AirDoctor Review: Is It Worth It? + How I Finally Fixed My GE Refrigerator

This is episode number 362 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We are so glad that you could join us for another live episode here in the studio. What's going on, Kev?

Oh, it's another day and man, life's pretty good.

Yep.

Yep. School's about to start up again, which I think all the parents are going, yeah. All the kids, honestly, my kids are—

They're excited?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, they kind of get excited about new classes, new teachers. This is an interesting year for my son because he started off at one elementary school, moved to a different elementary school, and those 2 elementary schools go to the same junior high.

Oh, okay. So he's gonna get to meet up with some new buddies.

Yeah. So he's, you know, he's kind of excited about that. And, um, uh, so it should be, should be a good year and, um, looking forward to kind of settling back into a little bit of a, of a rhythm. So anyway, how you doing?

I plead the Fifth.

Oh my gosh, you've been waiting on that for a while. Well done, sir. Well done.

Yeah.

Based on what?

Oh, the advice of my attorneys.

Oh my goodness. That— I'll tell you what, man, if you have not been keeping up with the whole Fauci thing, uh, let me just say He's, he's not on trial.

No.

But he is involved in a hearing.

Should he be on trial?

Yeah. That's the question. He's in a congressional hearing, and they're trying to determine if she— if he should be on trial. And they basically— this can happen at any time to try to turn evidence over and try to figure things out.

Yeah.

They can call these types of hearings to determine if something else needs to happen. It's almost kinda like a, like, like a grand jury on some level to find out, like, is this worth taking to trial type of thing? And what's bizarre about it is Fauci has been— he's been pardoned federally by Biden and for anything basically prior to January 19th, 2025. Yeah. And So when that happens, he could have like an outstanding parking ticket and wouldn't matter. Yeah, exactly. But, but when that happens and you get called in one of these types of hearings, you are compelled to answer because nothing can happen to you because you've been pardoned. Yep. And so what he did

was he came in, they asked him 111 questions. And he pled the Fifth to all of them, including things like, what's the color of your tie? What's the carpet in front of you? What's the color of the carpet in front of you? Like 111 times. And that wasn't the only— obviously there were real questions, but those questions he wouldn't even answer.

Dude, it's such a— it's a charade.

It is.

Like, there's like anybody that believes that anything's actually going to happen, Because of any of this.

It, it won't.

Nothing's going to happen.

No. And in fact, so you and I were talking about this before and the, I, I did a little bit of research and, and I'm not saying this is accurate because I'm not a, an attorney, legal scholar. I'm no, no, no, no. I'm far from it. I would love if, if you're a legalese person and you've got information on this, I'd love to hear if this is accurate. But I did a little bit of research and one of the things it said is that The pardon, it does protect him from a lot of stuff.

Right.

But one of the things it doesn't protect him from is state crimes. So he's been pardoned federally, but it doesn't prevent him from being tried and convicted of state crimes. It also doesn't prevent him from being— well, it doesn't protect him from perjuring himself or bearing false witness. And if he does that, then he can be tried if he does that. And there's a couple of other things, but those are kind of the big ones. So I think he has decided to plead the Fifth so that he doesn't say something he shouldn't and so that the states can't come after him for something that he said.

Yeah.

Now, whether that's accurate or not, I don't know, but there's got to be a reason. There's got to be a reason he's not willing to answer these. Even if he says, uh, oh, I did it for whatever reason, it wouldn't matter otherwise because he's not going to get convicted. Even if he said, yep, you're right, I did that, I profited off of this, I, you know, I don't know, I withheld opportunities for people to get healed.

This is— this does seem like a play to sort of protect your legacy? Yeah. Because you say to yourself, how could it get any worse? It could probably get worse.

I'm sure it could.

Like, your reputation could get—

Oh, yeah.

Oh, did you hear about— someone was saying that Barbra Streisand has the— what is it? That she could sue Fauci. For breaching doctor-patient confidentiality. Have you heard about this?

No.

Apparently, apparently, um, Barbra Streisand reached out to Fauci during the middle of the pandemic.

Okay.

Uh, because she had sores on her bottom.

Oh.

And he wrote about it in his private journal, which has now been taken into evidence and read aloud. And so they were— and made public.

Okay.

And so, like, everyone knows that Barbra Streisand had sores on her bottom, and she was reaching out to him to see if it had something to do with the vaccine.

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

Wow. That's probably like the last way you want everyone in the country to find out that you were having some issues.

Of all— yeah. The whole thing, like you said, it's a charade. It's a dog and pony show. It's, it's— I— because ultimately, and again, unless he gets convicted, like, well, gets to the point where they go, look, we're gonna try you, one of the things that they could do is hold him in contempt for pleading the Fifth. That is apparently something that could be done. Now, what that means and like what would come of that, I don't know. But let's say he doesn't— like, even if he did get convicted of something here, mm-hmm, Like, so much of this is in the past. Like, I don't know. I'm— I think we all know that he's definitely guilty of a

lot of the things that they're like saying he's guilty of. Yeah. I think if he wasn't, he would be talking right now.

Well, but I heard, I heard somebody walk through this the other day, and it's like, you already know that he is willing to lie to everyone.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Because what was it initially? Oh, we don't need lockdowns.

Right.

Oh, you don't need a mask. Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah.

And then he not only did he confess to lying about that.

Yep.

