this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Prime example here is refrigerators. If you get a leak in the refrigerant line, your refrigerator is pretty much toast. I found this out the hard way when I wanted to repair one. They don't even have taps that you could refill it with. I had assumed there would be something like with a car's air conditioner where you could add refrigerant and recharge it. Instead, it's a closed system and because of the way that they are designed, to recharge a refrigerator well over $3,000, because the technician has to tap into the line and reseal it after they top it off which requires specialized tools, so basically if anything happens with that system, you're better off buying a whole new refrigerator. Super wasteful design imo. I guess one could argue that by making it not sealed it could be more prone to leaks over time, but it's still wild that you don't have the option of filling it with maybe 10 bucks worth of refrigerant and instead have to scrap the whole machine.
I mean, I fix my own fridges and appliances and do small appliance work for my friends and neighbors, but I already own the required tools so I’m really just charging for some time and the refrigerant.
134a is still cheap, and no company worth their salt should be charging a fee to customers so that specialized tools can be purchased. If you don’t own the tools of the trade, that’s a company problem, not a customer problem.
3000 dollars was a “I don’t want to do it price”
For people I don’t know, I do charge about 300 bucks to just show up, because that covers operating costs and an hour of my time. But unless the system was pulling into a vacuum, it shouldn’t take longer than an hour or so to recover the refrigerant, patch the leak, pull a vacuum, and recharge. So yeah, if your fridge is only worth 500 bucks, it’s not worth it. But if it’s an expensive fridge it might be worth it to find an appliance technician that will charge you a fair rate to repair the damage.
I might have misremembered the price. I just remember it being prohibitively expensive vs just getting another fridge. I ended up just getting a free one off nextdoor n tossing the old one. It was a garage fridge. Having said that, I can see what you're saying about if someone had a higher end fridge.
I actually love doing appliance repair as side jobs. Most of the time it’s a cheap part that I have on hand and it’s a quick fix.
Unfortunately, just my hourly rate usually makes some people second guess if it’s a good idea, which is fair, because manufacturers have made their products so bare bones and cheap that is often cheaper to buy a new one then have someone diagnose and repair it. It’s a real shame, because you do end up with literal tons of equipment that gets scrapped every day because of a 10 dollar relay or capacitor that went bad.
This!! A few years back, a student tried to launch a wash machine called "l'increvable" (~can't die). Stainless steel tank, open source, focus on repairability:
https://www.lincrevable.com/en/story/
That was to be maybe the last machine you buy in your lifetime? Unfortunately they ran out of money.
Instead, we have short life unrepairable appliances, but hey: they're cheap so who gives a damn??
They have piercing valves that cost a few bucks, shredder valves are also less than five dollars. These are typical and easy repairs for for household refrigeration. I do it daily.
Depending on what the job requires it's 125 to 500 to refill a system.
Most fridge manufacturers don't put access valves on their sealed systems because they cost more money and are significantly more prone to leaking.