Repair vs Replace; Wasted Resources

[fetteler]

I'm not sure that labour is a finite resource, it's a renewable surely?

Steve.

[G6Tanuki]

I consider labour very finite, specially when it's mine! We only get the one life, and it's a shame to spend it all working.

[fetteler]

Of course I mean world wide and over the span of humanity's existence. When viewed like that then labour is a renewable i.e. there is a renewable supply of human beings in a way that there is not (for example) a renewable supply of tantalum or other definitely finite resources.

Steve.

[avocollector]

For me it's about the value to some extent you can get from the repaired item - chainsaws chains can be easily sharpened by non specialists such as myself for 4-5 times but once you have to reduce the lands I tend to replace. For many years I saved all the 'usefull' offcuts of small bits of wood for wedges, blocks etc until I realised they were the reason I could not move in my shed - so I dumped 80% and have not missed them to date. I got great pleasure out of fixing a Weston 1940's multimeter despite the fact a modern digital one would have cost under 5 pounds and been far more accurate. On the other hand I cannot be bothered with defunct toasters etc and they go asap. What really narks though is knowing you have the replacement item/bit stored away and simply cannot find it - of course the moment you throw the item requiring repair out it's bound to appear!

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by avocollector

...On the other hand I cannot be bothered with defunct toasters etc and they go asap...

If I were stuck with a throwaway toaster I expect I'd throw it away if it failed, rather than embark on trying to repair something that wasn't designed with repair in mind. Fortunately there are still alternatives, and if the Rowlett Regent in the kitchen should need a new element or timer I'll not grudge it the little time required to restore full operation.

[Boom]

Originally Posted by fetteler

There's tremendous pleasure from keeping stuff going, improvising and making things from scratch - not just pleasure but I believe it to be creative. As a result, we (my partner Angie and I) end up living in a world that is (in a large part) unique to us and has our personalities and souls within it.

Well put Steve. Relatives call our front room 'The junk shop' but we wouldn't have it any other way.

[ms660]

Originally Posted by avocollector

For me it's about the value to some extent you can get from the repaired item - chainsaws chains can be easily sharpened by non specialists such as myself for 4-5 times but once you have to reduce the lands I tend to replace.

This a bit off topic I know but, unless the chain is hitting metal or stone etc between sharpenings you can get much more than 4 or 5 sharpenings out of the chainsaw chain, with a good quality chain there should be a line mark on top of each tooth that not only gives the correct angle for sharpening for cross cutting (not ripping) but also the minimum amount of tooth that it can be sharpened down to before the chain needs replacing, that line also extends down the side of the tooth, there should also be a minimum height line mark on each raker that serves the same purpose, what is also important that some folks don't fully realize is that the diameter of the file used must be the same diameter as that prescribed by the chain manufacture for the type of chain employed. If not experienced then use a file holder/guide, they're cheap enough and have the correct angle marked on them, also if not experienced use a raker gauge as well, again very cheap and are often sold with the file holder/guide in a wrap up tool roll.

Stay safe.

Lawrence.

It has been said of me "oh he will like that, it's broken, something to fix". In these days of fleeting instant gratification I find an evening (time scales are variable) of repairing something much better. It is not financially viable taken simply as hours v.s. outcome, what does an evening out cost these days? Saturday cost nigh on £200 for a bit of afternoon pub with friends and (a glorious) dinner later, celebrating our 26th anniversary.

Doing a jigsaw is a total waste (of money) so is repairing a £2 bit of kit over an hour or so, it's all fun.

[YoungManGW]

Just to answer a couple of similar queries on this point: the timber in the skip that I referred to wasn't the old stuff out of the building being redeveloped, it was the off-cuts (many feet long in most cases) from the new timber being used to rebuild the roof. I asked again today, a different chap on site, and have come home with plenty of kiln-dried pressure-treated 6"x2", more than enough for all the required noggins.

The cement mixer that I inherited from my father, and was third- or fourth-hand when he had it, finally gave up the ghost today, the bearing shot to hell. The motor, gearing and pulley have been saved for future use; and the rear section of the bucket has been salvaged to make into a fire-pit.

All good.

Regards,
Richard

[julie_m]

Result!

[dave walsh]

Excellent Richard. I think you were unlucky to encounter a knob the first time but not one even of any use on a piece of vintage equipment!