He said, I lied about it because I wanted to make sure that the doctors and the hospitals could get enough PPE before the public could.

Yeah.

And so it wasn't that he was telling the truth.

Right.

He was lying on purpose.

Right.

Now he had a reason for doing it. Was it a good one?

No. No.

It's a bunch of hooey. Bunch of hooey. So, and then it was, oh yeah, no, one mask is fine. And then when the public was like, well, if one mask is good, 2 masks is even better.

Even better.

He's like, well, you can wear 2 masks. Yeah, everyone wear 2 masks. It's like—

It's so stupid.

Who is this? And like, we're just gonna keep listening to this guy?

Right. No, I—

so like, I think that's part of the problem is we, we already know that he has propensity to not tell the truth.

Yeah.

So even if he did answer the questions, no one would believe him anyway.

Right.

Which I think is part of the calculation that he's making. He's like, well, what's the point of this? No one's going to believe what I say anyway.

Right.

Because I've already been caught lying.

Yeah.

Oh, and, and like when you told everyone that it was a wet market and you knew full well Like, because we know that you knew it wasn't full well because you wrote it down that you knew it wasn't full— like, that was not the case.

Yeah. I mean, look, so I think his biggest nemesis right now is the fact that he, because he's a doctor, one of the things he did, he wrote everything down.

Yeah.

Well, they have his diary. Whoops. 'Cause you wrote everything down.

'Cause you wrote everything down.

That, I mean, so it's like, we know.

Yeah.

And they have like, stacks and stacks of papers that are like email traces of conversations he had with people. Like, we know that he's guilty of these things, but because of the pardon, he's protected against all of those things.

Mm-hmm.

But he's compelled to say something in a congressional hearing like this, and he's not. So 111 times, man.

Well, and I was, I was telling you before the show, for those of you that haven't actually looked into this, like, this is not the first time Fauci's run this playbook.

Which I didn't know.

Yeah, it was. So he did the exact same thing with the AIDS epidemic.

Yeah.

Blows my mind. And when I say the exact same thing, I mean, like, falsified information, made it scarier than it was, made everybody think they needed treatments that they didn't really need.

Right.

Like, all kinds of stuff. Like, that one to me is actually way scarier than COVID. COVID, the government actually got more involved and just shut everything down. because people were supposedly spreading this disease, right? Well, AIDS was different because we all thought that was transmitted sexually, right? So it was a different animal. But it— like, when you look into what he did, it's just as nefarious.

Sure. Um, well, it's on the same playing field from the same person.

Yeah.

And, and he, he profited off of the AIDS stuff because this is the other thing you told me that I didn't realize. He held the patents for those drugs.

I don't know that he held the patents, but like he profited off of the treatments.

The treatments, that's what it is.

Yeah, I don't think he had the patents because those are typically held by pharmaceutical companies and they tend to keep those separate.

Okay.

You know, but like we, if, I mean, just watch an episode of Scrubs. Like, I think there's like a famous episode where like Heather Locklear comes through and like is like dancing in front of doctors, luring them into using their pharmaceuticals.

Yeah.

Like we know that they play well together. Sure.

Of course.

So that's, that's more likely what was going on is he was profiting off of, you know, okay, you should use this treatment. I'm the guy that's in charge of this epidemic. Hey, everybody, use this treatment.

Right.

And then the, you know, the kickbacks or whatever it is.

It's messed up.

Yeah. So anyway, so we're gonna, we're gonna get in your refrigerator. But along the same lines, Air Doctor from Ideal Living sent us an air purifier.

Yeah.

And it's awesome.

Okay.

So I've, I've been running it now for about a month.

Okay.

Um, it, it's the Air Doctor 3500. If you, if you go look it up online, it's— I mean, you can go to airdoctorpro.com. Um, you've, you may— if you listen to the show, you've probably, you know, heard an ad or two about it. Um, super easy to set up. And this one, the one that they sent us, is like for like an entire living room. Um, but the— what The reason I say it is conjunction to what we're talking about is the specs on it say, let's see, I can pull it up here. Yeah, so removed 99.97% of live SARS-CoV-2 in a lab.

Wow.

Out of the air.

Wow.

And then 99.99% of bacteria, virus, and viruses, including H1N1.

Incredible.

Yeah. So, and it like, it's, it's self-sensing, like it runs when it needs to. Um, and it is the simplest thing in the world to set up. Um, I was actually in a, uh, a doctor's office the other day. That's one of my clients. And I saw one.

Oh, really?

And I was like, hey, where'd you guys, where'd you? And she was like, oh no, uh, our, the doctor that owns this office, she has like 5 of them in her house.

Really?

Uh, and so we got one for the office and we just—

Interesting. Um, is it loud?

No, not at all.

Okay.

I mean, it'll— it's, it sounds, um, I'm trying to think of something that— because I mean, like, it does make a little bit of noise.

Like, I've got a dehumidifier sound in my mind. Like, those are— those can be a little bit noisy.

They could be a little bit noisy. It's not— it, it's quieter than a box fan on 1. Okay. Like, it just—

and it's white noise.

Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not loud at all. Like, you would barely even register it when it's in the room.

Okay.

The only thing is, I, I highly recommend if you're going to get one to download the app and let it monitor the system for you because it will tell you when to replace the filter.

Oh, okay.

And that's, that's really the entire setup for the system.

That's the maintenance.

