3 ms·

>You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-fril

>You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge. You can certainly pay that. And they are better than residential. But they are not like old residential. Often these "made to fail" products actually cost more to engineer than products that last longer. It's just the company makes more money by selling you two of something than one of something.

cr0sh 7y ago
Something to also be aware of is that some commercial "appliances" should never be installed in a "residential" (or anything close to it) setting. I once had an employer who had this extreme Icee addiction. Our office was near a 7-11, and he'd be over there getting an Icee all the time. Well - one day he was one Craigslist, and found an Icee machine someone was selling for a few hundred dollars. Since I was the only one with a pickup truck, he enlisted me and all the other software developers to go and pick up this machine - he was going to install it in the office. Yeah - he made terrible decisions like that - apparently paying us to do manual labor at software development rates was a-ok. So we go and get this machine - heaviest darn thing I've ever seen, short of the cast iron fire place insert my parents had. We get it wrestled into my pickup, and drive it back to the office. We carefully get it up to the office. Then began the long process of making it functional. He dragged me all over the place, I'm not sure why I was the picked guy. But we went to ace hardware, various welding supply places (needed CO2), and several other places - to get all the special hoses and other parts to fix the darn thing. Some parts we could only get from Icee itself - fortunately there was a local distributor - and I don't know how he swung it, but he managed to not only get parts, but also to get Icee flavors (we toyed with the idea of using boxes from Costco, but they had a different connector or something for the hose IIRC). We got the thing all together, then began the process of cleaning it - because it hadn't been run in a long time, and there was gunk and other junk inside the parts, etc. It's crazy how complicated Icee machines are - heck, you wouldn't believe the manual for programming them (it used some kind of small 8-bit microcontroller system from the 1980s - probably 8051 or something like that - maybe even a Z80 - but anyhow, it could be programmed to make "the perfect Icee" - of course, in order to really do that, you needed a special scope to allow you to measure ice crystal sizes - I am not joking - the manual was easily 500 pages long). So - we got it clean. Now mind you, again, my boss is paying me as a software developer to do all of this with him, instead of - you know - working on client's software. I don't know what was going thru his head. "Must have Icee" or something crazy like that. So - we get it all done. It's clean, it's right. We plug it in, pressurize the system, follow the steps and turn it on. And it runs... A few hours later, we pull the first Icee. A little runny. Pull a second an hour later. Better. Pull a third 30 minutes later. Pretty much perfect. So there we have it - an Icee machine in our office. It probably cost him $1000 not counting my paycheck - but "free Icees"? Guess what - an office of a few people can't drink that many Icees - not even with a boss who has an addiction. We tried, we couldn't do it. We burned out quick. We also found out that a commercial machine like an Icee machine, if it isn't kept running and used constantly (like you'd see in a convenience store or such) - that it will break down often. And this machine did. Each time costing a lot of money and time to source parts and fix it. One time we had to make a custom tool to pull the impellers that stir the mixture in the freeze chamber (the actual tool was god-aweful expensive), in order to change some seals. It was crazy. Then one day, after Christmas break, but before New Years - one of my coworkers and I had to go into work (we didn't take the days off). I get there early in the morning. Our office was on the third floor. I walk down a hallway to the elevators as normal and see that the ceiling is leaking. I think nothing of it, but plan to call maintenance to let them know. I take the elevator up to the office. I step out of the elevator. Squish. WTF? Look down the hall - water running under the door from our office. SMH. Long story short, my coworker and I got things cleaned up in a jiffy using a shop vac and a rented rug doctor. We called maintenance and let them know, but we played stupid on the water connection and the machine (after they left, I checked the machine, and what had failed was a solenoid valve for the water supply). My boss wasn't pleased when I told him about the problem, but we got it cleaned up (he was at Disneyland over the break) over the day. Maintenance also helped with the cleanup (fans and more shop vacs). I'm not sure what/how maintenance or management said/did to my boss, but the machine was gone in a week.

cr0sh 7y ago

Something to also be aware of is that some commercial "appliances" should never be installed in a "residential" (or anything close to it) setting. I once had an employer who had this extreme Icee addiction. Our office was near a 7-11, and he'd be over there getting an Icee all the time. Well - one day he was one Craigslist, and found an Icee machine someone was selling for a few hundred dollars. Since I was the only one with a pickup truck, he enlisted me and all the other software developers to go and pick up this machine - he was going to install it in the office. Yeah - he made terrible decisions like that - apparently paying us to do manual labor at software development rates was a-ok. So we go and get this machine - heaviest darn thing I've ever seen, short of the cast iron fire place insert my parents had. We get it wrestled into my pickup, and drive it back to the office. We carefully get it up to the office. Then began the long process of making it functional. He dragged me all over the place, I'm not sure why I was the picked guy. But we went to ace hardware, various welding supply places (needed CO2), and several other places - to get all the special hoses and other parts to fix the darn thing. Some parts we could only get from Icee itself - fortunately there was a local distributor - and I don't know how he swung it, but he managed to not only get parts, but also to get Icee flavors (we toyed with the idea of using boxes from Costco, but they had a different connector or something for the hose IIRC). We got the thing all together, then began the process of cleaning it - because it hadn't been run in a long time, and there was gunk and other junk inside the parts, etc. It's crazy how complicated Icee machines are - heck, you wouldn't believe the manual for programming them (it used some kind of small 8-bit microcontroller system from the 1980s - probably 8051 or something like that - maybe even a Z80 - but anyhow, it could be programmed to make "the perfect Icee" - of course, in order to really do that, you needed a special scope to allow you to measure ice crystal sizes - I am not joking - the manual was easily 500 pages long). So - we got it clean. Now mind you, again, my boss is paying me as a software developer to do all of this with him, instead of - you know - working on client's software. I don't know what was going thru his head. "Must have Icee" or something crazy like that. So - we get it all done. It's clean, it's right. We plug it in, pressurize the system, follow the steps and turn it on. And it runs... A few hours later, we pull the first Icee. A little runny. Pull a second an hour later. Better. Pull a third 30 minutes later. Pretty much perfect. So there we have it - an Icee machine in our office. It probably cost him $1000 not counting my paycheck - but "free Icees"? Guess what - an office of a few people can't drink that many Icees - not even with a boss who has an addiction. We tried, we couldn't do it. We burned out quick. We also found out that a commercial machine like an Icee machine, if it isn't kept running and used constantly (like you'd see in a convenience store or such) - that it will break down often. And this machine did. Each time costing a lot of money and time to source parts and fix it. One time we had to make a custom tool to pull the impellers that stir the mixture in the freeze chamber (the actual tool was god-aweful expensive), in order to change some seals. It was crazy. Then one day, after Christmas break, but before New Years - one of my coworkers and I had to go into work (we didn't take the days off). I get there early in the morning. Our office was on the third floor. I walk down a hallway to the elevators as normal and see that the ceiling is leaking. I think nothing of it, but plan to call maintenance to let them know. I take the elevator up to the office. I step out of the elevator. Squish. WTF? Look down the hall - water running under the door from our office. SMH. Long story short, my coworker and I got things cleaned up in a jiffy using a shop vac and a rented rug doctor. We called maintenance and let them know, but we played stupid on the water connection and the machine (after they left, I checked the machine, and what had failed was a solenoid valve for the water supply). My boss wasn't pleased when I told him about the problem, but we got it cleaned up (he was at Disneyland over the break) over the day. Maintenance also helped with the cleanup (fans and more shop vacs). I'm not sure what/how maintenance or management said/did to my boss, but the machine was gone in a week.