We’ve been having a spectacular autumn leaf-peeping season in the Kearsarge-Lake Sunapee region this year.  I hope you’ve been able to get out and enjoy it.  I sure have!  Here’s a small sampling of some of the leaf-peeping I’ve done.  To see a larger view of any photo, just click on the picture you’d like to see and a larger image will open in a new browser window. Enjoy!

Purple Haze at the Clarke Lookout

Autumn Fire from Lincoln Woods Trail

Looking Down on the Famous Cliffs of Mt.  Dickey

The Oz Man Chilleth on Mt. Welch

Deadly Mistake Numero Uno: Using a gel detergent or powered detergent that is old or has already gotten wet. 

The main tasks of a detergent are to remove soil from surfaces and prevent the re-deposits of soils on the surfaces. The best detergent formulations will be powdered. Do not use gels or liquid detergents.

Why powdered detergent? Because in today’s phosphate-free world, you need two types of cleaners in a detergent formulation to get dishes clean:

1. Enzymes to remove protein-based stains

2. Bleach to remove other stains

These two cleaners are incompatible with each other– if they’re released at the same time, the bleach will destroy the enzyme and, after this epic battle, there will be little or nothing left of the bleach to do even its little bit of cleaning. The result: dirty dishes. They can coexist in a powdered form because they are not activated until 1) they get wet and 2) the water temperature reaches 125 deg. F. In a liquid or gel form, everything is already wet so you’re only getting one kind of cleaning action.

Detergent has a shelf life. Old detergent will not work well because the enzymes denature over time. Also, the detergent must stay dry until it’s time to use it. Once it gets wet or even damp, it activates and will no longer be active when put to work inside the dishwasher.

In my experience as a professional Appliantologist, my customers have enjoyed much better dishwashing results after I switched them over to Finish Powerball tablets. I leave two free samples behind and invariably, they report vastly improved washing results. BTW, I do not make a kickback for giving out the Finish Powerball samples– I do it because the manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser, puts on an excellent training seminar at the appliance training sessions I attend and it really does work well.

Deadly Mistake Numero Duo: Pre-rinsing dishes. 

It is not only okay to put dirty dishes into a dishwasher, it is mandatory to properly activate the detergent! Detergents are designed to work with food soils, not clean water. Without the food soils, the detergent will create a caustic slurry inside the dishwasher which will etch the glassware by removing the silica from the glass.

Not only that, but pre-rinsing the dishes wastes water. DOE estimates that pre-rinsing dishes uses 20 gallons of water per load. Scrape the chunks off with a fork and leave the rest on the dishes. It’s a dishwasher, for crying out loud! Let it do what it was designed to do!

Deadly Mistake Numero Trio: Not scraping the chunks of food or solid debris off the plates before loading them into the dishwasher.

Taken together, these last two Deadly Mistakes are a great illustration of the saying, “The opposite of dysfunction is dysfunction.” People tend to fall into one camp or the other: they’re either OCD pre-rinsers or they use the dishwasher as a garbage disposal.

You wouldn’t believe some of the junk I’ve pulled out of dishwashers! Here’s a short list of some of the things I’ve dredged up from deep within the bowels of broken dishwashers:

– plastic wrappers- tooth picks- bits of bone- broken glass- mayonnaise jar label- an adult human tooth!- crab leg shells- candle wick holders- ear rings- a tongue stud– yes, a tongue stud!

Today’s dainty little dishwashers can’t handle hard solids and these things end up damaging the innards of the dishwasher such as breaking the macerator or binding the wash motor impeller.

So there you have it, the Big Three. Almost every dishwasher service call I go out on, the customer is doing at least one of the Three Deadlies. But not you because The Appliance Guru hath revealed esoteric dishwasher wisdom unto thee!

BONUS SECTION!

Since you slogged (or scrolled) through to the end of this post, here are a couple of bonus tips for getting the best performance from your dishwasher:

Tip #1: Use Rinse Aid!