It comes in a box. You take it out of the box, you gotta open it up and take the filter out. And this is the key part, take the packaging off the filter.

Okay. Well, yeah, makes sense.

It's plastic wrapped. So it's not, it's not gonna do anything if you don't, if you don't take it off.

Right.

So you just gotta remember to take the plastic off the, the filter.

Okay.

Put the filter in and then just let it go.

Interesting.

And it, it does, it, it'll, you know, run and it'll sense things in the room. And when it sense— senses that something, a contaminant's in the air or whatever, it'll just run.

Interesting.

And just does its thing.

So I, when I look on the website, it says that it removes pollutants, um, other than what ordinary purifiers do, including pet dander, which for a lot of people, that's a huge big deal. In fact, my, my wife is allergic to pet dander. So we, and we have an indoor dog. Now he, we, he doesn't shed, but all dogs, even non-shedding dogs, they, they have dander to them. So removes that. dust, which is a big one, volatile organic compounds, which I don't even know what that is, toxic gases, mold spores, pollen, viruses and bacteria, which you mentioned, and smoke. So that's pretty impressive.

Yeah. And like, you know how like things can just smell clean?

Yeah.

It smells clean in my living room all the time now.

Which, and, and I, I think that that is important to note for a couple reasons. Number one, you have dogs that are indoor and yours do shed.

Oh, massively.

Yeah, you, you have shedding dogs that live inside, or, or at least they come inside. Um, and I will tell you that my, my parents also have a purifier in their home. Uh, it's different than this one, but there is a distinct smell that it has, but it's a clean smell. Like it smells I think that some homes, whether you mean for them to or not, you walk into them, they just kind of smell musty or dusty or, you know, it smells like the dinner you made the night before.

Right.

You know, I mean, it's just, they're—

Lingering odors.

Right. And I think that's normal to have those types of things. And what happens is over time, you just kind of get used to those and you walk into your house and it's smells like your house, you know?

The one that bugs me the most, man, is when people— when a house smells like cat pee. Oh, and it's like, how do you not notice that?

Yeah. How are you used to that?

Yeah. And it like hits you in the face.

It does.

When you walk in your house and like, you don't wanna be rude.

Yeah.

But you're like, what the hell?

Yeah. Come on, man. Yeah. Uh, I'm curious about a couple other things. What kind of footprint does it have?

So it is, I'm trying to think. So it sits right next to my son's computer desk downstairs.

Okay.

In between that and my armchair. And it comes up to about the arm on my armchair.

Okay.

And then it's, I mean, it's about half the width of my armchair.

All right.

It's like half the width of an armchair and comes up to like the arm.

All right.

So like it's very low profile. It is bright white. So I'm like, if you have like a dark room, it's gonna stand out.

Sure.

But it just sits in the corner.

Okay. Have you had to replace the filter yet?

No, because I mean, the app will tell me when it's dirty and needs—

But how long have you had it in your house at this point? About a month.

About a month.

Yeah.

And I think it says it needs to be replaced once every 3 months or something like that. That's about how often. I mean, unless you have a really dirty house.

Well, yeah, I would expect that the first 3 months might be a little bit more dirty than from their own.

Yeah. If you've never had one before.

Yeah.

For sure.

So, I mean, I, I will tell you one of the things that if you've listened to us long enough, you know that we're not just gonna tell, tell you the, the raw truth. We are gonna tell you the raw truth. We're not gonna tell you like what the company wants us to tell you about this, cuz that's just not who we are.

No, no, no.

Uh, but it sounds like it works well. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and I think, I think one thing that's, You know, if you got it, it might be a misconception. It does have 3 filters on it.

Oh, okay.

So, but like the pre-filter is really the one that has to be changed periodically.

Okay.

The other 2 is a carbon VOC filter, and then it has a HEPA filter as well.

Okay.

So like this thing is, it is gonna scrub the air in that area.

Yeah.

So, you know, now do you, You know, like, my physician friend, like, she bought one to, like, go throughout the entire home. Because, and I think that, I think that's an important distinction is, like, it's gonna, like, this, this one in particular, the 3500, it's, it's good for, like, bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, things like that.

Yeah.

But, like, it's, don't expect it to, like, get the next room over.

Sure.

You know what I mean?

That's not what it's trying to do.

No. It's, it's for that room.

Do you think that there's ever, this is a completely tangential question. Do you think that there, I think some of these already exist, But do you think that some of these companies would ever create some sort of, uh, like an in-ceiling type of situation where it like does multiple rooms but you just put it in the ceiling, you know?

Well, I think some air conditioning systems—

I know some do because they've got even like the— what is it— the— they got the UV, the UV filters in them and things like that, which I think is supposedly gonna help with some of this kind of stuff. It kind of, it kind of cleanses the, the air.

Right.

What it does, the UV, it really helps with the air going into the house.

Right.

That it pulls from outside. Which I would think the more you clear the air that's coming in and expel the air going out, It makes sense to me that those would work.

Same.

But I would— I'm just curious, like, some of these, they're great, but again, they do have a footprint and they do make a little bit of noise and those sorts of things. I, I just— I wonder sometimes maybe there's a whole home situation, but not what we're talking about here. Again, just completely tangential, but, um, No, it looks great. Do— but there's nothing you don't have to— other than the filter, you don't have to do anything else?

No.

Okay.

