Hey, so there's been an ice buildup in our fridge creeping along the back. After a while it hit the front, and tadaaaa, it finally got bad enough the door didn't close fully... So most everything outside of one big pile of vegetables got defrosted overnight. (On the plus side, I walked into having a nice big pancake breakfast!) We threw out the meats and moved the veggies to our other freezer. This at least let me finally disassemble everything and see what's in there. It looks like this in there:

https://imgur.com/a/YnGB3Zz

When we noticed this was happening a few months ago I turned off the ice maker switch in the back and, but it still kept doing this. There's still a ton of ice in the top tray, and set the temp to the max. But the fridge is right up against the left wall there, making it difficult/impossible to get the trays here out with the door blocking it. Additionally the right side has a dishwasher immediately next to it, so a decent amount of heat goes up the back. Then ALSO I found that big chunk of ice frosted on a pipe, so I wonder if it split? I'm unfamiliar with fridge design, so I don't know exactly what would give me the right answer.

I'm wondering what to do. My thoughts are that I've finally got the bottom tray/shelf/bucket thing out, so I could hammer the shit out of it and at least clear the bottom up... Then if I could get the top tray out I could see if removing all the ice in the top would stop the creep. I'm guessing that's a big fat no. At that point, is it possible to remove the ice module that I actively do not want anyway to see if it fixes anything, or is it integral to the freezer design? And at that point... Should we just get another fridge? Are there fridges without this busto icemaker shit nowadays? Thanks!

Help me Tildes! My refrigerator is leaking and I live in an apartment so I need to get a new fridge ASAP so that I don't cause water damage to my downstairs neighbors! Does anyone have a brand recommendation? All I really care about for this is avoiding brands that are known to be shitty.

I also will use this as an opportunity to replace the absolutely horrible microwave that came with this apartment. While all fridges are basically identical to me, I am very opinionated about microwaves:

• There must be a 30 second button that either starts the cooking or adds 30s more to the existing cooking
• 1-6 must be quick-access "microwave for this many minutes" buttons, so that i can press 1 and then 30 to microwave for 90s or 4 and then 30 for 4:30, etc
• I would really like a decent popcorn button that has a microphone to determine when to stop
• Multiple power levels that are actually good at being lower power (I am fine with power level 50 meaning "be on for 50% of the time" etc, I think that works pretty well)
• idk if this even needs to be said in the year 2024 but a spinning tray
• auto-stop on door open so I can press just 1 thing
• If I press 'stop' or open the microwave after it stops it's "haha I'm done" beeping sequence, it STOPS BEEPING (my current microwave keeps beeping even if I press stop and/or open the door and I hate it so so so so much)

Edit: Thanks everyone! Based on recs here I bought a fridge without an ice machine and not LG, and it will be installed on Monday! I don't live in a rented unit, but usually I just say "apartment" rather than "condo" when I'm talking about neighbors.

I didn't go for freezer on the bottom cos those all seem to be drawers and I guess I do have an opinion about fridges, which is that I don't want the freezer to be a drawer, I feel like I'd get too cold pulling things out of it. So I got freezer-on-top, fridge-on-bottom.

There was 1 microwave with all the features I wanted plus the feature I didn't know I wanted where the numbers are arranged the same as a phone instead of [12345][678910] in 2 rows (why would you reinvent how to display numbers like this????) so I bought that one, and everything will be delivered on Monday!

Came home today and found wet clothes in the dryer. Which was weird because earlier, I had found the same load in there wet and just thought I had forgotten to start the dryer. Low and behold, when I stood and watched it, about ten seconds after starting it, it started beeping and gave out an F01 error code.

While googling it, it seemed that the code meant the relay electronics board had failed and needed to be replaced. I thought, I can probably do that, but the board seemed to be more than $150, which is more than the callout fee on our home warranty ($125). But what we most needed was a working dryer!

While looking for the exact price and a source to order the board, I found this video describing a simple fix for a blown solder connection. I unplugged the washer, opened it up, and the board was blown in the exact same spot as in the video. I soldered a jumper in, put it back together, and lo and behold, the dryer runs!

I have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, even though it hasn't been my day job in a long time. So I could at least evaluate the plausibility of the fix, and I had the tools and know-how to do the soldering. So definitely not a fix for everyone.

Money is tight right now, so fixing the dryer for $0 (and in half an hour no less) was big for us. Sometimes you need a win, and today was a day I really needed one!

What fixes around the house are you most proud of, saved you some money, or kept a piece of equipment out of the landfill?

We bought our house over eight years ago and it came with a number of appliances. Within the first year, both the refrigerator and the dishwasher crapped out on us. We replaced them with new Frigidaire and Whirlpool models respectively, but I definitely haven't been satisfied with them. Now my washer and dryer are acting up and I'm not sure how much longer they've got.

When our fridge first started giving us issues, we had someone come out to try to fix the existing one. He basically told us that it would be around $400 to replace the failing motherboard on it — and given how simple that fridge was, it was essentially the price of a replacement. So you can't fix anything—you just throw it into a landfill and buy a new one.

The principle of "you get what you pay for" doesn't seem to apply, either. I don't need a fridge that has a 20-inch OLED screen for connecting to a Samsung account. Paying more just seems to get you more features that are likely to cause problems down the road.

Before we bought our replacement dishwasher, I got a subscription to Consumer Reports. The one we got was one of their recommendations. But it's just… not a good dishwasher. Little parts of it keep failing (e.g., the top rack's glassware holder-spine-thingies). And it's leaking, too!

So, to bring it back around to the subject title, how do you even find reliable appliances? Does anyone even make reliable appliances? It seems like there has been a race to the bottom among all of the appliance manufacturers (not that this is a unique to appliances, as this Vox piece explains). Long-term reliability doesn't move units off the showroom floor, so it doesn't get prioritized. (Plus there's the whole economic disincentive for "durable goods" to actually be durable.) And with model numbers changing annually, there's no good way to keep track of which models have proven reliability.

So our freezer is dying. Our fridge is over 20 years old and has served us well, but it's time to move on. Given the reputation of modern appliances, the proliferation of smart appliances, and the current class-action lawsuit against LG and Kenmore over faulty compressors leading to fridges dying after just five years, I figured I'd ask for some recommendations on good brands.

For specifics, we don't need or want any fancy features beyond an ice maker. We'd prefer it to not have any smart features, just a good old simple fridge/freezer that can be expected to function fine for years (again, we've had the current one for 20 years). My mom says she'd prefer a fridge with a bottom freezer compartment, but I don't think that's a deal-breaker (our current one is a side-by-side) so long as it's a good model.