It’s not an option with today’s dinky dishwashers. Rinse aid allows the dishwasher to use less water with the same amount of cleaning and drying effectiveness. It does this by creating what we professional appliantologists call “sheeting action” of the water. By making the water sheet along dishes, rather than cluster into beads, it evaporates faster and with less energy.

Tip #2: Do Routine Dishwasher Tune-Ups

No tools needed! Regularly using a dishwasher cleaner (Affresh) and performance booster (Glass Magic) to clear out the gookus and reduce the build-up will keep your dishwasher clean and fresh smelling and operating at peak performance.

Once we have diagnosed your appliance and know what repair is needed, we will explain that repair to you and then look up the price for the repair using an online program that we subscribe to. This program is basically a database of job-rates for appliance repair tasks that many appliance repair companies use around the country.

This is how it works. Let’s say a widget on your ACME washer needs to be replaced. We would select “ACME washers” in our program, find the task “replace widget”, and the total cost for the completed repair will be calculated and displayed on the computer screen for us to show you.

There occasionally can be some add-ons if, for example, the washer is located in such a tight little closet that either it will take special equipment and/or a second man to help maneuver it so that it can be serviced, in which case a “difficult access” or “second man” charge will be added.

There are also discounts that will be made if more than one task is performed during the same service call.

The main point of the job-rate (or “flat-rate”) system, compared to a “time and materials” system, is that the exact cost of the repair can be quoted up front to the customer, so that they can make a fully-informed decision about going forward with the repair. If the customer opts not to do the repair, then they will simply have to pay the service call/diagnostic fee.

How are these rates calculated?

The most common appliance repair flat-rate program on the market is called The Original Blue Book Major Appliance Job Rate Guide.” According to the publisher’s website, the primary elements that are taken into account when calculating a job rate are: “parts, time & labor, equipment, predictable and unpredictable circumstances surrounding specific jobs, inventory management, education/training, office staff, advertising, insurances, travel time to and from the customers home, and all service vehicle expenses.”

Are these “job-rates” more expensive than the prices from a company that charges by the hour?

The short answer is that they shouldn’t be

A properly calculated hourly rate should take into account all of the costs of doing business listed above, meaning that, on average, a service company charging “by the hour” should be making the same as one using job rates. Any servicer charging consistently less is probably not adequately covering the above expenses.

My plumber charges by the hour – why don’t you?

Although they may seem similar, appliance repair is a very different trade than plumbing or electrical work.  First of all, each day usually consists of anywhere between 4 and 8 separate jobs, which means more time driving between each job.  Also, the large variety of brands, models, and types of appliances out there means a lot more time spent on training each year as well as complicated parts inventory management to ensure a high percentage of first-call completes (having the part on hand to do the repair on the first trip).

The challenge of every appliance service company is to price themselves so that they offer a good value for the service provided, but they also adequately cover all of the real costs of doing business so that they can stay in business for the long run. That’s why more and more companies are choosing to use a job-rate system like we do to calculate their rates for them.

What are the advantages of a job-rate system for the customer?

Here’s a summary of what customers like about flat-rate pricing:

1. The exact repair cost is quoted up front, which makes the “repair or replace” decision easier to make and gives the customer more of a feeling of being in control of the situation.

2. The standardization of prices prevents a price “penalty” for situations that result in a longer-than-expected repair, such as when the technician is performing a repair he doesn’t have much experience with or the part needs to be ordered, resulting in a second trip.

3. It is reassuring to know that the price is an accurate reflection of the actual skills, effort, and equipment needed for that particular job, and is calculated by a national firm whose specialty is producing fair and accurate appliance repair pricing.

In this rockem-sockem episode of Appliantology TV, The Appliance Guru is batting clean-up behind another appliance tech and an electrician, both of whom failed to fix the problem.  Watch with amazement as The Appliance Guru leads you by the hand and nose through a tricky and rare problem that prevented a dryer heating element from getting hot and the timer from advancing yet the motor still ran.  I know, I know– I make this stuff look easy!

