When you think about it, your washing machine is probably the most used large appliance in your home – well, except for your television.  So it makes sense to be careful how you use it.  Here are some tips to help you keep me away from your washer.

1. Remember, more is not better. You may think putting all your clothes in one large load will save you time, but all it really does is put unnecessary strain on the washer. Too much strain is not a good thing. Avoid washer overload.

2. Again, less is more. Use only the amount of soap that’s recommended. Too much detergent will gum up the works and cause the machine not to operate correctly – resulting in repairs.  Good for me but not for you.

3. Speaking of soap, use a high efficiency (HE) detergent whenever the machine calls for it. This is especially true for front-load washers. Look for the HE label on the machine and the laundry product package. These detergents are concentrated and low sudsing.

4. Yes, I said not to overload your washer, but don’t under load it either. Too small a load will cause your machine to become unbalanced putting strain on the washer and shutting it down.

5. Check your pockets before throwing that pair of jeans in the machine. Too many water pumps have been damaged by pens and paper clips left in pockets. Besides, you wouldn’t want that winning lottery ticket to get wet.

6. Ever see a washing machine “walk” across the floor?  Not a good thing. “Walking” can happen when the machine isn’t level. Check your machine by putting your hands catty-corner to each other on the top of the machine and and alternate pushing down the corners.  If the washer rocks, it’s not level.

7. Tell your kids (because I know you don’t do this – wink, wink) not to let the lid of your top load washer slam down. Slamming the lid will cause the safety lid switch to break. Then the machine won’t start or will stop in the middle of the cycle, and your clothes won’t get cleaned.

8. Tell me the truth. When was the last time you cleaned the filter on the drain pump?  Cleaning the pump regularly prevents clogging and unpleasant odors.  On many front load machines it’s not that difficult -  just ask me.

9. Here in Dallas where it’s hot, it’s important to leave the door of a front load washer open between wash days or overnight. Leaving the door open will allow moisture to dry and prevent mold and mildew.

10. Last but not least, and I know you’ve heard me say this before, use a surge protector. Every spike in electricity (average home this happens 20 times per day) wears out the washer equipment, especially the circuit boards on the newer washers. There is a brand new top load clothes washer that is put out by Whirlpool; it doesn’t look like there are any computers on board. The console is all knobs and there are 5, count them 5 circuit boards on that one machine. Eventually it will fail prematurely if you don’t have a surge protector on it.

If you abuse your washer, the machine will get even and break down.  Then you’ll be calling me, Tyler Adkins. My number is (972) 890-5014.

The way a typical home warranty works is to charge you the money “upfront” and then when you have a problem you make a claim. A service tech of the warranty company’s choosing comes out, charges you between $50 and $75 to diagnose the problem and then bills the warranty company for the remainder of the repair.

My personal experience with these companies and many conversations with clients leads me to believe that the home warranty company’s end game is to put your money in their bank account and give as little back as possible. This is not always true with every home warranty company; however I would venture to say that most are like this.

From the home warranty company’s standpoint they make a bigger profit if they can find a reason to deny your claim or pay out as little as possible towards your claim. They deal in large numbers and know that a certain amount of people will cease the home warranty before they have realized a “return on their investment”.

As a service tech working for that company, I could run around and deny claims all day (the home warranty company “likes” this) and collect my average $65 and do almost no work. I can deny the claim for “not properly maintaining the equipment” or for “user abuse” or for “pre-existing conditions”, any number of creative ideas to not have to work but still make money. And to top it off, the home warranty company sends me lots of business, because it doesn’t cost them anything to have me deny the claims.

Now again, I don’t really believe that all techs or all home warranty companies operate this way, but hopefully you can easily see how the system that they have set up leads to this type of modus operandi.

At A+ Certified Appliance we operate a little differently. The A+ Service Plan is designed with some very distinct differences which amazingly enough actually can enhance a home warranty, or is a great stand alone service.

First – Our overriding principle of business is: Companies should be in business, first to serve people. I hope that everyone that has done business with us and everyone that will do business with us in the future experiences this philosophy to the fullest extent we can create for each individual.

Let’s get the downside out of the way first. The drawback to the A+ Service Plan is that it currently only covers what we work on. We hope to change this in the near future. We service and repair: Washers, Dryers, Refrigerators, Freezers, Dishwashers, Ovens, Ranges, Cook tops, Disposals, Microwaves, Wine Coolers, Ice Machines, Trash Compactors, Flat Panel, & DLP TVs.

Second – the A+ Service Plan is a monthly automatic billing, cancel anytime you want. There is no long term obligation or risk.

