It is pure madness that we build appliances intended to be sent to the landfill.

Refrigerators are almost entirely disposable. Leaks in refrigerant coils embedded in foam insulation are not repairable. Older designs were better but in general, refrigerators haven't had a lot of design love with respect to maintainability. There's a lot of headroom for improvement. Of course we could start by removing wifi and built-in cameras and remote bricking capability, but that's a separate thread.

Dishwashers are frustratingly simple to repair. So few components and such a simple mechanism. All we really need is a standard controller, pumps and chassis. With a universal design, an entire blue-collar segment of appliance can become viable again.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/117417287425034290

I have posted in the past on repairability and repair-hostile appliance design practices.

Let's integrate a couple of lines of thought:

Firstly, our planet's resources are finite.

Secondly, we're in late-stage exploitation capitalism.

Thirdly, we have a mature ecosystem of open source production.

Given that we should conserve resources and we're being forced to buy inferior appliances and we have the ability to stand up amazingly capable products (both software and hardware) using contributed effort, it's time for us to build open-source appliances.

I've talked about an open-source clothes washer before, and it's clear that refrigerators and dishwashers also need to go back to first principles.

#repairReuseRecycle #repairability

RE: https://mastodon.energy/@waltbaldwin/117397584803343711

@waltbaldwin does a great job of running Mastodon.energy. This is a top quality site and just like the work of @chrisnelder , is worth paying actual money for.

If you’re a regular, please chip in. It’s a small amount and the value is disproportionately great.