patrick.net

SunnyvaleCA says

Patrick says

stereotomy says

Being broke used to be the best motivation for learning skills, since it was 10% of the price to do repairs yourself.

Not broke, but still cheap. My 20 year old KitchenAid fridge died a week ago, but AI helped me figure out that it was probably the relay, the part that turns the compressor on and off, and that it's a snap-in part. So I drove an hour and a half to an applicance parts place in South San Jose, got the replacement part for $35, drove back, put it in, and it works again!

A great success. Freezer didn't even thaw out completely.

Had a similar issue (simple broken part) with my ancient washing machine. I priced the part at $40 from a local store. Being the washing machine — and not the refrigerator — I decided I could wait 2 days and ordered the part for $5 from Amazon. Moral to the story is that for appliances that aren't critical, internet repair sights + Amazon is a major boon to low-cost repair.

A neighbor was putting out a Whirlpool top loading washer on the curb - I asked what's wrong with it and he said the main bearing was shot, but that there were repair kits. We took it, and sure enough, the kit plus tools was about $100. Fixed it up and it's been running like a champ these past 7 years.

Last year it started throwing unbalanced load errors - the tub suspension had worn out. Another $80 in parts fixed the problem.

It's a great machine - huge capacity and it's gentle on clothes. The only thing I don't like is that you can't manually set the water level - one of these days if I have time, I'll jerry rig the sensor more to my liking.