Third – We give you value upfront. We maintenance your equipment once per year on your sign up day anniversary. This includes: cleaning the coils on your refrigerator(s) – this will save most folks enough on their electricity bill to pay for their service plan, we open up the dryer and clean the lint out from the interior of the dryer – prevents the danger of fire, we check for drain clogs on dishwashers – prevents leaks and helps dishes get cleaned, and for front load washing machines that have access to the drain pump we clean out the lint trap in the pump – this can help with the “stink” that front load washing machines can get. This service alone is worth up to $215 depending on how many appliances a home has. In addition, maintaining your equipment will absolutely save you money long term as the appliance will run more efficiently and last longer.

Finally – ANY time you need service or repair, you call us, we’ll be there, we’ll treat you right and you will only pay for parts. Being on the A+ Service Plan eliminates any trip charge and labor and gives you the comfort that you won’t have a big bill for repair that you weren’t anticipating. Even though a few parts can be costly, especially computer boards (get our whole house surge protector for this), being on the A+ Service Plan will reduce each repair by 30% to 100%. If you don’t need parts, there will be no charge.

As a bonus, we will warranty all parts we replace for 1 year from installation. This is 4 times what the typical manufacturer will warranty the parts. Also, if we ever have to declare an appliance unfit to repair, we will offer a 50% off our normal installation fee.

So, I hope you can see how the A+ Service Plan differs from the typical home warranty – Value upfront, no desire to “duck” the service and a great value to the customer.

Almost everyone knows to put surge protection on their computers, most folks know to put it on their TVs and less than 1% know to put surge protection on their appliances.

A couple of pointers about surge protectors:

1) Most surge protectors at the retailers lose their ability to protect after about a year. This is because they “absorb” the surge. Our surge protectors redirect the surge to ground and therefore don’t wear out and that is why we can offer a lifetime warranty on the equipment. Check it out. We do also offer point of use surge protectors – the ones you plug into the wall to protect your TVs and computers.

2) Had a customer in Frisco, TX that had a lightning strike in his back yard. He had our whole house surge protector, but failed to run his Samsung TV signal, internet signal and telephone line through the surge protectors. This is very important! The transient voltage came in through those sources, made a u-turn through his equipment and into the electrical system, bypassing our whole house surge protector and caused over $3000.00 worth of damage. Don’t forget to run your TV signal, internet signal and telephone line through the surge protectors. Also, if you buy from the retail store, you need to replace them every year. Hint – Buy them from us and never buy them again.

3) Our connected equipment warranty does not extend to TVs, computers, garage door openers and wireless routers. Why not? Transient voltage in the air from a close lightning strike can attack through a wireless signal, TV signal, Internet signal, & telephone line (ex. Coax cable, DSL, etc.). This means you should turn off your laptops and wireless routers in a thunderstorm. Don’t just unplug your laptop, turn it off!

4) I’ve had several people tell me in the last couple of weeks that they have home warranties and that protects them if a circuit board in an appliance fails. The fallacy in that lies in a lack of understanding regarding what no surge protection leaves you open to. “Dirty” electricity is a fact of life. Unless you “clean” it up, it beats on everything that is electric, from light bulbs, to motors and compressors, to circuit boards in appliances. These items will fail prematurely if you don’t protect them with “clean” electricity.  In addition, we need to factor in that home warranties don’t reimburse the cost of losing food when your refrigerator breaks down, and most don’t pay the whole cost of replacing your equipment because what is in your house is not what is available today.

5) The ONLY way you can protect an electric dryer, electric oven or range, your AC unit, your hot water heater, many dishwashers, your electronic control for your AC and your electronic control for your security system is with a whole house surge protector. These items are either 220V or hard wired and there is no “plug in” solution.

Well hope that helps and let us know if we can help you with protecting your computers in your appliances.

Warmer weather, more people in the house for longer hours contribute to refrigerators working overtime.

Some things you can do as a consumer are:

1) Make sure the doors stay closed as much as possible. Every time the door is opened, cold air escapes and the refrigerator or freezer works overtime to replace it.

2) Make sure your water filter in the refrigerator has been changed recently. Old filters can restrict water flow or even burst creating a serious flood in your house.

3) Place your refrigerator in a coolest location possible. Refrigerators in garages, especially in Texas are very susceptible to compressors having “heart attacks”. Be sure there is plenty of room behind the refrigerator and you can even buy a small 8″-10″ fan and place it to blow behind the frig at the bottom to help the dissipation of heat.

4) Keep hot food or liquids out of your refrigerator until they are cooled off.

5) Keep everything covered in both the freezer side and frig side. Uncovered food can create “food dust” that circulates into the freezer compartment and can clog the defrost drain. A sure sign that your defrost drain is clogged is ice on the floor of the freezer and/or water “leaking” out onto the floor in front of the freezer.

6) Keep the freezer full. This uses less electricity to maintain the desired temperature. Don’t pack food tight. For efficient cooling and freezing, air must be able to flow between items.

7) Check your door seals. Worn door seals let cold air seep out. To test for worn seals, simply close the door on a dollar bill. If there is no resistance when you pull it out, the seals should be replaced.

