Stats - common failures, items to avoid, challenging products

Offtopic Chat
1

What sort of statistics, if any, do you collect?

Are any tends appearing, do you have things that frequently appear in for repair. Do you have items you refuse to repair or feel dread at the thought of of trying to break into them or find spare parts, etc…

For us right now, it’s Pressure Washers, mostly Karcher, but some other brands too. Leaks from plastics and seals. We also sort a lot of table lamps, chairs and broken cables on garden power tools.

We avoid petrol powered items (insurance limitation for the building), microwaves and things that may contain asbestos. We also don’t take in devices containing valves or things are local businesses fix such as wind up clocks.

This week I declined a battery powered scooter. Too many fore risks from tinkering with lithium batteries, BMS systems, chargers etc.

2

Lamps are very common with us too. Coffee machines tend to come in a lot, many of them the pod type machines and we’ve not had a lot of luck working on them.

I think it’s radios that I dread the most and similar things. I’m fairly confident with basic electrical items where you open them up and there’s wires and a few components. More complex items such as laptops and PCs tend to be fairly modular with either common or relatively easily obtainable model specific modules we can replace to get things working. It’s the middle ground where they’ve got relatively complex circuit boards inside, but less modular and less easily disassembled than a laptop and where the operation is more bespoke.

3

Lots of lamps, yeah.

Asbestos in domestic appliances was phased out by 1999.
I don’t think I’ve seen a microwave yet. Had a bloke turn up with a petrol strimmer once, never again.

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4

Quite a few coffee machines here too. Originally it was pod type, but recently a lot more bean to cup machines.

5

I know that pressure washers cause lots of problems for Sharing Libraries - I’m aware that at least 1 has given up lending them out. Is this something you lend through the Tool Library @AlanBrown ?

6

Hi Jane. Yes we lend out several pressure washers. All donated items. We also repair quite a few so can see the challenges with reliability. We get a lot of tool donations so it’s perhaps slightly easier for us to update our inventory as newer stuff comes in.

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