Appliances

A dryer tells you a lot by how it fails. No heat, long cycles and a drum that will not turn point at three different systems, so start from the symptom rather than the part.

Washers fail in ways that look alike from the outside. Water left in the tub, a soaked load and a cycle that never ends have separate causes, and telling them apart saves the call-out.

Whether the freezer is still cold is the single most useful thing to know about a warm refrigerator. It splits the diagnosis in half before you touch anything.

Standing water, poor cleaning and a door that will not latch are the three complaints that cover most dishwashers. Two of them usually end at the filter.

Ovens drift out of calibration long before they break. Work out whether yours is running cool, heating unevenly or genuinely failing, and treat anything involving gas as a technician job.