Articles
What we have learned repairing
Four articles, written to be worth reading by somebody who is never going to call us. No invented prices, and no statistics about ourselves we cannot evidence.
- · 5 min readSan Diego water is hard, and your appliances are keeping scoreMost of the county drinks imported water with a lot of dissolved mineral in it. That mineral does not leave — it plates onto heating elements, valves and ice moulds, and it is behind a good share of the dishwasher and ice-maker faults we see. Here is what it does, how to find your own number, and the three things actually worth doing about it.
- · 3 min readWhat appliance repair costs here, and why nobody honest quotes it over the phoneThe two numbers we publish, the one we do not, and what actually drives the bill. If you have called three companies and got three different answers to "how much to fix a dishwasher", this explains why — and how to tell a real quote from a hook.
- · 3 min readThe garage refrigerator, and what a San Diego September does to itThe second fridge in the garage is a local institution and a predictable service call. Here is why heat breaks it, the check that takes two minutes, and the one thing people do that guarantees a failure.
- · 4 min readRepair or replace: the arithmetic, and the three places it breaksThe 50% rule is the standard advice and it is roughly right. Here is where it comes from, why it survives, and the three situations in which following it costs you money — including one where our own calculator will give you the wrong answer.