Nothing is broken nor do I have any big purchases planned in the near future. I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately though as it comes up frequently at work. When an expensive item breaks and is getting old is it better to repair it or buy new?
I see this allot at work, I get called out to repair a piece of equipment, lets say a residential air conditioner. I get there and realize it has a refrigerant leak and the unit is over 20 years old. At this point you have spent $80 and it's still broken, to fix it the bare minimum is about another $200, including a charge to find the leak, one pound refrigerant, a small leak repair, it can however approach the $500 mark as I had the other day. Including the diagnostic charge you just spent $580 on a 20 year old air conditioning system that still has all it's original parts.
A new system will run you close to $3000. For this you get a 5 year warranty with option to upgrade/extend a much more efficient unit and since everything is new things are less likely to break. As good as that sounds though it is still quite a bit more money than the repair and also a new unit will take a few days before it can be installed the repair is likely completed same day. What to do?
I like to give people the heads up before I start any repairs because if just told the price of repair most will say just do it, however in the past I have had people tell me once they saw the total they realized they should have considered a new unit. I tend to compare it to repairing an old car, sure it's cheaper to repair it but what else might go wrong next year or heck next month? It seems people are more willing to upgrade their car than their furnace or AC, I seen many people fix 20+ year old equipment yet I am sure the same person would never dream of dropping $500 on a 20 year old car, yet the cost of a new car is way more than $3000, why is that, heck your old car you can sell even if for only $100 there is a very limited market for 20 year old furnaces.
Speaking of cars, I got rid of my Sunfire because it was at the point I no longer wanted to spend any money on it, I had not really spent much on repairs the time I had it but I knew I did not want to do it again. Had I kept it sure there would have been repairs due but it still would have been less than what the MINI has cost me, although the MINI is many times more fun.
Now for the cheaper stuff, lots of mass produced good these days simply cost less to make than to diagnose and repair. |This is fine for a non sentimental appliance that has worked well for many years. That 3 year old washing machine on the other hand is a waste, it's no longer under warranty, is it even worth having a guy come out spent $80 just to have him tell you it's not worth fixing? Yeah there is a chance it is just a burnt wire or a no part required repair but we assume the worse and simply go buy another one, throwing the not so old one in the trash.
This repairs not worth it can be frustrating for electronics. A camera for example can take a while to get used too, if it breaks and is very expensive to repair if repairable at all(obsolete) can be upsetting sure the new one may be better but by how much really?
Anyway all that to say,,,, actually I don't really know what my point is does everything need a point?
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2 comments:
I have become MUCH less of a waster the older I get.
I am trying my hardest to be "green", only I was doing it before it was a fad.
But to repair an old appliance rather than buying a new "energy star" is a conundrum for sure. On the one hand, you have something that was probably built very well and if you can't repair it, usually where does it end up? On the other hand you have an appliance that is MUCH more energy efficient...plus you may get a tax break to boot.
If our furnace was to break down and Jerome would not be able to fix it nor the repairman that we'd undoubtedly have to call couldn't fix it or advised against fixing it - I guess getting rid of it would be the way I would go...however, I would go to the scrap yard and recycle the metal.
If we have to throw away anything that could have materials inside of it that can be recycled, we typically take it apart and recycle what we can.
I can't speak for other companies but we do recycle the scrap metal, especially the copper$$$
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