Appliance Land is a very good source for stuff like this, the only thing comparable to the old heavy duty washers is Speed queen. Specifically their Classic Clean series that still uses a transmission. Also If you ever have a control board go bad, I use a very good shop near baltimore that can repair them. (very rarely do proprietary chips go bad, generally it's just generic relays and capacitors that fry). It's called US Electronics Repairs, a bunch of older TV repair guys run it.
Finally, I currently have a pair of 1995 Whirlpool HD units that I bought used 5 years ago when I first bought my house. I learned to make repairs on them using Appliance parts pros.com They have very good videos and OEM parts at a good price. I heard the combo units are much harder to work on. But with that site your not a compleat slave to the repairman.
Yeah, people who used to work in repair shops, or the handful who still do, are awesome. I'd like to learn a little bit of this stuff, and if we have larger space one day and need a new unit I am buying Speed Queen 100%. I grew up with appliances that were expected to last more or less indefinitely, now I hear from repair techs that the current stuff is like, 2-8 years.
Quite the adventure! If I may, there may be one other reason why washer/dryer sizes of the ones you are looking for are no longer made. It's possible that the market, while it exists, isn't large enough to have a large enough ROI for the manufacture and sale of that particular size range. In a way, it might have a weird tie-in with housing policy, in that a majority of dwellings in the US seem to be either single-family units that are large enough for a full-size washer/dryer, or else are apartments that can only take the combined units like the one you wound up with. So, in this case, it could just be the appliance market responding to the incentives provided by the housing market, though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn of a anti-consumer motive among the manufacturers.
It's interesting that you brought up John Deere...growing up in the 1990s, my family relied on a pair of early 1950's vintage John Deere Model M tractors for a variety of tasks on our 13 acres. Turns out, it's hard to get a medium-sized tractor in that size range, as everything is either gigantic (designed for 100s of acres) or else just a glorified lawn mower! That seems to have changed a bit in the last 10 or so years, it seems, but then there are still the issues of dealing with modern John Deere's predatory maintenance policies. Those classic JD tractors will run just about forever, and when something does break, you can fix it in a garage with relatively basic tools. Plus, unlike with appliances, there are in fact tractor junkyards out there to get parts from!
Very interesting. My dad has been looking at a tractor to handle a few acres of yard and forested land, something above a lawnmower but not a farm tractor. There are a handful of options. But I'm sure the old fully mechanical models are both more reliable and easier to fix.
The housing market business is very interesting to. These models have already been researched and designed, so I wouldn't think it would cost that much to just keep making a small baseline number of them. Maybe it is. I also suspect it might have been less profitable/more expensive to make something with large interior capacities but small overall dimensions.
Ha when I bought my property near frederick I did a ton of research. I ended up with a 1989 John Deere 430 with a 62" Deck. 3 cylinder Yanmar diesel. The only thing bad about the older stuff is a lack of suspension, but you can add a suspension seat. These lawn tractors are considered bullet proof if you find a well maintained model. When I needed something larger to bush hog my back property, I found a low hours 1993 JD 870, also with a 3 cyl Yanmar diesel. Mid 80s-mid 90s was a sweet spot, and a lot were made. Kubota is just as good. Avoid the dealer and know someone local who can work on them. They will never lose value and become more desirable everyday.
A kawasaki powered zero turn is a good option as well, I just like small diesel tractors. Plus the fuel never goes bad, and no carburetor to clog.
The washer in my apartment stopped working a few years ago. I called my landlord and she sent a technician to come look at it, and he confirmed it was broken and not worth repairing. He took it away, so we could get a replacement right away. My landlord promptly bought us a new machine. We plugged it in and it won't work. Finally I figured out the issue was with the tap on the wall, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with old washer. So yeah, our landlord bought a new washing machine for no reason.
Wow. The technicians really like to tell you to buy a new unit, for some reason. If you read to the end, our installer forgot to turn the water back on, so the brand new washer would not run. Luckily Best Buy sent a pretty good guy out a day later and he took care of it.
Interesting story. One detail I would add which can provide some background into why many older GE products were discontinued is that GE Appliances (the company) was taken over by Chinese manufacturer Haier back in 2016. I am almost sure that Haier has withdrawn all previous models by now and replaced them with their own designs or platforms and accessories/ancillary components. Hence, today‘s GE products have little if anything in common with the ones from the 2000-2010 era like the ones you had installed at your home.
