406's Repair Thread

[406refining]

Well...I think it's time to post the 406 appliance repair thread.

For those who don't know, I have operated a small electronics recycling facility for the past 4ish years. It's been fun, a lot has come in, but I'm getting burned out a little bit doing the same thing over and over again. Towards the end of 2022 I started messing around with appliances a little bit to see what opportunities were around. As it turns out, there are A TON of opportunities to source, recycling, or resell appliances (special thanks to the landfill jacking up their rates to $60 a fridge!). Fast forward to the beginning of this year when I figured I'd post a ISO appliances ad on one of the local facebook groups. My ad absolutely blew up with requests to pick up over 60 appliances just in the first weekend....too many appliances lol. After picking up about 25 of them, getting 15 of them knocked off the list due to being too far out of town, I'm starting to learn a lot.

In this forum, I am going to be posting what I try to repair every week or two. Some weeks it will be fridges and ovens. Some weeks dishwashers and TV's. Other weeks something in between.

[Aeowulf]

Looking forward to this!

When I get my new space set up (currently trying to buy a new house), I'm going to have to post on Facebook for appliances and electronics. I'll be in a new area, but where I am now, I'm still flush with them and I only get them from neighbors and family. No telling how much more is just hiding in people's garages and basements.

[Degate]

Looking forward to this!

When I get my new space set up (currently trying to buy a new house), I'm going to have to post on Facebook for appliances and electronics. I'll be in a new area, but where I am now, I'm still flush with them and I only get them from neighbors and family.    No telling how much more is just hiding in people's garages and basements.

As I had already mentioned in my snake thread our prairie water is very hard.

This hard water reacts with the hot water tank's anode and make the water smell so most people remove the anode which is not a good idea as it shortens the life of the tank.

Every house we've purchased has always had two or more old hot water tanks left in the basement, the reason being over their useful years have become half full of calcium.

Because of the added weight the tanks get left in the basement, I use a 2" hole saw to breach the tank at the half way mark then use my sawsall to cut the tank into two pieces then scoop out the calcium into buckets.

The rest is history,

[Aeowulf]

Every house we've purchased has always had two or more old hot water tanks left in the basement, the reason being over their useful years have become half full of calcium.

EVERY singly house I've bought has had at least some scrap for me. The crap people leave lying around...

[406refining]

Well..It's been a week, that's for sure!

I've been making some progress working through the appliances in the warehouse. Unfortunately, I have just lost my used appliance store source for microwaves, dishwashers, and other nicer appliances. How you might ask?

Many of the major appliance retailers (the ones that sell new stuff) sell appliances and haul away the customer's old units. Shops like the one I buy stuff from have contracts set up to pay per unit on these old appliances. They then fix and resell whatever they want in the pile. In theory this works great, unless you're a one man operation that doesn't have time to fix everything. When that happens, you end up tossing tons of appliances into your rolloff at a loss, a big loss. This is effectively what happened here. Anyhow, the prices I used to pay are between 3 and 5 times higher than what current scrap prices are. I was informed at the beginning of the week that my prices were going to be increased between 3x and 5x what I currently pay. In many cases, there is still money to be made. However, there is not much margin left with these new prices. I countered his offer with a 50% increase on microwaves and a 25% increase on dishwashers which is reasonable. At this point, I haven't heard back. There are times where you sometimes have to walk away from sources. This is one of those times. Sadly, my offers were rejected. Fortunately, there is another appliance place with another contract that can supply me dishwashers which is great! Also, there is no shortage of appliances that people want to get rid of.

[Aeowulf]

I was informed at the beginning of the week that my prices were going to be increased between 3x and 5x what I currently pay.

Ouch, that's painful.

Have to get out front and work to get them before they make it to that point. Like you said, no shortage. It's just a matter of getting them before they do.

[Degate]

I was informed at the beginning of the week that my prices were going to be increased between 3x and 5x what I currently pay.

Ouch, that's painful.

Have to get out front and work to get them before they make it to that point. Like you said, no shortage. It's just a matter of getting them before they do.

The appliance store selling new and used is just squeezing out the competition, maybe they'll give 406 a job. It happened to me once when I was buying discarded equipment  from a rental outfit.

[406refining]

I was informed at the beginning of the week that my prices were going to be increased between 3x and 5x what I currently pay.

Ouch, that's painful.

Have to get out front and work to get them before they make it to that point. Like you said, no shortage. It's just a matter of getting them before they do.

It was quite the shock. I mean, there were signs of issues (the guy kept throwing things away that I had told him multiple times to set aside and I would gladly buy). I'm a planner on certain things so I had planned for price increases to be a reality eventually. However, I was pretty surprised when he rejected my price increases and stayed firm on his prices. Oh well, certain people are set in their ways I guess.

In regards to your post Degate, I really wish that were the case as I think I have a future in appliances. I have offered my help many times, but it's always been rejected. I do think competition did have a part in it, but that's just speculation. This sounds terrible, but I'm just going to keep getting appliances from my other sources. Eventually, he's going to go under (much sooner than I think he wants). At that point, it might be worth pursuing the appliance contract he has. I'm still at that "figuring out what I really want to do with appliances" phase so I'm in no hurry to get a large source like that yet.

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I also figured I would do an update on the appliance situation here:

-Stainless GE side by side (newer unit with a control board).

I plugged it in and the lights were flashing on and off. GE fridge boards are known for having bad electrolytic capacitors. Typically they swell up and fail. I pulled the old board out and put new caps on it. Fixed the issue which is awesome! Usually it's a capacitor issue with other failing parts too.

-White kenmore side by side (older unit with no control board).

I plugged in this unit and it powered up with fans running just fine. However, I put my hand on the compressor and it was totally dead. This is an overload relay issue (very common from what I've found so far). The overload relay is typically a little white box with a little black box connected to it that plugs directly onto the side of the compressor. I got the relay replaced and was up an running!

-Another white kenmore side by side (older unit with no control board).

I plugged this unit in and it had the same issue. The standard process for me is to blow the coils out before doing anything to remove any potential issues. Let me tell you, this thing was DIRTY, like a softball sized dust bunny dirty. After deep blowing out everything and replacing ANOTHER overload relay the unit was working! After testing the water lines, I found an issue with the icemaker (still tracking it down at the moment).

Other than that, I had to take a break from appliances to process a mega load of electronics last week. Now it's just back to finishing up a few units that have been here for too long.