The ideal temperature for a refrigerator is 38 degrees Fahrenheit, and the ideal for the freezer is 0 – 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

9) If you know how to clean the lint and dust off of your condenser then do it. If not call me and I will teach you or come and do it for you. It is one of the main reasons I offer my Service Plan, so you don’t have to worry about it. Homes that have animals are especially susceptible to hair collecting on the condenser. This one tip can save you $10 – $40 per month on your electric bill as the compressor has to work much harder to dissipate the heat when the airflow over the condenser is limited. Also, this can help prevent your compressor from failing – by far the most expensive repair on a refrigerator.

10) Please, please, please… put surge protection on your equipment. If you were my brother or sister I would twist your arm and make you do it. It really is that important! Of course you can check my Whole House Surge Protector and protect the whole house. Be sure to call and ask about my Spring Special!

Bottom line – Now is the time to check your refrigerator to prevent failure and loss of food!

Recap:

1) Keep the doors closed.

2) Change your water filter.

3) Place your refrigerator in a coolest location possible.

4) Cool off hot food or liquids.

5) Keep everything covered.

6) Keep the freezer full.

7) Check your door seals.

Frig temp – 38 degrees, freezer temp 0 degrees.

9) Keep your condenser clean.

10) Put a surge protector on your equipment!

Summer is coming – I hope you have a great one!

We want to thank Greenville Utilities from Greenville, NC for their tips page which contributed to our post!

Typically this is caused when someone switches detergent usually to a liquid gel. It is almost always because we use too much soap.

One of my most appreciated recommendations follows:

My suggestion is to throw the liquid away and use the Cascade Complete or Finish tablets. Place one in the bottom of the dishwasher. Do not put them in the dispenser.

The reason for this is you want the soap (abrasive) at the front end of the cleaning process so that the last little bit of food that is left on the dishes  (I’m assuming you are rinsing your dishes) is blasted off and then the dishwasher can “sanitize” the dishes with water that is too hot for you to handle. That is the real purpose of a dishwasher.

Keep in mind that if you rinse your dishes well before placing them in the dishwasher you can probably use the shortest cycle and save quite a bit of money on electricity and water over the course of a year.

Also, take a coffee cup and fill it half way with white vinegar and place it upright in the top rack with your next load of dishes. Do this for the next several loads and then once per month for as long as you own and use a dishwasher.

There are 3 main factors that I see contribute to the panic call – “My appliance is broken, come help me….”

1) Proper usage of the appliance. Most of my helpful hints can be found on my tips page or for more in-depth knowledge read my other blogs. Most common are “abuses” such as slamming a lid on a washer or dryer, too many clothes in a load of laundry, too much soap in the washer or dishwasher, too much food left on plates before placing in the dishwasher, not cleaning the microwave frequently, etc. These are habits that we get into that if we will break them, you can eliminate the expense and hassle of a lot of repairs.

2) Proper maintenance on your machines. Typically the lay person should not attempt some of the maintenance, so that is why I have a Service Warranty that does include a yearly maintenance opportunity.

3) Surge Protection – I would estimate that 1/3 of all my repairs could be prevented through proper surge protection. It sounds crazy, but if you followed my around for a week, you would see how many circuit boards I have to replace in machines, not to mention how many electrical parts, compressors  and motors I see that have burned up most likely due to excess voltage and “dirty” power. You can purchase my whole house Surge Protector right on my site – click here and then fill out the form, or call my @ 972-890-5014 and I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

As the holidays approach, please check you oven and make sure it works before you need it. Call me or an appliance repair company you trust with plenty of time before the parties and relatives get here.

Oven and stove repairs really accelerate n frequency around the holidays and it is difficult to work in the emergency repair. Also, this will save you money as many appliance repair companies will charge a premium just because of the urgency of the situation. I don’t personally, nor do I condone the practice, but as a suggestion don’t call me on Thanksgiving because your oven doesn’t work. Although I would like to help, there is nothing that I can do at that point as the parts houses are closed.

As, I have mentioned in previous posts, get a whole house surge protector now! Don’t procrastinate, don’t put it off until after Christmas, don’t wait! You don’t want an unnecessary expensive repair that you weren’t planning on right before all the expense and stress of the holidays. I’m not promising your appliance won’t break, but it sure will reduce the odds of you having a problem. If you mention this blog, I will offer $100.00 off my current price if you sign up for my service warranty at the same time you purchase the surge protector. This will help limit your expense on any repair for as long as you are on the warranty. This is my gift to you this holiday season. Unfortunately, I can only offer this to my clients in the DFW area. Those outside the area, I can still offer you the whole house surge protection.

