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is 18 years a good run for a electric stove/oven?

18 is a pretty good run these days. I've got one a bit newer than that at my Oregon place, freestanding smoothtop. So far, knock on wood, no problems.

On the other end, I still have the original Whirlpool electric wall oven that came with my CA place when it was built in 1968. The Hobart dishwasher is original too. Both are built like tanks. So, nearly 51 years old and still going. Used both today.

There was a time when appliances were pretty expensive but lasted a long time. Now they're just expensive.
 
camachinist said:
There was a time when appliances were pretty expensive but lasted a long time. Now they're just expensive.
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And we brought that upon ourselves. People default to price shop everything these days. The largest retailers of appliances are the "big box" stores like Lowes. Those stores further force the decline of product quality with their demands of suppliers to lower item costs and meet other profit eating supplier requirements. The net result is cheaply made crap.

All that said, you can still get a long service life out of many of those same appliances if you simply do a bit of preventive maintenance and parts replacement yourself. At the first sign of trouble, open it up and fix it before it gets beyond repair. Keep filters clean. remove those access panels and vacuum out under and behind. Keep the fridge condenser clean. That dryer develop a squeak? Likely a drum support bearing. You can find them for a just a few bucks if you look around. Or you can let it go until it locks up and more is damaged in the process and it becomes too costly to fix. Same for motors, heating elements, water valves all kinds of parts. Even small plastic bits that can age and become brittle are easily found for most appliances. Got a 3D printer? Make your own replacement parts!
 
Yeah, my newest major is over 20 years old and, just like with vehicles, routine maintenance can help. However, with increasing reliance on solid state electronics, there are some aspects which can't be addressed by maintenance. We see the same with vehicles.

I just made toast this morning in a toaster my parents got for a wedding gift in 1953. Only repair to it over the decades was re-soldering a power lead where it attaches to the toaster mechanism inside. It's one of those Sunbeams which slowly lowers and raises bread. Pretty amazing mechanism and reliable over now 65+ years. Expensive though, when it was new, as seen in this Dec 1953 ad, 26 bucks, or a dollar a week. Still working though, probably will long after I'm dead.
 
Man, what a cool piece. Can you find a manufacturer plate on it?

I was just watching a documentary on George Westinghouse and it reminded me I still have the Westinghouse standing heater my grandparents used in their ranch house. It still works, got a picture of my IR gun showing 208 degrees output, and it was built in 1923 according to the data plate. Only defect is the snap low/medium/high porcelain switch on it has lost the internal contacts except on medium. Hopefully I can find a replacement/retrofit some day.
I chuckle a bit as the modern ceramic cube heater I use that came from China and cost 30 bucks probably didn't cost much less in absolute dollars than that old Westinghouse. Doubt it'll be around in 100 years though and equally doubt anyone will care. Use it up and throw it away. That's progress!
 
camachinist said:
On the other end, I still have the original Whirlpool electric wall oven that came with my CA place when it was built in 1968. The Hobart dishwasher is original too. Both are built like tanks. So, nearly 51 years old and still going. Used both today.
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Until the 80s most appliances were electro-mechanical. That is they used switches in various forms, like rotary, push button, snap acting, or relays. By their nature, these are tough long lasting devices. But they can't possibly provide the features of electronics. Electronics by their nature are short lived. Cars with early electronics in them are failing, mostly because capacitors will dry out and change their values. There is also a phenomena called threshold drift, where the voltage level required to activate the gate in a chip changes over time. It drifts out of range and the system will no longer operate. The public wants fancy touch screens and lots of glitzy information so electro-mechanical systems became obsolete. That's progress for ya.
 
I deleted my mini-rant about gas prices and gas stations comparing 50's to now :D

Point taken on features and devices... I kinda laughed looking at the two tiny rotary clocks on the wall oven, the 1960's version of 'features' where you set one to turn the oven on and the other to turn it off, then set the bake dial to 'timed bake'. Still works great. The main dial clock still works too and keeps accurate time, however the buzzer on the timer has buzzed out over the last couple years. Use the timed bake for heating up the pizza stone when making pizza crust in the breadmaker, also an old throwaway of the in-laws that I rescued from the trash can. Heh. It and its simple electronics worked fine but they broke the hinged lid so threw it away. A little ingenuity and some epoxy and it's still working 15 years later.
 
These old appliances are like your children. You get them new for almost nothing, put in a lot of maintenance over the years, and, after about year 18, you kick them out to the curb, especially if they don't work at all...
 
All these anecdotal tidbits remind me of my Mom's 1956 kitchen, electric Thermador brand cook top and wall oven. She loved that oven and had it serviced every so often for the first 35 years until the repair man finally told her that replacement parts for that model were NLA and fabricating something from available parts was even getting difficult. Reluctantly, the next time the oven needed help, she replaced it with something new that never really performed up to her expectations.

On the other hand, my 1930 vintage kitchen was updated in 1952 with a "new" gas fired Wedgewood stove that continues to plug away to this day. The only repair it needed in the 24 years I have lived here was the "pickle" value needed refurbishing a few years ago. Fortunately there is a guy in SoCal who keeps these old Wedgewoods alive and I sent mine to him for the service. Energy efficient, probably not. Reliably accurate, absolutely yes! Electronic components = 0
 
camachinist said:
...that I rescued from the trash can.
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Speaking of trash cans. We keep the cattle feed in metal trash cans. I have some from our old homestead over 40 years old and are still in great condition. The new ones are a quarter of the weight and you can dent them by just bumping into them. The old ones have held up to 40+years of use. The new ones might last 5 years.
 
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