No, no. I mean, just, you know, and the, you know, as long as you give the app permission to give you notifications, it'll tell you, you know, when everything needs to be done or if there's any problems with it.

Well, in the, so just, just a couple of things that I'll mention that I'm reading. So first of all, the, the website is extremely helpful. Like, it gives you a whole bunch of information.

Oh yeah. And there's other ones other than the one that they sent us.

Right. This is just the, this is what they call the middleweight contender. Yeah. Um, but I mean, it will do on average, it says circulate 630 square feet.

Mm-hmm.

4 times an hour.

Yeah.

It does that 4 times an hour. So I mean, you think about an hour at my house, at least in my main living area, which is probably a little bit more than 600 square feet, but that main living area, the number of times a dog or a child comes from the inside to the outside and then from the outside back into the inside is a lot.

Yeah.

In an hour sometimes. So I would think that that would be necessary. 4 times in an hour. That seems reasonable to me.

Yeah.

And it, but even, even if you have a larger space, like 1,200 square foot, it'll do that twice an hour.

Right.

Roughly. So, I mean—

I mean, they make bigger ones.

Sure.

Than, than the one that we have, but the one that they, they sent is plenty.

Right.

For our downstairs living room.

Right. So, and which is a, that's a pretty large space down there.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a pretty good size.

I forget what the dimensions are, but it's, it's not 600 square feet. I'll tell you that much. I mean, it's—

No.

Maybe $400. Okay.

Well, so I guess the end result here is you like it, you recommend it. If you're looking for an air filter, it's a decent one that really performs well.

And we've never had one in the house ever.

Yeah, we haven't either.

And so I was like, I was really interested in trying it out and seeing if it made a difference. And my son is highly susceptible to like, pollen and things like that. And, you know, when he goes outside, he picks stuff up and starts sneezing. But like, he's fine when he's inside.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Good to know. He didn't want to be inside, but—

No, no. My, my son doesn't either. He'd rather be outside most of the time.

So let's talk about this fridge, man.

Yeah. So this is an interesting situation.

We've talked about this infamous fridge in the past.

Yeah. So, uh, A couple of things I will tell you. I, I, I feel pretty good about myself because— did you— did I tell you about our portable air conditioner that I— that wasn't working well at the beginning of the season?

No.

So I've got a Midea, really— it's a really nice, uh, portable air conditioner, and it's one of those that attaches to the, to the window. Okay. And but it's got, it's got a big like a rectangle hose. And it's, so it's got 2 systems. It's got an exit hose and an intake hose. So what that means is all the air that it pulls in gets pulled in from outside rather than from like under the door.

Right.

So we've got ours in the garage, which is good because that means it's not pulling air from inside or from underneath the, uh, the garage door or anything like that. Um, because once you start circulating air that way, it's not very efficient at cooling that air. If it brings hot air in from outside, it's really efficient because it takes it into the unit immediately and cools it and only blows out the cold air. So really, really efficient. We've been extremely happy with this thing. I mean, It'll get our garage down to 70 degrees and we bring our dogs in at night. So it's, it's really, really good for that. Plus, like, if you start storing stuff in your garage, I mean, it just dry rots

like anything else because it's hot in there.

Yeah. Or melts.

Or melts. Yeah, absolutely. So it, the beginning of this season, it was probably a year and a half into having it. And I'm like, this thing is not keeping up. Like, I don't know what's going on. So I did some research on it and changing the outside filter is not enough. And I did not know that. You need to break that thing down and it is an in-depth process. I mean, there, I think I took out 30 screws.

Oh, dang.

And there were like clips that you had to like carefully remove and like the whole, the, like the thing came apart from the front to the back. And it's like any air conditioner, you have to clean the, the, the wheel that turns in there and all kinds of stuff. And dude, it was caked. And I'm like, I did not even know it's got a filter on the outside of this thing. I thought that's all it needed, but no. Um, once I cleared that thing, it started working beautifully again. I'm like, all right, feeling kind of good about myself. I've fixed something.

Yeah.

I mean, these things are not cheap. I mean, those things are like $600, $700, some of them.

I feel like every man at some point in time, most men, have the Castaway experience.

Yes.

It's just like, look, look what I have made.

That's right.

Look what I've done.

Look what I've done. Because I mean, I'm sitting here, I'm telling my wife, my wife is like, man, I don't want to have to buy another one. And I'm like, I got you. And I go out there and I fix it and I'm like, we don't have to buy a new one. That just took me 3 hours of my life. But, and I had to take it apart 4 times.

Oh geez.

Because I thought I had it back together and I kept finding excess parts. I'm like, whoops. Oops. Shouldn't have done that. But anyway, so I'd already felt pretty good about myself and this fridge has been nagging for a while. So I bought this fridge, off of someone on Facebook Marketplace a few years ago, probably 3 years ago now. It worked pretty well. Uh, it's a side-by-side, it's a GE side-by-side, uh, residential refrigerator, but it's our drink refrigerator primarily. And that's how I know I'm an adult, because I have a garage refrigerator with drinks in it. There you go. That's how I know I'm an adult. So, um, it stopped cooling, and what happened was the freezer was at -6 degrees,

which it should have been at 0 roughly, and the refrigerator had gone up to like 57, 58. And so I don't know anything about appliance repair. So I've, as I mentioned before, I got on ChatGPT and it said, hey, like, take a picture of the coils. I don't know where the coils are. So it tells me, literally tells me, Take a picture of it. I took a picture and said, oh, there are the screws. And it like marked on a picture where they were. I was like, oh, okay, I can do that. Remove the panel. And of course, all the coils are completely frozen over. So what was happening was because they were frozen over,

the way this fridge works, and not all refrigerators work this way, but the, all of the cold air gets created in the freezer.

