The problem with Modern Disposable Equipment

[fazer]

After looking at "Poe's Law" post by Andy Peters,  I stumbled on to this article. 

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/0115/Back_In_The_Day.htm

DIY is the answer.

 

[Andy Peters]

After looking at "Poe's Law" post by Andy Peters,  I stumbled on to this article. 

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/0115/Back_In_The_Day.htm

DIY is the answer.

I love articles like that, mainly because they always set up straw men and then proceed to knock them down, and then they congratulate themselves for being so clever.

The line about how cars today are so computerized that you can't tinker with them? Well, let's see, today's cars have significantly-better gas mileage, performance, longevity, emissions levels and comfort than the cars a generation ago. I mean, it's not even close.

And who wants to futz with the dozens of adjustments we used to do with an old-school CRT, just to get the image stable? The author complains that he had to pay approximately the cost of a new TV to  repair his 50" model. Yet, could he have even imagined a 50" TV a generation ago that wasn't 2" thick and as inexpensive as they are now?

And Edison and Ford are just "tinkerers?" Sure, they may have started out as one, but if the author had bothered to read a biography of either man, he'd know that those men were industrialists. Ford, especially, believed in mass production, not individually-tweaked products.

That article is horseshit.

-a

 

[JohnRoberts]

Seems like his rose colored glasses have fogged up....  Complaining that it is harder to fix cars that don't break down regularly is just silly.

For those of who experienced the good old days, they weren't always that good....

Now is better in so many ways.

JR

 

[fazer]

I think more about things like washers dryers dish washers and such.  My wife is a massage therapist.  Does a lot of laundry.  We had a washer when we got married and it lasted 25 years.  I then replaced it twice in 10 year after repairing each model  2 to 3 times each because of very substandard designs. 

The idea today is to save energy with modern design but if you throw this stuff into the trash after 5 years or less , you don't take the energy and materials it took to make junk in the first place into account.  I replace the washers with a commercial washer by Speedqueen.  Its old fashion (mechanical switches not epoxy sealed electronic control card driven) but solid and is easy to work on if needed.    Somethings are much better.  Somethings are modern junk. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

I think more about things like washers dryers dish washers and such.  My wife is a massage therapist.  Does a lot of laundry.  We had a washer when we got married and it lasted 25 years.  I then replaced it twice in 10 year after repairing each model  2 to 3 times each because of very substandard designs. 

The idea today is to save energy with modern design but if you throw this stuff into the trash after 5 years or less , you don't take the energy and materials it took to make junk in the first place into account.  I replace the washers with a commercial washer by Speedqueen.  Its old fashion (mechanical switches not epoxy sealed electronic control card driven) but solid and is easy to work on if needed.    Somethings are much better.  Somethings are modern junk.

Customer generally get the robustness they are willing to pay for. Heavy duty is a premium feature not a quality metric.

I have been lucky enough to still be using an old GE washer and dryer that I don't even remember buying.  But this was back when GE was still making appliances in the US.

it seems there was some early generation design flaws when the US market started using high efficiency (low water use- horizontal drum) wash cycles, that were popular in Europe for years before we got green. I've read all kinds of early adopter problems with bad smells (mildew) etc.

Hopefully they will get their act together after a few tries.  8)

JR

 

[PRR]

> cars today are so computerized that you can't tinker with them?

You can still "tinker". Coffee-can exhaust pipes. Cold-air intake. Giant wheels with rubber-band tires.

If you just want to keep it running: several times those computers (plus deep thought) have pointed me to the problem without lifting the hood. O2 sensors several times. I was stunned when the 1997 Honda reported a bad plug wire (it could have been several things, but leaning on the plug connector made the engine and computer happier). And then there is the wretched tank-fume valve under the Accord (a place I knew would be prone to road-rust). The diagnostic code was fairly clear.

And then there are the off-board computers. The codes and the service manual do not tell all. But there is this search-indexed communications posting network (possible mostly because of computer technology) where MANY other observations and opinions are found. I put my Accord codes in Google and found a lot of posts about it. After shoveling the BS, the take-away was that the valve would be rusted-into the tank, access is nasty, for a few more bucks but less straining and swearing I could get a new tank also, replace the combination. This IS stupid, throwing-out a carbon-filled plastic-jug  just because the valve-screws are long and rusty. But on the whole there's less stupidity in 2002 service than say 1966 service.

 

[Andy Peters]

I think more about things like washers dryers dish washers and such.  My wife is a massage therapist.  Does a lot of laundry.  We had a washer when we got married and it lasted 25 years.  I then replaced it twice in 10 year after repairing each model  2 to 3 times each because of very substandard designs. 

