This Christmas just gone, we stayed with some friends in their holiday cabin that their father had hand built back in the 1960's. It had a refrigerator (cannot remember the brand) that had been there since 1961, and it still worked perfectly.
The only thing was that you could not open it too many times, otherwise the ice build up would mean you had to turn it off and defrost it.
Makes me wonder if 'convenience' leads to a reduction in longevity at all? Nowadays fridges are self defrosting, self cleaning, have built in IoT and a myriad of other features in order to try and make life easier for consumers.
Has this abdication of care and responsibility actually cost us in the long run? Perhaps if people went back to having to spend time to care for their goods, and took on a little extra time to ensure simple preventative measures, simplicity of manufacturing could come back in and things will last longer?
Self-defrosting freezers are usually (or can be) remarkably simple in implementation. A mechanical timer, driving a DPDT switch (to cut out the compressor and power the defrost mechanism), a snap switch (to regulate the temperature of the defrost), and resistive heating element(s).
I wouldn't want to give up that convenience in exchange for troubleshooting the system once a decade when something goes wrong.
The only thing was that you could not open it too many times, otherwise the ice build up would mean you had to turn it off and defrost it.
Makes me wonder if 'convenience' leads to a reduction in longevity at all? Nowadays fridges are self defrosting, self cleaning, have built in IoT and a myriad of other features in order to try and make life easier for consumers.
Has this abdication of care and responsibility actually cost us in the long run? Perhaps if people went back to having to spend time to care for their goods, and took on a little extra time to ensure simple preventative measures, simplicity of manufacturing could come back in and things will last longer?