Okay.

And then there is an evaporator fan that blows that air into, like, through a damper into the refrigerator. And so, um, I've learned so much about how refrigerators work. Um, but there's a thermistor in the fridge and a thermistor in the, in the freezer. Do you know what a thermistor is?

No idea.

I didn't either. Um, glad you asked. So a thermistor is simply something that reads the temperature. So you remember when we talked about the Ecobee?

Yeah.

So the Ecobee, one of the things that's brilliant about the Ecobee thermostat, which is just residential thermostat, many of you probably have it in your house, they have like little nodes that are, that you can put in different rooms.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it will read the temperature. That's basically a thermistor.

Okay.

All it does is it reads the temperature and it sends information back to the thermostat. So, um, that'll come into play in a minute. So the damper in mine is, is not mechanical. Some of them apparently are. I didn't know that. This one, it just, when the air starts flowing, the damper opens. It's just a little flap. That's all it is. So it was like, okay, probably what's happening is the control board has gone bad.

Mhm.

And I'm like, okay, well, I don't— what, a control board? Where is that thing? Pretty simple. It's right in the back of the— you like literally in the back, not on the inside of the back, but on the back. You pull it out, couple of screws, and you remove a couple of wires that are pigtailed in. Just pull them out. You take screws, take the thing out, put it back in, pigtail the new one, put the new one in, and it's good to go.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a 5-minute change. Didn't take any, it was super easy. So I changed that out and it started working again. I'm like, great, this thing works. But then about 3 weeks later, it froze over again. It didn't take too long, froze over again, and same problem as before. So that's whenever ChatGPT was like, well, let— maybe the thermistors went bad. Maybe it's not reading the temperature correctly, so it doesn't know when to send the air over the right way. So I'm like, all right, great. I changed the thermistor in the fridge, found it. I could not find the one in the freezer. And I'm like, I think it's up behind something else, and I don't wanna rip this whole thing apart. I don't know what I'm doing. And so I was

like, I don't know. I couldn't change the thermistor. And it was like, well, it's probably not the one in the freezer. It's probably the one in the fridge. Let's try it again. So it ran for about 3 weeks, froze over again. And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is, this is killing me. And we were literally— I was literally to the point where I was like, I'm just gonna get a new one. 'Cause I, 'cause I don't have the time. It happened during the summer. I'm like, I don't have the time to like switch, like take all my stuff out of the fridge, put it somewhere.

Yeah.

And then let this thing thaw out and turn it back on so it'll run for another 2 to 3 weeks. and just to have this happen again. Um, but I also don't want to go spend the money on another refrigerator. So I kind of got to the point where I was like, what's the worst that could happen? If I'm going to throw this thing away, yeah, just take it apart and figure it out. So one of the things it told me was that it could be the defrost heater.

Okay.

Do you know what the defrost heater does?

I assume it heats up to defrost the coils.

It's exactly what it does, but I didn't know what it did. And it basically told me, hey, it's in this location. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. Took a picture. It's like, oh, here it is. I see it. Which is funny whenever ChatGPT or any AI model tells you, I see it right there. It's like, you don't see anything. You don't see anything. But it told me where it was and it said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take the— there's 2 wires going into it from either side of the coils. Take those out. And I want you to, which basically takes all the power from it. And I want you to take, uh, an ohm, a volt-ohmmeter

and see what you get by touching either side of those, those, uh, connections.

Mm-hmm.

Let me tell you, I have a volt-ohmmeter. I don't understand those things at all. Do you understand them?

A little bit. I mean, that's the thing is like enough to get myself into trouble.

Yeah. Yeah, like when ChatGPT tells me to do this and do that, I can do it. But like, there are people out there, they're like, oh yeah, just turn this and touch this to the black to the red and blah blah blah. I'm like, I don't know. Um, well, nothing was really happening, but when I looked at this thing, I was like, this thing doesn't look good. And it was like, well, try this. And so it told me to like take the end caps off of the defrost thermistor. And so I did, and it was like, you should see like a, like a barb coming out of that thing, and you can just test it from either side. Well, when I did that, a spring

about an inch and a half on either side came out. And I was like, this thing looks rusty. And like the whole— there's a tube that is— that it—

those—

that spring apparently went into, and I'm— it's black. And I'm like, That can't be right. So I got on Amazon, $18, I can buy another whole housing for this thing. Like it's the entire defrost heater and it came with a new thermistor and it came with a new thermostat. And I'm like, I'll do that.

Yeah.

I get it in, dude, the, the piece of glass tube is completely clear and there is a spring running through the entire thing.

Oh, so it like, it burned up this—

It burned up and rusted through, whatever it did. And so I'm like, I think I found the problem. I really do. I'm like, the defrost heater wasn't working, which makes sense.

That it kept icing over.

It kept icing over. I installed it and I was like, oh, when I had this stuff apart, I was like, oh, there's the thermistor. I might as well change it. Oh, there's the thermostat. So by the way, the only thing the thermostat does in a refrigerator, it's different than your thermostat at home. The only thing it does is when it reads from the thermistor a certain temperature, it opens or closes.