Oh Jesus. You have to do ANYTHING YOU CAN to keep old appliances working! A 30-year-old Anything will keep lasting longer than a new Something will last before the Something needs repairs, and if you can find an older appliance-repair company to service your Anything, it will be better than dealing with a Something that may look great but whose motherboard crashes in months and for which you cannot get a repairman for weeks. Appliances also illustrate the downfall of American goods (although everyone I know also deplores their Bosch products). I am so sorry you went through that; I would not have lasted as long and would have just considered starting to take the laundry out to be done and waiting for a used set to come on Craigslist (although people now look at them as disposable; the stories I have heard from the man who fixes my appliances in Albemarle about the attitudes of the nouveau riche in Western Albemarle toward their appliances are horrific—not wanting to wait to donate them to Habitat, for instance).
Yes yes and yes. The lack of a good used market for appliances is a huge market opportunity for somebody. I get that they're heavy and inconvenient to move around and test, but there has to be some untapped demand for them. There's practically nothing used you can buy from a reliable dealer. I was going to keep my dryer and try to sell it, but they're not worth much of anything on eBay, and Habitat won't even take them if they're more than 10 years old. I must have been the first person to call one of these appliance stores and ask them if they had anything 20 years old!
As to motherboards, don't get me started. I will never buy a stove or dishwasher with an electronic touch panel. Give me dials and switches all day long. It's like cars - the more you pay for the unit, the more you'll pay for every repair it ever needs.
I'm curious if the home warranty been worth it for you so far? If you had saved the money spent on the warranty and service calls and instead and paid for the replacement/repairs yourself would it have been cheaper? I recently had to replace some parts in my ~15 year old whirlpool refrigerator. And while the parts weren't cheap (total around $300), it wasn't anywhere close to what they wanted to charge you for the washer parts.
It has been a pretty good value. The premium is about $500 and the trade call is $100, but they paid $900 towards the new washer/dryer, and most of all covered most of our central AC replacement. The model they installed retailed for about 6k, I only paid a bit over $1k. Most of the contractors they send out are pretty good, and not having to search for a contractor, compare reviews, call them for info, etc. is great. I would recommend it unless you are really handy with this stuff.
Appliance Land is a very good source for stuff like this, the only thing comparable to the old heavy duty washers is Speed queen. Specifically their Classic Clean series that still uses a transmission. Also If you ever have a control board go bad, I use a very good shop near baltimore that can repair them. (very rarely do proprietary chips go bad, generally it's just generic relays and capacitors that fry). It's called US Electronics Repairs, a bunch of older TV repair guys run it.
Finally, I currently have a pair of 1995 Whirlpool HD units that I bought used 5 years ago when I first bought my house. I learned to make repairs on them using Appliance parts pros.com They have very good videos and OEM parts at a good price. I heard the combo units are much harder to work on. But with that site your not a compleat slave to the repairman.
Yeah, people who used to work in repair shops, or the handful who still do, are awesome. I'd like to learn a little bit of this stuff, and if we have larger space one day and need a new unit I am buying Speed Queen 100%. I grew up with appliances that were expected to last more or less indefinitely, now I hear from repair techs that the current stuff is like, 2-8 years.
Quite the adventure! If I may, there may be one other reason why washer/dryer sizes of the ones you are looking for are no longer made. It's possible that the market, while it exists, isn't large enough to have a large enough ROI for the manufacture and sale of that particular size range. In a way, it might have a weird tie-in with housing policy, in that a majority of dwellings in the US seem to be either single-family units that are large enough for a full-size washer/dryer, or else are apartments that can only take the combined units like the one you wound up with. So, in this case, it could just be the appliance market responding to the incentives provided by the housing market, though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn of a anti-consumer motive among the manufacturers.
It's interesting that you brought up John Deere...growing up in the 1990s, my family relied on a pair of early 1950's vintage John Deere Model M tractors for a variety of tasks on our 13 acres. Turns out, it's hard to get a medium-sized tractor in that size range, as everything is either gigantic (designed for 100s of acres) or else just a glorified lawn mower! That seems to have changed a bit in the last 10 or so years, it seems, but then there are still the issues of dealing with modern John Deere's predatory maintenance policies. Those classic JD tractors will run just about forever, and when something does break, you can fix it in a garage with relatively basic tools. Plus, unlike with appliances, there are in fact tractor junkyards out there to get parts from!
Very interesting. My dad has been looking at a tractor to handle a few acres of yard and forested land, something above a lawnmower but not a farm tractor. There are a handful of options. But I'm sure the old fully mechanical models are both more reliable and easier to fix.