If you have a broken appliance and you want it fixed right the first time, don’t waste your time with anyone else– call The Appliance Guru for fast, expert service today!

The Appliance Guru: fixed right, fixed right away!

The Appliance Guru team (Scott and Susan Brown) attended the 21st Annual Appliance Service Training Institute (ASTI) held this year in Orlando, Florida.  The ASTI is presented by the United Servicers Association, of which The Appliance Guru is a long-time, active member.

The ASTI is not your ordinary conference!  It is an unprecedented opportunity for appliance repair professionals to get together in a casual setting and learn from one another.  Interactive sessions delve deep into topics that are on the minds of servicers today, and the Institute’s format allows the collective wisdom “in the room” to be distilled into concrete, confidence building, actionable ideas that retailers & servicers take home with them.

Technical trainers from all major appliance manufacturers held in-depth training classes on their latest equipment.  The Appliance Guru attended technical training classes on laundry and refrigeration appliances presented by Samsung, Whirlpool, LG, Electrolux, and laundry and dishwasher detergent manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser.  You can see the detailed training schedule here.

The Appliance Guru is committed to being the appliance repair professional you call and providing you the very best appliance repair experience.  We invest a lot of time into making sure we achieve this goal.  If you have a broken appliance that you want fixed right the first time by factory-trained experts, call The Appliance Guru at (603) 526-7129 and schedule your service call today!

A common problem with refrigerators is the appearance of various forms of water in places where it shouldn’t be. Examples are: water at the bottom of the freezer and dribbling out the door in a side by side refrigerator; fuzzy frost built up on the back wall inside the freezer compartment; moisture on beer bottles and the side walls inside the refrigerator compartment (also called the Beer Compartment); solid slab of ice on the bottom of the freezer compartment.

In each of these examples, we’re dealing with water that’s out of place. Water in a refrigerated space can take on three forms: ice, frost, and condensation. Which of these forms you see, along with where you see it, are important clues to help you zero in on the needed repair.

Condensation problems will appear as “sweating” on jars and bottles and sometimes even on the sidewall in the refrigerator compartment.  Condensation is caused by water vapor condensing into a liquid as it hits the cold surfaces inside the refrigerator.  When you see this, it means outside, humid air is getting inside the refrigerated compartments when and where it shouldn’t. So, you’re looking for bad gaskets, doors not closing properly, or doors being left open from carelessness.

Ice refers to liquid water that froze into a solid. This sounds obvious but it’s an important distinction from frost, also known as rime ice, that fuzzy looking stuff that is formed when water vapor condenses directly into a solid. The important point here is that ice and frost are the effects of two completely different underlying causes.

If you see smooth or solid ice in a freezer, then you know you’re really looking for liquid water in places where it shouldn’t be (that ended up freezing): clogged condensate drain in the drip trough below the evaporator coil; ice maker fill tube leaking or out of place; ice maker mold leaking.

If you see frost or rime ice in a freezer, then you know you’re really looking for water vapor that’s getting into the compartment. How does water vapor get into a refrigerator? It comes in with the outside air. In most cases when you see frost in a freezer, you’re looking for an air leak: bad door gaskets or doors not closing all the way. This video shows an extreme example of rime ice all over the contents inside a freezer:

Sometimes, you’ll see both ice and frost appearing together in a freezer which can make diagnosis tricky. In this video, I walk you through an example of such a case and I explain the failure sequence:

A special (but common) case for diagnosing frost in a freezer is when you see frost accumulated on the evaporator coil or back wall inside the freezer that covers the evaporator coil. This indicates a defrost system failure (defrost terminator stuck open, burned out defrost heater, bad defrost timer (on older units) or adaptive defrost control (ADC) board).

