> Virtually EVERY product
> Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today
> it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines.
I'm not sure about this part, unless you are very careful in what you're shopping for, and knowledgeable about it. One Achilles heel of a lot of current appliances is that there are now circuit boards everywhere, which are a common point of premature failure. If the computerized part of your appliance fails (due to a power surge, capacitor aging, etc.), the device is effectively bricked in a difficult-to-repair way, even if all the mechanical parts are still fine. One option is to buy all-mechanical high-end models, which works with some appliances (espresso machines) but is basically impossible with others (washing machines).
(There was this EU introduced power cap for domestic vacuum cleaners the other year, accompanied with articles how you should hurry up and buy one of the powerful ones before they were forbidden. I was in the market for one, and scoured every independent test I could find where I understood the language, and the result were the same: the modern ones using less power picked up small particles better. As soon as you have a powerful enough engine other things start to matter. That's when I sighed deeply about journalistic integrity and bought one of the newer models.)
You describe an important problem. Consumers keep buying older models, which are objectively worse, because they want a scalar value for "betterness". It's just like megapixels, where you stuff a 20 megapixel sensor behind a plastic lens and consumers buy it because big numbers are good.
The claim that cleaning time is linear to motor effect is unrealistic at best. There is an optimum effect for the nozzle. A 10 kW engine wouldn't clear your floors any faster than a 1 kW one, and definitively not ten times faster. The best (household, not for garages or anything like that) vacuum cleaner commercially available on the market is likely closer to 1 kW than 2 kW.
You think only "average" people falls for marketing tricks, but this superficial knowledge of the engineering involved actually makes you an easier prey for the marketing trick that more powerful motors makes for a better product. That bigger numbers are better is one of the easiest marketing schemes ever.
...my dad's top-end washing machine bought 25 years ago is still going strong, working without a hitch. Had simple maintenance once. All the while I'm about to get my third model in 14 years.
Craftsman tools used to be the same, although you have to be careful - they've started mixing in the cheapo junk lines and putting the Craftsman name on them, and those don't necessarily have the same warranty policy.
I do know someone whose entire business is reverse-engineering bricked old devices, sticking in a new circuit board with custom software. But it's expensive enough to hire him that his customers are all businesses with expensive equipment they want rescued, mostly 1990s vintage produced by now-defunct companies.
We've seen a spread in the market to where the cheap end
is now affordable by everyone, and the expensive end is
even better than (and more expensive than) the best of
the best was 20 years ago.
I mean, I'm sat here in my living room, place was built 1798 (relatively modern), near as damnit everything is original. Stone floors. Stone fireplaces. Stone walls. Lath and plaster ceilings. Lime plaster.
They knew what they were doing, this shit is built to last.
These days, they also know what they're doing, but a house has a shelf life of 30 years, so you can tear it down later, not feel bad, and stimulate the construction industry. In theory. I. Practice people live in leaky shoeboxes made of twigs, paper and tar.
Finally, the insurance industry drives this. Ever try insuring a 100 year old slate roof in America? Good luck with that. They'll insist you rip it off and replace it with tar shingles, because no roof more than 20 years old can be any good.
My other property has a 13th century stone roof (limestone, stacked), and it's barely been maintained and is in perfect nick after 600+ years.
A.) Snow doesn't come off of shingles worth a damn unless you have a wicked pitch on your roof. So you have to get up and shovel off the roof, or risk icedams, leaks, and potentially the whole roof collapsing if you have really heavy snowfall.
B.) Shingles only last about 20-30 years. Steel roofing lasts a lifetime. You might have to repaint it once in a great while.
I'm unclear what point ventilation or insulation in the attic would have to do with ice dams... In my experience, it's caused by snow that doesn't get removed, which then melts, seeps down to the roof, and refreezes, with the texture of the shingles providing a greater surface area to freeze against.
All things being equal, it's nice to have a steel roof that will warm up on a sunny day and have all the snow slide off.
The snow melts because of heat coming from the inside the house. [1]
So if you keep your roof cold through insulation and ventilation, you don't need to remove the snow (as long as the roof can handle it structurally)
[1]: http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Portals/55/docs/CEERD-RV/CEER... [pdf]
I collect antique espresso machines. Some of these are highly sought after because they use big, heavy, high quality components: big brass boilers, copper piping, stainless steel enclosures and big brass groupheads. Compare that with many flimsy, plastic machines today (which rarely last more than a couple years), and it's no wonder there is a market for these older machines.