When it rains, it pours and Maytag is getting swamped with troubles. First, they get slapped with a class-action action lawsuit for their Neptune front-loading washer–this machine is an orgy of engineering blunders. Now, surprise, surprise, the bungling Maytag management (or, more accurately, “manglement”) decides they need to cut 1,100 jobs (and probably move them to Mexico) citing increased labor costs. Yeah, it wouldn’t have anything to do with bone-headed Manglement decisions authorizing the production of poorly-designed products. Or their decision to move away from making quality machines, like their flagship product, the Maytag Dependable Care washing machine with a bullet-proof transmission and drive assembly, opting instead for the cheesy Norge-style machines in their current-production Atlantis and Performa washers with plastic gears in the transmission. And they must have hired some crack-heads to design all their electronics control boards because they all SUCK! From refrigerators and ranges to washing machines, their electronic control boards are going snap, crackle, pop.

And can someone tell me why none of the knuckleheads at any of the major appliance manufacturers have figured out that electronics and wet appliances just don’t mix? What’s wrong with discreet switches and mechanical controls? Oh, wait: they’re too reliable and they don’t provide enough residual revenue in parts sales. Ok, got it.

Anyway, the workers at Maytag plants do their jobs and make these pieces of crap that Manglement tells them to make. So when all these appliances start breaking down in the field, the workers take the hit. It’s interesting how I frequently have to replace an electronic part on some Maytag appliance that failed just a couple days after the warranty expired, or install some service kit to fix a design blunder, but I can’t remember the last time I had to fix a Maytag appliance because of a defect in workmanship from the factory. Seems to me they were all made exactly to plans and specifications–you could say they were made perfectly wrong. And Manglement wants the workers to take the hit. Well, the UAW workers at Maytag’s Iowa plant had a different idea.

Manglement has no one but itself to blame for Maytag’s troubles.

A fellow appliantologist sent me this list of cool things to do with a sheet of Bounce. And all this time you’ve just been putting Bounce in the dryer. Bounce this to a friend!

• It will chase ants away when you lay a sheet near them.
• It also repels mice .. spread them around foundation areas, or in trailers or cars that are sitting and it will keep mice from entering your vehicle.
• It takes the odor out of books and photo albums that don’t get opened too often.
• It repels mosquitoes – tie a sheet of Bounce through a belt loop when outdoors during mosquito season – Golfers put a Bounce sheet in their back pocket to keep bees away.
• It eliminates static electricity from your television (or computer) screen. Since Bounce is designed to help eliminate static cling, wipe your television screen with a used sheet of Bounce to keep dust from resettling.
• Dissolve soap scum from shower doors. Clean with a sheet of Bounce.
• Freshen the air in your home. Place an individual sheet of Bounce in a drawer or hang in the closet. Put Bounce sheet in vacuum cleaner. Prevent musty suitcases. Place an individual sheet of Bounce inside empty luggage before storing.
• Freshen the air in your car, Place a sheet of Bounce under the front seat.
• Clean baked-on foods from a cooking pan. Put a sheet in a pan, fill with water, let sit overnight, and sponge clean. The anti-static agent apparently weakens the bond between the food.
• Eliminate odors in wastebaskets. Place a sheet of Bounce at the bottom of the wastebasket.
• Collect cat hair. Rubbing the area with a sheet of Bounce will magnetically attract all the loose hairs.
• Eliminate static electricity from venetian blinds. Wipe the blinds with a sheet of Bounce to prevent dust from resettling.
• Wipe up sawdust from drilling or sand papering. A used sheet of Bounce will collect sawdust like a tack cloth.
• Eliminate odors in dirty laundry. Place an individual sheet of Bounce at the bottom of a laundry bag or hamper.
• Deodorize shoes or sneakers. Place a sheet of Bounce in your shoes or sneakers overnight.
• Put a Bounce sheet in your sleeping bag and tent before folding and storing them keeps them smelling fresh.
• Prevent thread from tangling, run a threaded needle through sheet of Bounce before beginning to sew.
• Bounce this on to all your friends. Nothing will happen if you don’t, but those people you send it to will be glad to hear these hints!

If you’re repairing or installing a major appliance in your home, you’ll need to know what the electrical requirements are for that appliance. The most important things to know are the amp rating of the circuit breaker and the size wire needed. The table below lists electrical requirements for major household appliances. Also, be sure to check out these related links for more information:

• Appliance Power Usage
• Power Quality and Your Appliances
• Making Basic Electrical Tests
• The Mysteries of Dryer Cord Wiring
• Understanding Electric Range Outlets

Notes:

[1] Values given are nominal voltages. All voltages listed are alternating current (AC) at 60 Hz.
[2] Fuses with the same amp rating as the listed circuit breakers may also be used.

Yes, Grasshopper, now you, too, can receive the Samurai’s secret pearls of appliance wisdom delivered to your email in a discreet brown wrapper. Taunt your friends and delight your enemies with your amazing new knowledge! Just enter your email address below. And, no, the Samurai would never stoop to selling your email address and you can opt out at any time.

