so the induction hob packed up

four years, it lasted four years.

i can’t be mad about that right?

i did the thing, started looking for manuals, error codes, anything that would help me try and extend the life of the thing a little more. I actually thought i’d only had it initially for a few years but it turns out it’s been a while.

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

weird thing is, this morning (when i’m writing this after the event) the thing works again. when things get like this i know it’s on the way out and it’s become “unreliable” — as it’s one of my main ways of cooking then i need to replace it.

nothing seems to get repaired these days.

i remember “back in the day” that i had a handful of people that i could go to regarding electronics. mainly people that were into cb radios and aerials, guys who took it to the next level and got all the soldiering iron gear and who had a room that looked like a lab with stacked up rigs and lots of lights and meters moving.

if they could not fix it, they knew a man that could — often they lived down a dirt track in the middle of nowhere or we needed to take a big trip out to the countryside and up some hills and over a ridge to a bigger official cb shop where a guy seemed to import anything neat that he could get his hands on — burners, ham radios, massive aerials and all kinds of LED stuff.

so here i am still wondering how i’m gonna get it fixed still, it’s plastic, has that induction coil in there, probably full of dust and grime. Ideally, i need to ground myself and find a tutorial on youtube and take it apart.

but here is the rub. the cost of “tooling” up to fix it, all the gear or even taking it to someone to fix is probably gonna be just as much as buying a replacement for £35 (the cheapest i’ve found) so i’m left with this sinking feeling of being THAT consumer.

i dislike, no, hate this notion that we can just keep stacking this stuff. We simply don’t have the recycling options in place to do this kind of thing ad infinitum. I just envision these mountains of induction hot plates stacked up, falling down, crushing low paid workers.

and for what?

thing is i’d love to repair it, nothing more fulfilling about “extending the life” of a box of electronics, using compressed air to clean out four years of lack of maintenance and keeping it going, as far as moving parts go, it’s quite minimal so it’s less of a “gearing” issue it’s more a dead solider on the board, much and crap situation, it’s probably some thermal chip protection.

In fact, doing a bit of digging about the new ones are “thinner” which suggests to me that the process of the way these things are made have been made more “nano” — better boards, maybe better heat handling, not so first edition experimental. I was ok to be part of the r&d costs of the first wave because it replaced a dirty gas and stove setup before.

the problem with the last cooker was that the gas, butane, in confirmed spaces was really a) bad for me and b) kinda expensive — also the notion that you can’t “cook” without the gas in the machine is dumb. Something relying on another thing, not being able to feed yourself because you ran out of a “consumable” element you rely on.

The induction made the most sense, sure i’d have to upgrade a few pots and pans but i didn’t have many of them to start with anyway — also, less additional cost, my energy bills all included, it made sense to remove that extra cash outlay each month, also, at the time as i wanted to move towards solar panels and batteries this made more sense in terms of power requirements and tracking.

I actually learned a lot about power/wattage and “draw” because of the induction hot plate i have, the way that actually it’s not a model that has a low power up to max power, it actually bursts for periods of time rather than a low or high setting, the numbering was actually how many seconds it stayed on for.

When you are measuring “power draw” and “amps” per hour of how much solar/storage you have it’s important you understand the load on the system. I’ve since found new hot plates that operate from 200w to 2000w in different levels, mainly through people who travel around in RV’s who already have that setup.

I’m totally fine with a 200w (low amp) draw slowly if i know what the impact is on my batteries over a longer period, you can work pretty much how “long” you can have the unit on for, especially when you have a duel plate and are spending thirty minutes to cook lunch, if ya want it faster, you up ya power demands.

anyway, i digress.

i don’t want to throw this in the trash, but what do i do with it, replace it and then repair this maybe? then give it away to a friend in need or who might benefit from induction? maybe that’s the way, i know i have “some” tools but i don’t have everything — then my brain switches to “content creation” maybe that’s interesting enough for tiktok or youtube, maybe i can earn from dtube for doing some DIY.

I don’t enjoy this consumption culture we have. I should be tracking my technology usage more especially when it comes to feeding myself. I’ve changed my food intake for the month, less power, therefore less cooking, it won’t last as long, maybe a few weeks but by then i’ll have a fixed/replaced solution — i think i need to start tracking on “notion” when i get new kit!

i dunno, feel part of the problem when it’s something i can’t repair, this just replace replace culture is nuts to me, it’s not even about money, i don’t mind that it was like 60/70 initially four years ago, i’ve had my monies worth of time and service out of it.

Apart from maker spaces who’s fixing these things? I can’t wait until we are allowed back to co-working spots that have the FIX IT places back open again, i’ll be taking it, i want to breathe new life back into it, maybe i can get it done on the cheap and have it run for another four years eh?

Anyway, time for flat whites.
Peace
x Humble X