Are You Just Using Or Also Maintaining?
Visual storytelling upkeep tips
I usually wake up around 6 am every morning.
Too early I know but it gives me time to leisurely read the papers.
After the mandatory glance at my phone, I turn on some mellow jazz music - like Bill Evans - and head over to the kitchen to make some coffee.
While pouring my usual 2 spoons of dark coffee into the percolator, I suddenly heard this strange hissing sound going on and off.
Still sleepy I poured coffee into my blue mug when the hissing sound seemed to be closer. I looked down and realized - the hisser is the dishwasher!
“Weird! Maybe it hasn’t finished yet.” I thought and continued preparing breakfast.
While waiting for my oatmeal to cook, I mindlessly clicked on a few buttons and nothing, the strange intermittent hissing continued.
I pushed it out of my mind and later in the day after that hissing became unbearable, I checked the machine closely.
The display proudly reported Error E15.
“Here we go again!” I thought.
Can’t wait for AI to take over all appliances someday, so we can all skip the reporting part and go directly to the fixing part.
As we aren’t quite there yet, I turned to Google to unravel the mystery of E15 and understand the typical antagonist role it is often cast in:
An E15 error code is caused by there being too much water in the base of the dishwasher. The best way to fix the E15 error code is to remove the water from the basin and reset the safety switch.
Reading this and a bunch of other videos quickly made me realize this is way above my pay grade…
A day after an appliance guy arrived and after an hour of tinkering shared his diagnosis.
“First, you shouldn’t use dishwasher pods. They often don’t dissolve and can damage your machine. Use liquid instead.”
Then he opened a side panel and showed me a corroded moist-looking component.
“You’d need to replace it. It’ll cost you around $500. So if I were you I’d buy a new machine.”
“Seriously! This machine is only four years old! How can this be?” I shot back.
“Well it all depends on how you maintain it” he smiled.
“Maintening? I simply use it. Isn’t that what it’s for?!”
The guy was patient and went on to go over a bunch of maintenance tips to extend a dishwasher's lifetime value.
From regularly cleaning the dishwasher filter, running a cycle every month with white vinegar, cleaning the dishwasher gasket, and more.
Wow! Who knew? You get a new machine take a few glances at the manual on purchase day and that’s it, right?
I guess now I have a new role.
And then another nagging thought crept in.
Can’t think of all the other likely unhappy appliances I bet I’m just using and completely not maintaining…
Hi friend,
How are you? I hope you’re doing well.
I bet you’re probably chuckling about yet another appliance drama tale.
At least the root cause in this case was identified quite quickly unlike the longer and winding mystery tale of my washer I shared in
My dad was quite a handyman when things got broken around the house. As a kid staring by his side as he did his magic with another annoyance, it now all comes back to me.
He used to say:
If you treat this [machine] well it will serve you longer.
No brainer right? But here we are!
The other way to enforce maintenance routine was when my espresso machine stopped working after 200 shots, telling me: “Hey dude it’s time for some TLC.”
Out of curiosity and to quiet my conscious that it’s not just my stupidity:
With our busy lives, we’re all wired to operate under the notion of “if it’s not broken why fix it?” Yet, when the error alarm is on, oftentimes it’s already too late.
Interestingly, all these mundane tales carry some useful visual storytelling lessons.