Many grasshoppers often ask me, “Oh, most wise and beloved Samurai, which appliances use the most power and what can be done to make them more efficient?” To which I sagely reply, “Look, I’m Samurai Appliance Repair Man, not a friggin’ power meter. How ’bout you measure the power usage of your appliances yourself?” Yes, grasshopper, until recently, power consumption test instruments were very expensive. However, a new product called the Kill-a-Watt meter, can help you determine which appliance is hogging the most energy in your home.

Is your refrigerator running too much, or is your window air conditioner causing your electric bill to skyrocket? With the Kill-a-Watt meter, you can determine energy usage of any standard household appliance that plugs into a 110 volt outlet.

Refrigerators use a lot of power — between 300 and 500 watts while running. If the condenser coil is dirty, or the door gaskets are torn, they’ll use even more. Check the efficiency of your refrigerator and other appliances regularly, and clean or maintain them as needed to make sure they’re running as efficiently as possible.

You can also use the Kill-a-Watt meter to check computers, table lamps and most other devices that plug into standard wall receptacles. You’ll learn many devices, such as TVs and stereos, actually use energy when they’re turned off.

The Kill-a-Watt meter costs less than $30. This is a small price to pay to potentially save hundreds of dollars in electricity over time. Come git you one!

Your appliance is broken and your repair quest has brought you to Fixitnow.com. Your knees wobble and your bowels rumble as you contemplate doing the repair yourself. Since he is omniscient (and he knows it), the Samurai hears your question before you even ask it: “What am I in for if I decide to do this repair myself?”

Introducing Samurai’s User-friendly Difficulty Scale (SUDS). Created just for Fixitnow.com Grasshoppers, the Samurai has developed a proprietary scale for rating the difficulty of appliance repairs. SUDS is based on the universally-understood six-pack: the more difficult a repair task is, the more suds it takes to get through it. So now, when I’m helping you do a repair, either in the Appliantology Group or in Live Help, I can quantify the difficulty of the repair task that lies before you using a scale we can all understand: SUDS. Simple. Intuitive. Fermented. That’s the Samurai Way.

After you complete your repair using the myriad resources at Fixitnow.com or the Appliantology Group, you can return the favor and help the Samurai maintain his own supply of suds by giving to the United Samurai Beer Fund. Cheers!

SAMURAI’S USER-FRIENDLY DIFFICULTY SCALE (SUDS) for assessing appliance repair task difficulty
	Cake walk. You’ll be done before your beer gets warm. This is simple stuff that requires few, if any, tools and almost no electrical skills.
	Not too bad, but you’ll need a refill on your beer. You’ll only need ordinary tools, nothing specialized. You may need a multimeter to make a simple continuity check.
	You’ll need a little buzz to get through this one. Basic set of common tools and some specialty tools required. If it’s an electrical problem, you’ll need your multimeter and the wiring diagram.
	Get the kids out of earshot, adult language forthcoming. Settle in and get ready to spend some time on this one. No quick fix here, Hoss.
	A third arm growing out of the middle of your chest would be helpful. Time and pain, that’s what you’re in for here. If it’s an electrical problem, get ready for a brain teaser. If mechanical, you’ll be giving libations of your own blood from the skin scraped off your knuckles.
	What were the engineers smoking when they designed this damn thing? When you’re done with this one, you’ll probably want to hunt down the sadists who designed your appliance so you can give them a taste of the living hell they put you through.

Our mission here at The Samurai School of Appliantology is to prepare our students for that moment of appliance satori–a profound and simultaneous awareness of all appliances everywhere. It often strikes like a lightning bolt when a student least expects it, such as while working on an appliance that’s still plugged in. Conversely, the cherished moment of appliance satori can occur in the absence of any electricity, as revealed in this haiku from grasshopper Brad. His haiku is presented below for your appliance meditations. The Samurai recommends burning incense while slowly turning his haiku over in your mind with your eyes softly fixed on the accompanying icon. Hare Krishna.

This latest Appliance Jive Turkey Award goes to a parts changing monkey who works for Sears/A&E in south Florida. Reason for award: this monkey boy tells customers with refrigerators that have had a sealed system leak that the sulfur in their water corrodes the copper and causes the leak.

Our story begins with Charlie, in Florida, who has a two year old Whirlpool refrigerator model number ET21PKXGT02. Recently, the nearly-new refrigerator stopped getting cold. She went through all the basic checks with guidance from several appliance gurus at the Appliantology Group and it became apparent that the refrigerator had developed a sealed system problem. Since the sealed system is covered by a five-year warranty, we advised her to call for warranty service and have it repaired. What happened next reads like something out of a Franz Kafka novel. Charlie tells the story in the forum, but I’ll summarize it here.

The jive turkey who came out to the house was not a Whirlpool employee–he works for A&E Factory Service, a service company owned by Sears and is, in fact, a Sears employee with a different uniform. A&E is given priority on all Whirlpool-dispatched service calls, but Whirlpool has no real control over A&E operations or targeted markets. This is a really bad situation for both Whirlpool and the consumer because, through this arrangement with Sears, Whirlpool has lost all control of its warranty service to Sears. You can read more about this sick saga of corporate inbreeding here.