The idea today is to save energy with modern design but if you throw this stuff into the trash after 5 years or less , you don't take the energy and materials it took to make junk in the first place into account.  I replace the washers with a commercial washer by Speedqueen.  Its old fashion (mechanical switches not epoxy sealed electronic control card driven) but solid and is easy to work on if needed.    Somethings are much better.  Somethings are modern junk.

Sounds like your wife was doing a lot more heavy-duty laundry than the average household, hence the need for a commercial unit.

The standard Kenmore units I bought maybe 13 years ago have been perfectly fine, except that the clotheswasher's timer and lid switch were both replaced last year.

-a

 

[JohnRoberts]

In a little Karmic tweak my dishwasher has just started making a new (bad) noise...  Washer is probably 25 YO so I guess it's due for retirement, I am not inclined to try to repair it even if I could.  Of course I'll run it till it gets better or worse. 

JR

 

[okgb]

I'm 52 years old, and admit some of this maybe my " perception " but
before the formulas of designing down to a price point, maybe products were more crud, but used
more resources to make that crudeness ?  There is an obvious, " made not to be fixed " buy another one expectation
and no desire to stock parts for repair on some things, but things like roads,  which maybe a function of increasing
population or contractors milking it to the max,  never seemed to be as much a problem when I was young as it constantly
seems to be now [ government diverting road repair money ? ] Are these problems proportional to the growing population
[ & the competitive practices to earn profits ] or actually getting worse regardless?

 

[PRR]

The state of the roads is sometimes a factor of a NOT-growing local population.

There's a city and farmlands. With cars and money, houses sprout-up on the farms, roads are built or expanded, paid with long-term bonds which eat-up much of the increased tax revenue on these new houses. Every boom has its bust. My area grew fast in the 1980s but has been stagnant for decades. The very nice road installed in 1983 isn't that good any more; other areas the roads really went to heck. There is never the motivation to maintain that there was to expand and grow.

When I build my 600-room whore-house with booze and bait stores beside, then the town will run the heavy pavers again, paid by the large taxes I will be paying. But in this area, especially in this economy, no such large development will happen anytime soon. The mini-store down the street gets no customers some days, the bio-tech company shut-down, the tourist-zoo is 4 years in arrears on taxes, the fancy-fish dealer quit.

 

[okgb]

I get the tax part of it, , but my original ponder was , " Do they actually make/ fix the roads too cheaply ,
and therefore they don't last as long ? [ as the good old days ]
  where I live they must be so behind on road repair that they are always
fixing  / working on something.  In my slowly growing city,  Winnipeg [ 750k pop ] without a tax base to create a " real "
Freeway system the planners deal with the increasing traffic by slowing it down and diverting [ traffic circles, more lights]

 

[JohnRoberts]

I get the tax part of it, , but my original ponder was , " Do they actually make/ fix the roads too cheaply ,
and therefore they don't last as long ? [ as the good old days ]

Probably a pretty mature technology while they always tweak the materials for cost/availability/robustness. The life of roads is directly affected by weather (water freezing in cracks)  and stress from heavy vehicles.

They just repaved the state highway running in front of my house so I got an up close and personal look at the process.  They used some huge monster machines to grind off the top couple inches of road surface before laying down new asphalt. I was shocked because for the first time in my life a state worker took my advice.  There was a small depression in road where water leaking from a culvert running under the highway had eroded the road bed. I mentioned to a highway worker painting marks on road a couple months before they resurfaced it that it might be a good idea to repair the road bed problem "before" repaving it.  To my amazement a couple weeks later two crews showed up to repair the water leak (a water main running through the culvert was not properly grouted), then they dug up and repaired the road bed with fresh rock.

I'm sure my tax dollars were paying dearly for this extra work, but I was impressed that they fixed it right.

Some of the town roads I ride my bike on are horrible with years and years of patches on top of patches. These back roads get pretty heavy logging truck traffic and puny tax revenue to support serious re-paving like the state highway.  It might be fair to charge the logging trucks more for the road damage they do but don't trust that revenue to filter down to the town roads.

  where I live they must be so behind on road repair that they are always
fixing  / working on something.  In my slowly growing city,  Winnipeg [ 750k pop ] without a tax base to create a " real "
Freeway system the planners deal with the increasing traffic by slowing it down and diverting [ traffic circles, more lights]

Surely a hard decisions for local governments to find the revenue to pay for infrastructure, but not a new problem. Right now with the price of oil dropping 6 dB local tax receipts for oil production areas is falling like a rock. Interesting times.

