Category Archives: Tips & Advice
what lies below in your dishwasher?
Hopefully not a rat nest. Here is a picture of a little family of babies who unfortunately became separated from Mama Rat when the owners brought their dishwasher down to investigate a leak. Rats had chewed through the inlet and outlet hoses. It was time to say good bye to the dishwasher.
its time to remember the hardest working member of our household. our fridge
Try to limit the number of times and the actual amount of time the fridge is open. Although fridges have advanced in some ways, when you open the fridge or freezer door, it feels …lovely and cool. So all that nice food cooling air inside is now in the kitchen, and a whole lot of warm air just filled up the fridge. That’s no good for the food inside which is supposed to be cold. And its no good for the fan which is conducting the cold air from the freezer, and its no good for the compressor which is the heart and soul of your fridge; it has to keep powering up and starting again. If these components have to keep powering up over and over, it shortens their lives. You’ll need a new fan if the fan goes… but you’ll need a new fridge if the compressor fails.
And by the way, if a fly flies OUT of your fridge .. its too warm in there
Could not find a banana for size comparison so here is a fly.
How much capacity do I need?
Have we told you your washing machine needs replacing? Yes, we are sad too; we like repairing but sometimes your loved machine has given its all and now its time to say goodbye. So which machine to choose?
An 14kg front load washer? A 5.5 kg top load washer? The weight the washer can handle is measured as the dry weight of the clothes. That’s according to the manufacturer, but do they care if your bearings fail a couple of years after warranty expires? Bear in mind that a dry towel is MUCH lighter than a soaking wet one, and the weight you exert on the bearings during spin will affect their longevity, so maybe go underweight a bit with the towels, blankets and doonas.
The 5.5kg top load washer will use more water (approx 68Litres) than the 5.5kg front load equivalent (approx 50Litres) , but this may only be a big factor if you are using it often. If you only use it once a week, that’s not going to be a massive concern.
Capacity means more than just the weight of laundry, it also refers to the volume of each washer’s drum. Smaller machines may struggle to fit larger items such as doonas and blankets, even if they are under the weight limit.
Your required capacity is also influenced by other factors, such as how many hours a day they can run, the required quality of cleanliness, and if they are personal garments or not. Our technicians recommend you don’t do all your washes in one go; give the bearings a chance to cool down between finishing one wash and starting another, to give those aforesaid bearings a chance to recover.
Bear in mind if you have too large a washer, for one or two people, you are wasting water and soap each time you don’t fill it up with washing, so that is a consideration as well.
We won’t recommend a particular washer on here. And for various reasons, mostly to do with not wanting to be taken to court, we won’t tell you which ones we definitely don’t recommend. But stay clear of very cheap and unheard of brands, they tend to have soft little tubing inside, and poor connections.
HOW DID THAT EVEN GET THERE?
A recent visitor to our workshop, this dryer was making a rattly sound. It turned out the peg had travelled all the way through the workings of the dryer ending up jammed up against the vent and making that fun chicka chicka sound you get when something is caught against a fan. Fortunately the technician was able to remove it with no harm done but that was luck; it may have caught in places where it might have caused a fire. So its worth checking to make sure only clothes are going for the merry-go-round in your dryer. This customer was also lucky, as there was a bamboo skewer caught in the filter as well
Look at reviews for info about warranty claims and service availability
We get a lot of calls from customers who have certain white goods which they want repaired. They have already tried the brand’s customer support area and found there is a wait of at least two weeks before someone can inspect the dishwasher/washer/oven etc, so then they start calling around to service companies like ours. While there are some of these brands we look at, those companies sometimes are the best people to look at their own machines; but who wants to wait two or three weeks before they will come out to your machine? Have a look at their website.. don”t look at the bouquets (friends can always write those), but rather, look at the brickbats. If there are lots of people complaining about how long it takes to get a service person out, or if there are big numbers of complaints about warranty, move onto another brand.
“Australia” in the name does not mean its Australian
We had a call from a woman today with a glass fronted freezer she bought online from a company I can’t mention for defamation reasons, which had the work ‘Australia’ after its name. It looks pretty schmick in the pics on their website. She paid more than $2000 for the freezer a short while back and now its not cold. We can’t help her; we’ve never heard of this brand and have no idea where to source parts. But she has been trying for 5 MONTHS to find someone to do the warranty work on the fridge, as the company do not reply to her.
When buying a fridge or any other large appliance, check who will be servicing it if something goes wrong. If you have never heard of the brand, check for reviews; and then don’t buy it, because lets face it they can get all their friends to put up good reviews. We have recommended she goes to consumer affairs on this.
If the company has a really good warranty on the appliance, though, have a think about whether they will still be in business in 5 or 10 years if they make such wonderful promises. Once again , evaluating their viability its best to think about how long they have been selling their product in Australia; basically how solid solid is their brand?
Remember if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
Be kind – your fridge is in for the long haul
During this time of uncertainty many of us are stocking up with extra fresh vegetables and meat as we look like having to stay in for long periods of time, entertaining ourselves with games from bygone eras and streaming lots of Netflix. It will be tempting to go to the fridge for snacks and cold beverages, particularly as there is not alot else to do. Even if working from home, the extra temptation will be there.
But for the sake of your fridge, plan when you open the doors. Children in particular will be looking for snacks, standing and staring and hoping, while warm moist air enters the fridge. This causes the thermostat to register a rise in temperature and the compressor (motor) will immediately kick in to get those gases creating cold air again to wash over your meats and cheeses and butters and veggies to keep them fresh and edible. But the more the compressor has to kick in, the more it wears. Alot of fridges will already be a reasonable age, so putting extra stress on the compressor may tip it over to fusing altogether.
So plan visits to the fridge, and monitor to makes sure the door is shutting properly, especially before bed; a night where the door has not been closed properly can be enough to cause failure of the motor.
There is already extra demand for new fridges and as time goes on we can’t predict how steady the supply chain will be. You need your fridge to stay strong in this time, so as well as being kind to everyone else, be kind to your fridge.
Give us a call on 36301611 if you need to ask us some questions or if you have any problems with your fridge or any other of your whitegoods.
Move over sewer FatBurgs: make way for the undersink DrainBurg
Oh I could go on about this one a while but the photo says it all. One of our technicians went to inspect a dishwasher last week, reported to be not draining. At least fifty percent of the dishwasher call outs we go to are for drainage issues, but when he got there the sink was overflowing. So he delved into the cause and pulled this DrainBurg out of the plumbing!
Dishwashers drain into the same plumbing as the sink through a small drain spigot on the side of the main pipe, so this was completely blocked. It is easy for the spigot to become blocked as it is very slim, but not so usual to find a living, breathing DrainBurg. 
How did people cook in Paleolithic times? They don’t make ’em like they used to !
Below you will see a prehistoric artifact from the sixties which came out of a working stove one of our techs attended recently. For more than 50 years it has regulated the temperature of the stove top element with no issues at all. It is manufactured from a material we never see these days, BAKELITE… (look it up kids) It was the go to product for light switches, radios, telephones, even toilet seats, to name a few, in the days before plastic became the easy and much cheaper alternative. And it looks like it was lovingly crafted to last…![IMG_1165[1]](https://www.albionappliances.com.au/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/IMG_11651-e1566168546435.jpg)