The reason rime ice forms on the evaporator coil in the first place is because the coil operates at a temperature of -20F. At that temperature, water vapor that contacts the coil will condense and freeze directly into a solid, forming rime ice.  Every few hours the defrost system should kick in and melt that ice, because if it’s allowed to accumulate it will eventually act as an insulator, preventing the air from contacting the evaporator coils and getting cold.  The resulting problem would first be seen as a warm refrigerator compartment and, if allowed to continue, eventually the freezer will also get warmer than normal (normal = 0F).  Rime ice accumulated on the inside of the back wall in the freezer will often be seen at this point.

This melted rime ice has a special name: condensate.  (Not to be confused with condensation, although the words are similar,  they arise from two different causes.)  Condensate refers to the water that gets melted off the evaporator coil in the freezer compartment during the defrost cycle.  This condensate drips onto the condensate drip trough below the evaporator coil and drains out the condensate drain– a hole in the condensate drip trough– through a tube to the drain pan placed down by the compressor where it eventually evaporates due to the combined action of the compressor heat and condenser fan motor.

This video shows a freezer with extreme rime ice buildup on the back wall inside the freezer due to a defrost system failure:

You can find whatever appliance part you need through the parts search box right here at The Appliance Guru website!  Just scroll up to the top of the right-hand column and enter your model number in the parts search box.   No harm in buying and trying with our 365-day, no-hassle return policy, even on electrical parts that were installed!

Subscribe to our FREE, award-winning newsletter, Appliantology: The Oracle of Appliance Enlightenment ==> http://newsletter.appliantology.org and download your free report on appliance brand recommendations! Every issue is jam-packed with appliance repair tips and inside information direct from the Samurai’s fingertips to your engorged and tingling eyeballs.

The Appliance Guru provides prompt, convenient service in the following towns in New Hampshire: New London, Elkins, Wilmot, Springfield, Georges Mills, Sunapee, Mt. Sunapee, Newbury, Sutton, Bradford, Warner, Grantham, and the Eastman Community. Visit our website for more info and a discount coupon on your next service call ==> http://applianceguru.com

A long, long time ago, people did things like read books instead of surfing the Internet or had thoughtful discussions about complicated topics instead of yelling political slogans and sound bites at each other. Most folks also had at least a conceptual understanding of the process of troubleshooting: the logical, step-by-step progression of tracking down the cause of a problem.

To troubleshoot an appliance, you first need to have a basic understanding of how that appliance is supposed to work both from the operator’s standpoint and how the components inside are supposed to work together. In other words, to figure out what’s wrong, you first have to know what “right” is. Then begin troubleshooting right at the problem and step through, checking inputs and outputs, whether mechanical or electrical.

For example, an oven electric bake element isn’t getting hot and is not visibly damaged. The element needs 240 VAC to get hot, 120 VAC at each of its terminals. The voltage at the terminals is controlled and delivered by different circuits or components inside the oven. Many people would just immediately replace the element, not even considering how the element works or checking to see if it’s getting the voltage it needs to operate. Maybe they get lucky and fix the problem, but that’s not troubleshooting. That’s changing parts like a monkey.

Appliance repair servicers who practice their trade like that are not technicians or Professional Appliantologists; they are called “parts changing monkeys.”

Parts changing monkeys can cost you a lot of time, frustration, and money.

What’s a parts changing monkey, you ask?

He (or she) is someone who knows how to change out parts on your appliance, but doesn’t know how to actually troubleshoot the problem. Based on your problem description, he will change out the most obvious part involved and hope that fixes the problem. That works just often enough to get by in many repair situations, but there are other times it results in a major rip-off of the customer.

Here’s a repair saga where I went in batting cleanup behind a local parts changing monkey (PCM) who tried to fix a problem with a front loading washer that overfilled by blindly replacing parts, hoping to get lucky.  Of course, he failed miserably but that didn’t stop him from charging the customer anyway.  The customer called me out of frustration and desperation and, as usual, The Appliance Guru delivers another appliance ass-whuppin’!