US steel is shutting down because drilling pipe demand is off. Cheap gas is good, but it could stand to recover a little for everything other than gas.

JR

 

[G-Sun]

I repaired the washing machine the other day.
In fact a fairly accessible box for repair.

Now, the old Re20 mic that needed service was harder. 0,035" hex driver. That's small..

 

[CJ]

recycling is helping,>

 

[CJ]

used appliances (metal and plastic) not high on the list,

the problem is food scraps, which consist mostly of bait being discarded by  tackle shops,
which for some strange reason,  seem to be located next to cat houses,  ;D

 

[PRR]

I suspect, in most times and places, the pavement selected is "just adequate".

Priority is always on today's needs and let tomorrow take care of itself.

An exception is Roman Roads. They built for "forever". They went down 8 feet and filled in with selected rubble topped by carefully laid cobblestone. They needed hardly any repairs for hundreds of years. Indeed some are still in use. But mostly what happened is the Roman Army stopped getting their salary, stopped patrolling the roads, then locals stole the cobblestones for their own building. (Same happened with the "permanent" Egyptian pyramids.)

Given that roads are always "just adequate", there have been several different technologies. Concrete was "best" 1930s-1940s..... but we learned that old concrete roads are awful and also can not be re-surfaced in concrete economically. Meanwhile solvent bituminous blacktop was widely used for secondary roads and to re-surface old concrete roads. Good stuff but very stinky and highly flammable when laying. Today we mosly use a tar emulsified with water to avoid the solvents. I do not know if one is "better" than the other, but on the "just adequate" principle if you use the good stuff you will use less of it so it comes out "just adequate".

> deal with the increasing traffic by slowing it down

They are learning. If you build a good road, traffic will double or triple quickly and wear it fast. You either play catch-up, or you turn good roads into less-good roads to tame the growth of traffic.

> diverting ...traffic circles

They are not learning. I grew up near the first traffic circle, Airport Circle near Camden (in Pennsauken) NJ. It became THE most dangerous scrap of road in the world. Even when I knew it, they were taking half the traffic past the circle on massive bypasses. I think it is totally cloverleafed today. And yet across the bay from me they just put in a circle, and had their first accidents.

 

[Scodiddly]

In general you have to balance "good enough" vs. people screaming about taxes and not wanting to pay for anything that makes up a successful society.

A while back I read somewhere that the roads built by the CCC to get people working during the depression were much higher quality than usual and lasted a lot longer.

 

[okgb]

Modern roadwork here, reminds me of when I first bought my house and started repainting all the rooms and trim,
by the time I finished it was time to paint some of the rooms again.  For roadwork here, they are never NOT working
on something, they are always fixing sometthing, sometimes making something,
now how they determine priority IS another story

 

[PRR]

> roads built by the CCC to get people working during the depression were much higher quality than usual and lasted a lot longer.

Unlike traditional road-work where you want to minimize labor, much of the FDR program sought to MAXimize labor and get men working again. In road-work this trickles-back to making concrete and fuel to cook the raw rock into cement. Demand was generally down, so a large input of artificially paid labor brought forth massive construction.

We have some of those roads here. Did they last? Ah.... they were built "adequate" for the smaller traffic of the time. By the 1960s they were looking very narrow for heavier 2-way traffic. I recall in the 1980s driving half on tarred old concrete and wheel on asphalt shoulders added to increase travel width. And concrete slab can have problems with frost-heave. Even today, with 6 inches of tar topping over the concrete, going up Ryers Hill is bu-bump-bu-bump-bu-bump. We may finally be ready to scrub all that out and start-over, but that will be a different flavor of hell while the heavy excavators and haul-trucks take over the route for a year.

> For roadwork here, they are never NOT working on something

One thing about Maine-- no asphalt after Halloween, no heavy loads until Easter. Road-work totally stops over the winter. Also in tourist areas you "can't" rip the roads July/August, too many people make most of their money in high summer. So late-spring and early-autumn can be really crazy.

Then for more fun: a billionaire wants a dozen big old trees moved from inland to his place on the island. Last time he did one big tree, the whole local work-force was stuck in traffic for *ten hours*. (The rootball was 2 lanes wide, wires had to be lifted for the tree to fit.) Subway didn't open until after lunch, etc. He says it will be better this time, but I plan to stay home all week.

 

[okgb]

Right as the saying goes , we have two seasons here , Winter & road repair
although winter doesn't stop them just slows em down and they also fix pipes & sewers then

And excuse me for diverting the thread a little, It is harder to find things that are not disposable & last
..............and that anyone stocks parts for