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I question the sanity - in energy terms - of running a 55-year-old fridge on a daily basis.

A few years back I did the cost-spreadsheet for my 15-year-old Lec fridge and found that over 18 months its 'excess' electricity utilisation compared to a modern A+++ rated fridge would pay for the new one.

The path-of-action was obvious - the old Lec went to the skip to be replaced by a new Indesit, which is a lot quieter and a lot colder as well as being £60-a-year cheaper to run!

Replacing a R134a fridge with an R600a one will mostly be a good idea. For an even older R12a one, it will be less obvious. My old Liebherr falls into class B, replacing it with an A+ model would have paid marginally for itself after several years. Read: long after the warranty would have expired. Maybe an A+++ model would have a different outcome, but I would recommend anyone to do what you did: first calculate. It also depends on what you want to and can invest.

[Argus25]

Originally Posted by fetteler

I'm proud of my make do and mend lifestyle and background - wouldn't have it any other way There's tremendous pleasure from keeping stuff going, improvising and making things from scratch - not just pleasure but I believe it to be creative. As a result, we (my partner Angie and I) end up living in a world that is (in a large part) unique to us and has our personalities and souls within it.

Steve.

That is very well put. And a much better way to live than being dependent on the "Man" and part of the crowd relentlessly sold new plastic products every time something around them breaks down.

[MrBungle]

Originally Posted by Maarten

Replacing a R134a fridge with an R600a one will mostly be a good idea. For an even older R12a one, it will be less obvious. My old Liebherr falls into class B, replacing it with an A+ model would have paid marginally for itself after several years. Read: long after the warranty would have expired. Maybe an A+++ model would have a different outcome, but I would recommend anyone to do what you did: first calculate. It also depends on what you want to and can invest.

This is true for computers as well. My laptop pulls about 18 watts flat out and 9 watts when not doing much. My old desktop pulled minimum 90 watts and peaking at 160 watts under load! Cheaper to run a newer laptop.

[Nuvistor]

Re post 23.
A fridge will be ok at 45F but modern fridge freezers with a single thermostat will not work at that temperature, min temp for most is 10C/50F, some are 15C.
The fridge will be OK but the freezer will defrost.

['LIVEWIRE?']

My almost 10 years old Fridgemaster Fridge-Freezer of neccesity is opposite the south-east facing window in my small kitchenette, and has never suffered from the defrosting problem. However it has two seperate thermostats, which no doubt explains why.

[Radio Wrangler]

All the resources like tantalum, samarium, cobalt, copper still exist. It's just that mankind has mixed them up with all sorts of stuff and scattered them around, increasing their entropy and making them uneconomic to recover.

I expect that in the future, as supplies in handily mined concentrations get harder to find, old landfill sites will get re-processed. I also suspect that the large jail population could be seen as a labour pool for dismantling, separating and recycling junk. Weight and purity counting to reduced sentences.

David

[GrimJosef]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

All the resources like tantalum, samarium, cobalt, copper still exist ...

I got into this subject just before retiring from work. We were looking at fundamental resource issues as they might relate to an energy industry based on laser-driven nuclear fusion. This is when I came across the gold problem. In nuclear fusion reactions, of course, the elements may well not be preserved. In all likelihood any gold used in the target structure (say in the hohlraum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohlraum or in a fast-ignition guide cone https://www.researchgate.net/publica..._Fast_Ignition) would end up being transmuted into another element .

I agree this isn't the biggest problem facing the technology though !

VB

[avocollector]

My thanks to Lawrence for his info about the lines on chainsaw chains - never realised they had guidelines on them!! Had the files but usually a couple of teeth go awol by the 5 or 6th sharpening so simply not bothered.

As for toasters, I was referring to the el cheapos - you have problems getting parts here in NZ for quality ones and although the law says the retailers must import a stock of spares, it's honoured more in the breach than the observance.

[The Philpott]

Some of you will have noticed that one company makes the majority of kettle thermostats for the UK market. Replacements (presumably cloned pattern parts) can sometimes be found online, but if you approach the manufacturer direct they will politely tell you that they only deal with companies. A contrast with the supply of conventional capillary based 'stats for refrigerators, which are easily found.

When toasters start misbehaving i usually chuck 'em- though this could be a prejudice based on an offending toaster from my childhood which was caught moonlighting as a 240 volt mouse-o-cutor.