The other thing this video illustrates is the importance of understanding how the components inside an appliance are supposed to work together.  How else can you troubleshoot?  In this case, with the washer overfilling, starting troubleshooting at the water inlet valve is not a bad idea BUT what are you looking for?  The PCM simply guessed and hoped to get lucky.  But there’s no need to guess if you understand how the valve is supposed to work and can make a simple voltage measurement.

In this case, you would use your meter to see if the valve is still getting voltage when the drum was overfilling.  If so, then the problem is NOT the valve, but in the component that controls the valve.  Here, the pressure switch controls the valve and this is the next thing the PCM replaced.  But, again, there’s no need to guess because the switching function of the pressure switch can be tested using your ohm meter and gently blowing into the pressure tube to see if the pressure switch contacts change.

Actually, in the process of gaining access to the pressure tube to test the pressure switch, you would have discovered the chaffed pressure tube in the course of doing simple troubleshooting like a real technician and not just blindly thrashing about, throwing parts at the machine and ripping people off.

So, putting this all together, here’s a simple operational description of how these parts work together inside the washer:

As the water level in the drum rises, the pressure inside the pressure tube increases.  This increased pressure is felt by the pressure switch which is calibrated to switch contacts at a specified pressure corresponding to a design fill level.  The pressure switch, which was sending voltage to the water inlet valves during fill, then cuts voltage to the water inlet valves and the wash cycle begins.

Is that so hard to understand?  How is it that someone who repairs appliances for a living does not understand this?

The Appliance Guru provides prompt, convenient service in the following towns in New Hampshire: New London, Elkins, Wilmot, Springfield, Georges Mills, Sunapee, Mt. Sunapee, Newbury, Sutton, Bradford, Warner, Grantham, and the Eastman Community.  Call 526-7129 anytime for service.

It was a hot summer day, middle of a freak heat wave, when the panicked call came in.  The client was desperate because the ice maker in his refrigerator stopped making ice.  The client called in the morning and I was at his house that afternoon.  Same day/next day service is SOP with The Appliance Guru!

Watch with shock and awe as The Appliance Guru quickly hones in on the problem and fixes it right then and there before the client’s very eyes.  This could be you, too!

The Appliance Guru provides prompt, convenient service in the following towns in New Hampshire: New London, Elkins, Wilmot, Springfield, Georges Mills, Sunapee, Mt. Sunapee, Newbury, Sutton, Bradford, Warner, Grantham, and the Eastman Community.  Call 526-7129 anytime for service.

Replacing the bake or broil heating element in an electric oven is one of the easiest appliance repairs you’ll ever do… IF you unplug or kill power to range first. If you don’t kill power before you try to remove the element, you’ll turn a simple, plug n’ chug job that only requires a screwdriver into job that requires wire repair tools. That’s because you’re probably going to arc or burn one of the terminals attached to the heating element as shown in this video. Watch with amazed bewilderment as The Appliance Guru expertly replaces the burnt wire terminal and completes the job that the client started but couldn’t finish:

The Appliance Guru provides prompt, convenient service in the following towns in New Hampshire: New London, Elkins, Wilmot, Springfield, Georges Mills, Sunapee, Mt. Sunapee, Newbury, Sutton, Bradford, Warner, Grantham, and the Eastman Community.  Call 526-7129 for service.

This client contacted me via email at 9pm using the Service Call Request form at my website and I was there the next day to repair the no-spin problem with her washer.  In this video, I explain a couple of short cut techniques for diagnosing a bad door latch assembly in this washer.  I had a replacement door latch assembly on my service vehicle and got her fixed up in one trip.  That’s SOP for The Appliance Guru!

The Appliance Guru provides prompt, convenient service in the following towns in New Hampshire: New London, Elkins, Wilmot, Springfield, Georges Mills, Sunapee, Mt. Sunapee, Newbury, Sutton, Bradford, Warner, Grantham, and the Eastman Community.  Call 526-7129 today.