Yeah.

And as soon as it opens or closes, then it turns on the coils or turns off the coils. That's all it really does. So replacing thermostat and replacing thermistor. So I got all this replaced and I'm like, look at me.

Yeah.

I got this done. Plugged it back in. Everything's like, okay, I think I fixed this thing. Uh, it got down to 7 degrees in the, in the freezer, all like within a few hours, and it was still 65 degrees on the refrigerator side. And I'm like, what in the world? And I reached up to where like the, like the, the air comes into the refrigerator. Nothing. And so it's like, I think the fan must not be blowing correctly. And I'm like, are you kidding me? So I look where the fan is. I didn't even know where the fan was.

Yeah.

Found it. It's at the top of the coils. The defrost heater is at the bottom of the coils. So it pulls that, that air up and shoots it over into the fridge. It wouldn't turn on. I'm like, you've gotta be kidding me. There is no way that just coincidentally this thing worked and now it doesn't. But, um, it's like, I think you probably need to replace that motor because it's not turning. So I got on Amazon and it was $18 also to buy a new motor for this thing.

Yeah.

I did. Now I had to take everything apart. Like literally I'm taking parts all over this thing off. Like I'm splicing wires together, all kinds of stuff that I had no clue what I was doing. And, um, Put the new motor for the fan in. Fan starts, starts working, and I'm like, oh, so let's see what happens. Plug it in, everything works.

Been fine ever since.

Everything works. Everything's— so now, so literally—

Altogether, altogether, how much did you spend?

Okay, great question. Altogether, with the control board, which was the most, most expensive piece, I've replaced the control board, the thermistor in both the fridge and the freezer, the thermostat, the defrost heater, and the evaporator fan motor. $140. There you go. $140, way cheaper than a brand new fridge. But let me tell you, I got a brand new fridge. Literally the only thing that I haven't replaced is the coils themselves and the compressor. And the compressor works fine because it gets cold. without any issues.

Yeah.

Um, I will tell you the one thing that is a little bit interesting right now. So I did all of this, I think I got it done like 3, 4 days ago, and everything's been working great, but my fridge is running too cold now. I've got it set on 0 for the freezer and 38, I had it on 39, right, for the fridge, and it was reading at like in the 20s. So, uh, the, the fridge was— so, uh, it's too cold. I actually had one of the Cokes in there freeze up and bust.

Oh no.

Like, it didn't like spew, but it did leak. Um, and so that was not good. So I've, I've increased the temperature up to 42. I did that this morning.

Okay.

So I'm going to check it when I get home tonight and see If that kind of controls itself. If it doesn't, I may have something else I got to figure out. But the, the reality of it is this fridge is basically brand new.

Yeah.

And it, it cools. Everything's working.

Obviously it cools just fine.

Cools just fine. But I, I guarantee that the main issue, I did not need to replace the control board. I'm almost positive. I don't think I need to replace either of the thermistors or the thermostat. I think it was defrost heater. And then I do think that probably about the life of that defrost heater was also the life of the motor. And so once I fixed that, everything's working great.

Well, and I think sometimes when it comes to like parts and pieces like that on appliances, when you replaced one, they've all sort of learned how to function inefficiently together.

Yeah.

And so when you, when you replace one and it starts creating efficiency, like it causes the other ones to fail.

I think you're probably right.

So, and I think that's just part of having like an older appliance.

Sure.

I'm about to go through the same thing, I think, with the fridge in my kitchen.

Oh, really?

Because the ice maker has just stopped.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Which we haven't talked about this. I have a brand new ice maker that I bought for my guys.

Oh yeah.

So they can fill up their coolers. I have plenty of ice.

Right.

But it's just not in my kitchen.

Not in your kitchen where you want it.

So I can go get ice if I really need it, but Like, that's not the point. No, like my ice maker should be making ice.

Well, so I actually had this issue with my indoor fridge.

Mm-hmm.

And what was, what had happened, and, uh, I, I think I ultimately know what the issue is, but what was happening is the, where it dumps the ice got frozen over.

Mm-hmm.

And there's like a, there was a chunk of ice back there. And I think what has happened is it hit the actual, 'cause those things like they're inside the fridge typically. I don't think it's sealed up very well. And I think over time it had like the seal around it has loosened and air is getting in and it's not freezing.

Causing it to condensate.

So whenever it does freeze, it creates a block of ice back there. So what I've done is I've gotten a, uh, like a knife or something else. I've like hacked at that piece of ice, got it to fall out of there and it starts making ice again. But that's not the problem.

Right.

That's the, that's the symptom. There's another problem.

And so my, my son has gotten quite skilled because it's, it's one of those, uh, double door top fridges.

Yeah.

The ice maker's in the upper left-hand corner.

Yep.

But then the freezer's in a drawer at the bottom.

Yeah.

And that has definitely— the seals on that are not great.

Okay.

Which I'm gonna look into, like, what it actually takes to replace seals.

Yeah.

I can't imagine that's terribly difficult.

I wouldn't think so.

But every once in a while, underneath the drawers, there is just this sheet of ice.

Oh man.

And like, it's his favorite thing in the world, and he gets so mad if he can't get it out in one solid piece.

Oh, he wants to play with it.

Oh yeah, well, he just—

he wants to take it outside and Break it, didn't he?

