 3 days of research trying to figure out what to get before getting it. All reviews just said it was great.

It IS quiet which I think is half the problem. They compromised washing in favor of noise and water & electricity usage.

And the reviewers are all infant 20 year olds who apparently never experienced anything else and don't realize this thing, and I guess all current machines, is good looking junk.

lol, brand new whirlpool with controls on top of door. Leaked first day. foam on the floor.

I think the controls on top are annoying. It's like putting the dashboard of your car under your seat.

You probably used wrong detergent. The one for dishwashers doesn’t foam.

> Gas appliances are generally have dirt simple mechanisms - they are cheaper and last forever.

I remember renting years ago and the ANCIENT water heater went.

The landlord replaced it with a similar model with a pilot light. He said they last longer and have fewer problems. It used gas continuously, and though the landlord got longevity, I got the gas bill. Annoying.

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