planned obsolescence in engineering

[Michael Sackstein]

Hey Eric,

I’m sure this topic has come up before in your forum as well as touched upon briefly in your videos but it came to my mind this past weekend, and that is planned obsolescence. What I mean by that is the engineers who design things, cars, houses, etc. deliberately make things so that they eventually break and cost you a fortune to repair. Take for example, the a/c repair you did on Barbara’s van. having to replace that whole line for one valve was quite a challenge as well as expense. I can definitely relate to that not just on automotive repairs, but home improvement stuff as well.

This past weekend, I had a leaky shower valve in my Kohler stand up shower. and it has one of those mixer valves if you’re familiar with plumbing fixtures. So I did some research and thought, ok this looks pretty straightforward enough I should be able to handle this no problem. I get everything apart, and the mixer cap that mounts onto the valve snapped on me, and some springs and seats fell out, some went down the drain never to be seen again. Btw, I took it out to see what kind of unit it was before I replaced it with the intent on putting it back and replacing it at a later date. so that happened and I got everything I had left back together and now the shower won’t turn off. So I ordered a new part, which I didn’t realize until afterwards was generic and differed from the original, and that didn’t work either, so now the shower just won’t shut off, period. Thankfully, the contractor who did that bathroom had the forethought to put the water supply shut off valves for that bathroom on the outside of the wall in the pump room that’s next to the bathroom so I was able to just turn off the water for that bathroom as opposed to the whole house. Anyways, so I spoke to Kohler about the issues I was having and they agreed to send me a new unit under lifetime warranty. Problem is, the unit I have in my shower is discontinued and it all comes as one whole generic valve assembly which is fine they’re sending it to me for free. But the problem is that there is not enough space to swap the unit out and in order to replace the whole unit I would have to get a plumber to come out and cut a hole in the wall just to get in there and swap the stupid thing out. Now I have a fiberglass shower and the wall behind it is entirely covered in cedar wood which is where my cedar closet is, so it’s not as simple whereas if I had a Moem or Delta shower I could just swap out the valve and be done or even a tile covered shower would make life a lot easier.

After exhausting all my other options and even going so far as to source out other springs and seats, I decided to go on eBay and purchase another mixer valve and cap. This one being supposedly identical to the one I currently have. I’m really hoping this works and I can just install the same identical cap & valve and be done with it.

This experience made me think of your a/c experience with Barbara’s van and I was wondering if maybe you’d consider the topic of planned obsolescence for one of your future ETCG1 videos?

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[EricTheCarGuy]

Well, it just so happens.

[Author]

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