No, he, no, he just, it, to him it's like, all right, I'm skilled enough. I should be able to get this out in one solid piece. And so it just makes him mad. That's funny. When he, when he can't get, when, when it breaks off, he's like, ah, have to wait till the next time.

Oh, that's funny. That is funny.

But it's his favorite thing, man.

Yeah. Uh, that is interesting. I will tell you one of the things I've noticed, and I don't know if, um, cuz ours is basically the same thing. Uh, the ice bucket, the bin that it goes in. Mm-hmm. Uh, there's a crack in it.

Oh.

And I don't know if that has anything to do with it either. If like maybe again, some air is escaping somewhere.

Yeah.

I don't know, but surely there's a way to fix these types of— here's what I've learned. If you will take the time to use AI to help you understand what you're seeing, it just needs to know a model number. and it will go find the, the manual for that thing and help you. Like, you can literally take pictures and it'll go, oh yeah, it's this, it's this, you know, show me this, use a voltmeter in this way. Like, I, I was shocked at what I was able to do with zero knowledge of what I was doing. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, it's almost better than like YouTube University.

It is. In, in fact, one of the things that I did do actually at one point whenever I was replacing the fan motor, is I— so it told me what to do, and then I went to YouTube and found a video showing me how to do it.

Right.

So, you know, you can use those things in conjunction with each other a little bit. But man, I think it's like, there's a lot of things that break in your life, like whether it's an appliance or it's a, you know, a small engine, like a lawnmower or weed eater or something like that. Man, I think that we live in a world of, of knowledge that is accessible.

Well, the, the cool part about that is once you do it, you can do it again.

Oh yeah.

And you probably don't have to look it up again.

Right. You know, that's exactly right.

So, but we've, but we've also talked about this before. I mean, like at some point in time, there's gonna be stuff that's just not worth your time.

For sure.

Right.

Yeah.

So, and one of the ones I'm, I'm having somebody else do right now is I have a, old Honda four-wheeler.

Okay.

Um, it's 20-plus years old.

Wow.

But it's a Honda motor. The motor, the motor on it runs like a champ. Okay. It's fantastic. You, you almost have to work to kill those things.

Yeah.

Um, but went out—

Is it Briggs Stratton motor?

No, no, no, no, it's a Honda motor.

Oh, is it?

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, uh, but what went out on it is it has an electronic shifter.

Oh, okay.

And those are rather complicated.

Yeah.

And, you know, I know, I mean, I put like a manual shifter on the transmission. It's got like a little foot switch, but it's not, one, it's not intended to be used that way on a regular basis. It's not convenient to use it. It's hard to shift, but they put it there for exactly this situation. Like you need to limp it to the mechanic or you need to move it around the shop.

Yeah.

You can do that.

Yeah.

Manually. But I took it to the guy and I was like, hey man, like this thing's like 22 years old, electronic shifter. I mean, can you even find those parts? He goes, oh yeah. And I was like, what am I looking at to, you know, get this thing, the shifter back up and running? He goes, eh, parts, probably $300.

Oh.

And I was like, do it.

Yeah, now.

Do it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just call me when it's ready.

Yeah, because I think you bring up a good point. I mean, we've, how often when we were repping Lone Star Appliance Repair, did we say you— most of the time something can be repaired and it's not going into a landfill, right? Like, I— it would have been just as easy for me to go, I don't have the time, or I don't really know what I'm doing, I'm just gonna go buy another one. It's fixable for $140.

Yeah.

Like, $300 for your, for your four-wheeler. Like, it's, it's one of those deals where it's like, okay, you're saving money and you're keeping things out of the landfill. And oh, by the way, you feel pretty good about yourself afterwards. I literally feel like, ah, I can take on the world. My dad was like, oh, maybe you could do side business appliance repair.

I was like, no, stop it.

Stop it. I will not do that.

You can tell him when he retires, he can come work for you and do it.

That's exactly right. No, because I didn't enjoy the Like, I didn't enjoy the physical work of doing it. What I enjoyed was the learning process.

Yeah.

I was like, now I understand this thing. Like, you're— honestly, now I will keep this fridge for a very long time.

Yeah.

Because if something else goes out, I will know where to go, how to diagnose it, how to take everything apart. Like, the parts are available on Amazon. They got there the next day or 2 days.

Mm-hmm.

You know? Like, not that big of a deal.

Yeah, and if you know what you're looking for, you can usually find it on there.

Yeah, absolutely. And now they had genuine GE parts available. Like they had the original OEM fan motor. It was $82. This one was $18. And I was like, look, if this works, $18. And it works great. I mean, OEM stuff is out there, I could have used OEM stuff, but I was like, I don't need it.

Right. So I tell you one that happened to me the other day that blew my fricking mind.

Yeah.

One of my company's vehicles went down and it's a, I think that one's a 2017 Ram 1500.

Okay.

And employee called me and said, hey, power steering's not working. And I'm like, ugh, did you? And I was like, did you check the fluid? And he goes, I can't find the fluid. fluid.

Oh.

And I was like, I'll be right there.

Yeah.

So came and popped the hood. I'm looking around and I'm like, I do not see a reservoir for power steering fluid.

Really?

And I'm like, what is going on here? And so I get on ChatGPT.

Yeah.

And I'm like, hey, where's the power steering reservoir on this thing?

Yeah.