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

For me this is an easy answer with a qualifier. The answer is yes if the repair costs less than 1/2 the cost of a new dryer of the same quality. That is actually my standard measure for most appliances. As an example, if a refrigerator repair is going to cost $500-$700, which a compressor replacement generally does, then most refrigerators should be replaced rather than repaired.

Getting back to dryers however, I can almost always repair a dryer for less than $200, so the vast majority of dryers should be repaired.

Here are a couple of tips to keep me out of your house:

1) Always check the circuit breaker at the breaker box first before calling a tech if your dryer is not turning on or heating. I have profited many a service call and all that was necessary was flipping on a tripped breaker.  The breaker for an electric dryer should look very similar to the highlighted breaker in this picture:

To make sure the breaker is working properly – flip it off and then back on.

A dryer can sometimes fool you in that the motor runs which only needs 110V but not heat which needs 220V. I have seen breakers “half” tripped only allowing one leg of the 220V circuit to complete so the dryer “runs” but doesn’t hear.

Next most common cause of dryer failure, which results in the need for an electric dryer repair is the thermal fuse, high temp cut off or the heating element itself. Many times this dryer repair can be avoided by having the dryer vent duct cleaned out regularly. Recently I help a client in Carrollton, TX avoid a dryer repair by having her get her dryer vent duct cleaned before I came out. Here is a before and after picture of her exhaust hole on the roof:

The symptoms for this are that the clothes take 2-3 cycles to dry. The normal load of clothes in most dryers should take between 40 and 70 minutes to dry depending on how many clothes and the weight of the clothes. For instance, towels will take much longer to dry than whites.

The last thing is and those who have read my previous blogs know what’s coming – You must install a whole house surge protector to protect the computers in your newer model dryers. Almost any dryer that is less than 10 years old is going to have at least one circuit board in it and sometimes as many as three. As there is no such thing as a 220V plug in surge protector to my knowledge, the only way to protect your dryer is to put a surge protector on the whole house.

Here is some very good information regarding a dishwasher purchase if a dishwasher repair is not appropriate: http://www.toprateddishwasher.com/.

I’d like to add that the most common reason people prefer a quiet dishwasher is their TV is in the same space as the kitchen and it is hard to hear a TV program when the dishwasher is running. (Commercials seem to be no problem, though. )

I have found that typically a decibel rating of 53 or lower is typically quiet enough to have the dishwasher running and watch a TV program at a normal sound level.

Here is a forum of reviews: http://www.dishwasher-review.com/. I tend to stay away from Consumer Reports for reliability information although this resource can tell you a lot in terms of price vs. features and problems through the warranty period. For reliability information the forums are much better, but keep in mind that the manufacturers tend to update the models every year or two and sometimes so drastically that you can’t even tell that it is the same product.

Keep in mind as always that a surge protector is necessary to eliminate the “board” or “computer” problems that consistently occur in the dishwasher repair arena.

Also, the tips found on my Tips Page will drastically help a dishwasher last longer and operate properly.

I frequently have to repair a refrigerator that has overworked the compressor due to poor airflow which is caused by too much lint and animal hair on the condenser coils. This can cause the start relay and overload switch to fail prematurely because the compressor is working too hard. Sometimes the compressor will even have a “heart attack” (lock up) and that can be the end of your refrigerator.

Well, there are 3 things that you as a consumer can do to help prevent an unnecessary refrigerator repair.

1)      Clean off the condenser at least yearly, and if you have animals do it every 6 months.  On a Whirlpool or Kenmore refrigerator the condenser is usually at the bottom or underneath the refrigerator.

On a Whirlpool or Kenmore refrigerator typically the condenser is located at the bottom of the frig behind the toe plate.

Open the doors.

Pop off the “grill”.

The condenser is usually covered in lint, animal hair and dust. Use a vacuum and a can of compressed air like what you use to clean out a computer.

On many refrigerators the condenser coils are located at the back of the fridge. Just a few screws and take off the back and clean as above.

2) Also, keep all food covered in both the refrigerator and the freezer. Most folks don’t realize that in most refrigerators all the cooling comes from the freezer and is circulated into the refrigerator side with the use of a fan. When you don’t cover your food, “food dust” gets into the freezer and accumulates down at the defrost drain, stopping up the drain and causing ice buildup at the bottom of the freezer. I usually get calls that the refrigerator is leaking sporadically onto the floor in front of the freezer on side by side models or into the refrigerator on top freezer models. This refrigerator repair is very common and totally preventable the majority of the time.

3)      Again surge protection is absolutely necessary on any newer model refrigerator! Some GE refrigerator models have as many as 5, count them, 5 circuit boards / computers on board. A recent client of mine in Frisco, TX ended up paying over $500 to repair their GE refrigerator and it could have been prevented with a surge protector.

In the end, my goal is to stay out of your house as much as possible. I figure if I try to do that then I get to come if you really need me. If you have any questions, please fill out the comment box below. I’ll do my best to answer ASAP.