Anyway, our illustrious Appliance Jive Turkey Award recipient took one look at the blackened copper tubing in back and fed her a line about how sulfur in her water was corroding the copper tubing, causing them to leak and that this was not covered by warranty. He wrote the service ticket up as non-repairable, passing the buck to Whirlpool, and left. Intrigued by this novel line of bullsheist from an obviously accomplished jive turkey, Charlie called his employer, A&E Factory Service.

Now, here’s where it gets Kafkaesque. A&E told her that she should have known to paint the tubing with acrylic paint to protect them from the sulfur. I guess the fact that her previous refrigerator (a Frigidaire) only lasted 15 years in that same location should have been a clue that sulfur is a problem! It reminds me of Franz Kafka’s The Trial where a bank clerk is arrested and put on trial. He never learns the nature of the charges but is told that he should have known better. (Not a happy ending, either. In the end, he is taken away by knife-weilding officials who kill him ‘like a dog.’)

Another tech in the forum, fixum1, gave her the number to the Whirlpool partner line and suggested she might have more luck with that office. But they just gave her the run around, seemingly reluctant to get involved. Whirlpool’s authorized warranty service company, A&E, has become completely enamored of their star jive turkey’s line of horse manure and has reported this “sulfur corrosion” phenomenon to Whirlpool…without laughing too much. Whirlpool is probably wondering what those parts changing monkeys at Sears/A&E down in south Florida are smoking.

Obviously, the line about sulfur in the water corroding the copper was a very creative bald-faced lie told to avoid doing a lengthy sealed system repair at 4:30 in the afternoon. According to forum guru, fixum1, the real reason the copper tubing turned black was that a faulty brazed joint in the copper tubing around the filter-drier released compressor oil in the tubing around there. Although this jive turkey repairman is a Sears/A&E employee, Whirlpool is still on the hook for the repair. A warranty is a warranty and they have yet to make good on it. Stay tuned for updates on this situation as we follow it to final resolution.

There’s always a trick! And it all starts with your model number, which you conspicuously omitted. No brand, either. But, I’ll use my psychotic powers to divine the brand and model number. Ok, here goes…dayyam, it didn’t work. Guess I’ll need you to tell me that stuff after all.

Folks, if you want me to help you with appliance problems, which I’m happy to do, my virile and bountiful diagnostic powers are rendered impotent and flaccid without a valid model number. And, please, before you give me a model number that turns out to be gobbledy-gook, follow these guidelines for reading and reporting model numbers. Mucho Domos!

Your appliance is broken and your repair quest has brought you to Fixitnow.com. Your knees wobble and your bowels rumble as you contemplate doing the repair yourself. Since he is omniscient (and he knows it), the Samurai hears your question before you even ask it: “What am I in for if I decide to do this repair myself?”

Introducing Samurai’s User-friendly Difficulty Scale (SUDS). Created just for Fixitnow.com Grasshoppers, the Samurai has developed a proprietary scale for rating the difficulty of appliance repairs. SUDS is based on the universally-understood six-pack: the more difficult a repair task is, the more suds it takes to get through it. So now, when I’m helping you do a repair, either in the Appliantology Group or in Live Help, I can quantify the difficulty of the repair task that lies before you using a scale we can all understand: SUDS. Simple. Intuitive. Fermented. That’s the Samurai Way.

After you complete your repair using the myriad resources at Fixitnow.com or the Appliantology Group, you can return the favor and help the Samurai maintain his own supply of suds by giving to the United Samurai Beer Fund. Cheers!

SAMURAI’S USER-FRIENDLY DIFFICULTY SCALE (SUDS) for assessing appliance repair task difficulty
	Cake walk. You’ll be done before your beer gets warm. This is simple stuff that requires few, if any, tools and almost no electrical skills.
	Not too bad, but you’ll need a refill on your beer. You’ll only need ordinary tools, nothing specialized. You may need a multimeter to make a simple continuity check.
	You’ll need a little buzz to get through this one. Basic set of common tools and some specialty tools required. If it’s an electrical problem, you’ll need your multimeter and the wiring diagram.
	Get the kids out of earshot, adult language forthcoming. Settle in and get ready to spend some time on this one. No quick fix here, Hoss.
	A third arm growing out of the middle of your chest would be helpful. Time and pain, that’s what you’re in for here. If it’s an electrical problem, get ready for a brain teaser. If mechanical, you’ll be giving libations of your own blood from the skin scraped off your knuckles.
	What were the engineers smoking when they designed this damn thing? When you’re done with this one, you’ll probably want to hunt down the sadists who designed your appliance so you can give them a taste of the living hell they put you through.

At the bottom of your hot water heater, you’ll see a drain valve with a standard garden hose fitting. Connect a garden hose to the valve as shown here and open it all the way to flush all the accumulated scale and crap out of the tank. Leave it open until the water runs clear then close it. Wait one hour and then go take a long, hot shower. Ahhh!