Burbank Appliance Repair
Why Summer Matters for Your Appliances
Living in Burbank, we don’t get the extreme winters that hammer furnaces and boilers in other parts of the country. But our summers are a different story. When it’s 105 degrees in the San Fernando Valley — and if you’ve lived here long enough, you know those days are coming — your refrigerator, freezer, and washer are working significantly harder than they do the rest of the year.
Every August we see a spike in emergency calls. Refrigerators stop cooling, dryers overheat and trip breakers, and dishwashers start leaving dishes wet. Most of these breakdowns are preventable with about 30 minutes of maintenance.
Here’s the checklist our technicians use for their own homes.
Refrigerator
Clean the condenser coils. This is the single most impactful thing you can do. Pull your fridge away from the wall, find the coils (they’re either on the back or underneath behind a kick plate), and vacuum off the dust. Dusty coils force the compressor to work harder, which means higher electricity bills and a shorter lifespan. In a Burbank kitchen that gets afternoon sun, dirty coils in July can mean your compressor runs almost continuously.
Check the door seals. Close the door on a dollar bill. If you can pull it out easily, the seal isn’t tight and cold air is escaping. Replacement seals for most models run $30-$60 and you can install them yourself, or call us and we’ll do it during a routine visit.
Set the temperature correctly. Your fridge should be at 37°F and your freezer at 0°F. A lot of people crank the temperature down when it gets hot outside, which actually makes the compressor cycle more aggressively and can cause it to freeze up.
Washer
Clean the drain pump filter. Front-load washers have a small access panel at the bottom front. Open it, pull out the filter, and clean out whatever’s in there — coins, hair ties, lint. A clogged filter makes the pump work harder and can cause water to back up. We find everything in these filters. Last month, a Glendale customer’s filter had $4.37 in change and a LEGO minifigure.
Run a cleaning cycle. Use a washer cleaner tablet or a cup of white vinegar on the hottest setting with an empty drum. LA’s hard water leaves mineral deposits that build up over time and can cause odor and drainage issues.
Check the hoses. The rubber supply hoses behind your washer can crack and burst — especially in a hot garage or laundry room. If yours are original and more than 5 years old, replace them with braided stainless steel hoses. This is the cheapest insurance against a flooded laundry room. We’ve seen it happen in Toluca Lake, Studio City, everywhere — a burst washer hose while you’re at work can do $10,000+ in water damage.
Dryer
Clean the vent line. This is a safety issue, not just a performance issue. Lint buildup in dryer vents is a leading cause of house fires — the National Fire Protection Association reports over 15,000 dryer fires annually. In Burbank, where fire season is a real concern, this matters.
Pull the dryer out, disconnect the vent hose, and clean it out. Better yet, have the entire vent line from the dryer to the exterior wall cleaned professionally. If your dryer is taking more than one cycle to dry clothes, a clogged vent is the most likely cause.
Check the exterior vent flap. Go outside, find where your dryer vents, and make sure the flap opens freely. Birds, lint, and debris can block it. We’ve pulled bird nests out of dryer vents in Pasadena that were three years old.
Dishwasher
Clean the filter and spray arms. Pull out the bottom rack, remove the filter (it usually twists out), and clean it under running water. Then check the spray arm holes for mineral buildup — a toothpick works great for clearing them. LA water is hard, and those tiny holes get clogged over time. If your dishes are coming out with a white film, this is almost always why.
Run it hot. Before you start a cycle, run your kitchen faucet until the water is hot. Your dishwasher fills with whatever temperature water is in the pipes, and a cold start means poor cleaning performance.
When to Call Us
If you go through this checklist and find something that concerns you — a compressor that seems to run constantly, a washer that won’t drain even after cleaning the filter, a dryer vent you can’t reach — give us a call at (818) 264-4269. We do preventive maintenance visits for $49 where we’ll check all your major appliances and flag anything that’s about to become a problem.
It’s a lot cheaper than an emergency call on the hottest Saturday in August when your fridge full of groceries is warming up.