The housing market business is very interesting to. These models have already been researched and designed, so I wouldn't think it would cost that much to just keep making a small baseline number of them. Maybe it is. I also suspect it might have been less profitable/more expensive to make something with large interior capacities but small overall dimensions.
Ha when I bought my property near frederick I did a ton of research. I ended up with a 1989 John Deere 430 with a 62" Deck. 3 cylinder Yanmar diesel. The only thing bad about the older stuff is a lack of suspension, but you can add a suspension seat. These lawn tractors are considered bullet proof if you find a well maintained model. When I needed something larger to bush hog my back property, I found a low hours 1993 JD 870, also with a 3 cyl Yanmar diesel. Mid 80s-mid 90s was a sweet spot, and a lot were made. Kubota is just as good. Avoid the dealer and know someone local who can work on them. They will never lose value and become more desirable everyday.
A kawasaki powered zero turn is a good option as well, I just like small diesel tractors. Plus the fuel never goes bad, and no carburetor to clog.
My dad was looking at Kubota but is leaning towards Deere because of parts availability. But he noticed how little the used ones lose value too.
The washer in my apartment stopped working a few years ago. I called my landlord and she sent a technician to come look at it, and he confirmed it was broken and not worth repairing. He took it away, so we could get a replacement right away. My landlord promptly bought us a new machine. We plugged it in and it won't work. Finally I figured out the issue was with the tap on the wall, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with old washer. So yeah, our landlord bought a new washing machine for no reason.
Wow. The technicians really like to tell you to buy a new unit, for some reason. If you read to the end, our installer forgot to turn the water back on, so the brand new washer would not run. Luckily Best Buy sent a pretty good guy out a day later and he took care of it.
How do you know the old one still worked? I'm guessing the tech who took it away turned off the water when removed the old one.
Interesting story. One detail I would add which can provide some background into why many older GE products were discontinued is that GE Appliances (the company) was taken over by Chinese manufacturer Haier back in 2016. I am almost sure that Haier has withdrawn all previous models by now and replaced them with their own designs or platforms and accessories/ancillary components. Hence, today‘s GE products have little if anything in common with the ones from the 2000-2010 era like the ones you had installed at your home.
Oh Jesus. You have to do ANYTHING YOU CAN to keep old appliances working! A 30-year-old Anything will keep lasting longer than a new Something will last before the Something needs repairs, and if you can find an older appliance-repair company to service your Anything, it will be better than dealing with a Something that may look great but whose motherboard crashes in months and for which you cannot get a repairman for weeks. Appliances also illustrate the downfall of American goods (although everyone I know also deplores their Bosch products). I am so sorry you went through that; I would not have lasted as long and would have just considered starting to take the laundry out to be done and waiting for a used set to come on Craigslist (although people now look at them as disposable; the stories I have heard from the man who fixes my appliances in Albemarle about the attitudes of the nouveau riche in Western Albemarle toward their appliances are horrific—not wanting to wait to donate them to Habitat, for instance).
Yes yes and yes. The lack of a good used market for appliances is a huge market opportunity for somebody. I get that they're heavy and inconvenient to move around and test, but there has to be some untapped demand for them. There's practically nothing used you can buy from a reliable dealer. I was going to keep my dryer and try to sell it, but they're not worth much of anything on eBay, and Habitat won't even take them if they're more than 10 years old. I must have been the first person to call one of these appliance stores and ask them if they had anything 20 years old!
As to motherboards, don't get me started. I will never buy a stove or dishwasher with an electronic touch panel. Give me dials and switches all day long. It's like cars - the more you pay for the unit, the more you'll pay for every repair it ever needs.
I hate the touch panels as well. I don't want appliances to think or sense. I want them to move and work.
I'm curious if the home warranty been worth it for you so far? If you had saved the money spent on the warranty and service calls and instead and paid for the replacement/repairs yourself would it have been cheaper? I recently had to replace some parts in my ~15 year old whirlpool refrigerator. And while the parts weren't cheap (total around $300), it wasn't anywhere close to what they wanted to charge you for the washer parts.
It has been a pretty good value. The premium is about $500 and the trade call is $100, but they paid $900 towards the new washer/dryer, and most of all covered most of our central AC replacement. The model they installed retailed for about 6k, I only paid a bit over $1k. Most of the contractors they send out are pretty good, and not having to search for a contractor, compare reviews, call them for info, etc. is great. I would recommend it unless you are really handy with this stuff.