And it responds back. He goes, oh, they got rid of that system years ago. They're all electronic now.

Oh.

Like servo motors.

Oh, interesting.

And I was like, oh, suck.

Yeah.

So I took it, I take it into the shop.

Yeah.

And then—

How hard was it to get to the shop?

Uh, it was a chore.

Yeah.

I, I did it.

Yeah.

I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna make anybody else do it.

I did it. Yeah.

Um, which by the way, you can drive without power steering.

Of course.

It sucks.

People used to do it all the time.

But—

With, with honestly heavier vehicles than we were in now.

So, um, you'll, you'll find out how tough you are when you do it.

Yeah.

But I get it to the shop and the guy checks it out and he goes, yeah, the power steering motor went out.

Okay.

And he goes, this does happen relatively often. He goes, and just FYI, they're on back order for like 2 to 3 months.

Oh no.

And I was like, okay. And he goes, now there's, if you don't want OEM, we can get you a brand new one. He goes, but that's gonna run you 4 grand.

Oof.

And I was like, are you serious right now?

4 grand?

4 grand. And I said, what else can I do? And he goes, well, you can get a used one. Um, it'll come off a truck that has about 100,000 miles on it. He goes, but the one you just took off was on a truck that had 220,000 miles, so it should last a while.

Yeah.

He goes, it might cost you a little bit more if we have to reprogram it.

Okay.

And I'm like, what the hell are we doing?

Right.

We have to program our power steering now?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know about you. I grew up, it was like, it was part of the engine. There was like a—

It is.

It was part of the belt system and it had a reservoir.

Yeah. My truck right out there, if I have an issue with the power steering, for $8.99, I go buy a quart of power steering fluid, put it in there, voilà.

Right.

It works great.

That's not a thing anymore.

Oh my goodness. So there's a lot of reasons Why, I'm like, I'm going to keep that truck for a long time. I mean, there's some things on it that's like, I was driving around a church van the other day that has push-button start. It's got like 360 cameras on it. The thing was awesome. And there are times when I'm like, new vehicle would be nice. Then I'm like, nah, the one I've got is just fine. Just fine. It's paid off.

Yeah.

It's so good.

Yeah.

You know?

And that was honestly the calculation I'm having to do on this one. I'm like, OK, even if I had to spend $4,000, that's still way cheaper than buying a new one.

Of course it is.

And everything else on it's running fine.

Yeah.

There's a couple little things that need to be fixed here and there, but those are little things. I can do that.

Right.

But it was still like, never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to have to pay $4,000 to change the power steering. I went with the used one.

Sure.

It's got over 200,000 miles on it.

Yeah.

I'm not spending 4 grand.

No.

On power steering.

'Cause something else is gonna happen.

Especially if I have another option. So it ended up costing me like $1,800.

Well, it's less than half of the other one.

Well, I mean, I haven't made a payment on that truck in like 3 years.

Yeah, so it's done what you needed it to.

You know, so it's, anyway.

Yeah.

There's always a calculation in these things.

Yeah.

Right?

There is.

You know, there is. Whether it's a refrigerator, a four-wheeler, a car.

Yep.

Like whatever.

Yep.

There's always a calculation to be made. Can I do this myself?

Yeah.

Should I get somebody else to do this?

Yeah.

You know?

Well, and I, look, I, I will just tell you that there is every reason why someone would've gone, I can't do this. If this was my primary refrigerator, I couldn't do this.

Right.

Like, I, I, I would have to either bring out a professional to get it done immediately.

Mm-hmm.

And yes, would I pay more? Yeah, I would. But the reality of it is it would've been fixed a long time ago 'cause they know what they're doing. I'm learning what I need to do. But this is a supplemental fridge. And I don't have to have cold drinks every day.

Right. You can go without for a while.

I can go without for a little while and it's not that big of a deal. I can put ice in my Coke if I want to. And so, yeah, is that, is it, convenient that it wasn't my primary? Yeah. Uh, you know, if you've got a car that needs work and you've got an extra one that you can use, really helps. Um, but realistically, it's like, there comes a point where you, you have to weigh that. We, we used to have, and we need to get it back up. We used to have that calculator, right?

Right.

Yeah. That, that calculator. And one of the questions on the calculator that dramatically changed the price of something was how bad do you want to do this?

Yeah. Or how, how, how much do you enjoy?

How much do you enjoy it? Yeah. So anyway, I just, I, I wanted to put it out there. I had no clue what I was doing.

Mm-hmm.

And now I have a functioning fridge again. So maybe give ChatGPT a try.

If it doesn't hurt to like, if it, if it can explain it to you in a way that makes sense and you're like, oh, I think I could do that.

Yeah.

That's probably a good way to go.

It is.

So it is, and it's like it's available. I mean, right, give it a whirl.

That's right. Well, what else do we need to talk about? Anything? We're good, right?

No, I think we're good, man.

Well, cool.

I mean, we got other stuff we're gonna— we got other episodes coming up, but, um, yeah, that's good for now.

Awesome. Well, thank you guys for downloading today's episode or watching it on YouTube or Facebook. We appreciate it very much. And if you have not already, please like and subscribe our content. Hit the little bell on YouTube so you get alerted whenever you get new content. And, uh, you know, we're here every week. So, um, yeah, tell your friends about us. We got some cool things coming up that we want to talk about. Until next time, we'll see you later. See ya.