5 Appliance Repair Tools That Often Go Unmentioned

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Fred's Appliance Academy
December 9, 2019
Tools

In an appliance repair toolkit are many things that your average home DIYer would never expect to see. Most people think that all you need for appliance repair are a pair of work gloves and a few sets of screwdrivers and wrenches. In reality, there is a great deal of complex work that goes into bringing an old appliance back to life and working with appliances in a real-world setting. Outside of textbook instruction, there are appliances that have rusted through, parts that aren’t quite installation-ready when they are unpackaged, and appliances so dirty they must be cleaned before you can even start repairing them.

This means your toolkit has some unexpected contents. Let’s take a look at some of the often unmentioned appliance repair essentials. 

1) Rubber Mallet

A rubber mallet is surprisingly handy when working with older machines, knocking old appliance housing apart and then knocking it right back together. A rubber mallet is the ideal tool for making bent, stiff, or rusty housing do what you need. If you have rusty screws, a rubber mallet can knock them loose, if someone has bent the housing of their appliance so that the panels don’t quite fit right anymore, a mallet can solve the problem. Without causing any more dents. In fact, you can even bang it back into shape in many cases making reassembly that much easier. 

2) Tube Cutter

A tube cutter is a special blade that fits around a rubber or plastic tube and then gives it a clean even cut all the way around. Anyone who’s tried cutting tube with scissors or a knife knows that this is a hard thing to do no matter how careful you are or how sharp your tool is. For repairs that involve water, there is often flexible tubing that needs to be cut to size. A tube cutter is essential for making sure that your tubes fit perfectly into each socket, ensuring fewer leaks and a more satisfying fit for tubing length with every repair. 

3) Head Lamp

Never underestimate the usefulness of a headlamp. The feeling of looking goofy will dissolve the very first time you need to fish into a dryer housing in a dimly lit laundry room. Headlamps leave your hands free to do the delicate repair work needed without having to worry about ambient light, light direction, or holding/clipping your own light. That said, having a small flexible clamp-lamp for custom light direction aiming is also incredibly useful in addition to your LED headlamp. 

4) Water Quality Tester

Sometimes, being able to test the water that is coming out of a malfunctioning appliance is incredibly useful. When you’re not sure where a leak is originating from or if there are three or four problems layered on top of each other, the quality of the water can tell you a great deal. Water is clean and purified? Then the water filter is working fine and the water is coming from a point after the water filter in the system. The water is dirty or highly contaminated? Then you’re dealing with a dirty or degrading water filter or the water is coming from a point before it hits a working filter. 

5) Hand Vacuum Cleaner

Then there is the use of having your own hand vacuum cleaner with a hose and detail attachments. While you may not be a carpet cleaner, you are someone who repairs appliances that have been sitting uncleaned and untended for possibly decades. years of dust, lint, crumbs, and floor crud can build up inside an appliance to the point where you can’t even see the screws or components you’re supposed to be working with. A quick once-over with the hose of your own vacuum allows you to clear the area and get an appliance repaired no matter how dirty it was when you arrived.

—For more insider appliance repair tips and insights, contact us today!

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