30 People Share The Oldest Gadgets They Own And Still Use To This Day

As long as the property is wired up safely with all the relevant circuit breakers (requirements obviously vary across the world) then if an appliance develops a fault it should just trip a circuit breaker and not cause any problems. Of course there are going to be properties that haven't been rewired in decades - that would be a concern. Old appliances would be likely to cause tripping faults but anything can go wrong - new appliance or old. So, I would think it's safe enough as long as the property hasn't got ancient wiring! 🤞

Modern technology was also built to be disposable; and not all of it is environmentally friendly... computers are ridiculously hazardous to the environment if not recycled properly.

If it's mainly a style thing, old appliances can be easily modified to employ newer efficiency features. Refrigeration is easy, as the coils and compressor are hidden, they can be replaced with ones using modern refrigerants. Washing machines can be modified to spin longer so they extract more water from clothes. I wouldn't expect the dishwasher to be more than a novelty anyway as restrictions on phosphates in dish detergent have radically changed how wash cycles need to be timed. These appliances also come from a time when appliance manuals were written in plain language and made sense. People read them, understood them, and followed their instructions. I will refer you to the classic Toyota owners manual statement: "Do not drink contents of battery" That's what we've come to.

I think this one is akin to people owning classic cars.

I could be wrong, but it is possible they’ve updated the wiring and any part that would emit anything toxic, and basically kept the shell of each machine just to preserve the look.

The new appliances may not be as efficient but the fact that they are not being replaced every 5-10 years makes a huge environmental difference that many forget about

Each of those appliances can be repaired over and over. The new junk have very few replacement parts and the life expectancy isn't great. Lifetime Expectancy of Home Appliances Of the major appliances in a home, gas ranges have the longest life expectancy: 15 years. Dryers and refrigerators last about 13 years. Some of the appliances with the shortest lifespan are: compactors (6 years), dishwashers (9 years) and microwave ovens (9 years).

I agree that some of this stuff is not so safe especially gas stove. I doubt that this old stove has self stop if flame is out. But for everything else it is only how good and safe is your electrical installation in general. To make it really safe for old stuff there should be 2 pole curcuit breaker. What concerns environment - it is better to have this old stuff with lesser plastic in it, and also it is better to renovate old stuff than buy new and feed garbage.

The efficiency of this type of refrigerator really isn't too bad. The awful ones were frost-free models made between the 1960s and 1980s, those were absolute pigs when it came to power. Manual-defrost refrigerators are quite efficient as they aren't wasting energy to cycle the defrost heaters. This 'fridge likely uses R12 (which was also the propellant for OG silly string) can be directly converted to run on R134A. If you don't believe me, look up the Energy Star ratings for refrigerators with and without auto-defrost.