The 10 Year MTBF

You know how you can tell when you’ve been living somewhere awhile? Things start to break. All at once; one after the other. Doesn’t matter.

Last month, I was able to fix our dishwasher. In addition to having a rather virulent form of “creeping crud” infesting it, the heating element had succumbed to rot. I’m guessing the two were related. Anyway, after replacing the heating element (and the controller board) we were able to get rid of the crud using a dishwasher cleaner.

This month, it turns out the microwave was next in line. The Wife realized it on Sunday when she attempted to cook frozen veggies (those steam bags are great!) and the bag came out colder than it had gone in.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration. But the veggies still weren’t cooked.

Yesterday, I half-heartedly decided to try opening up the microwave and see if there was anything obvious. Microwaves are actually pretty simple devices, really. There’s a controller board that drives the magnetron. The magnetron is what vibrates the water. In addition, there’s a diode and a capacitor that are related to magnetron operation. If any one of them go, no heating.

Anyway, it turns out Kenmore assembled their microwave with a non-standard screw head. It’s a “star” head screw, but there’s a pin in the middle of the star so that none of my star-head screwdrivers worked.

SNAP! Aww, shucks.

So I replaced the microwave yesterday afternoon with something that looks pretty similar to what was there. This one’s a GE model. SAHD or not, I can’t fix everything.

I’ll note that the range top on our stove has been acting a bit flaky of late. Don’t know if that’ll be next, but I think we’re at that point where it’s a matter of “when”, not “if.”