Q: Do your manuals cover all brands of machines?
A: Yes. In most appliances, there are some common problems that may occur to just about all brands. Where it's appropriate, however, each brand has its own chapter, where problems specific to a particular brand or even model are pointed out (and solved!)
Note that only top-loaders are covered in our washer manual. A front-loader washer manual is in the works, but it is not yet available.

Q: Do you have a wiring diagram for model number XYZ123.........?
A: No. We could not possibly publish wiring diagrams for every machine ever made. That's an item you need to get from the original equipment manufacturer. (O.E.M.) Often the diagram can be found somewhere on the machine, if you look in the right place.
However, each of our manuals does have a chapter on how to read and use wiring diagrams and how to use test equipment such as voltmeters and ammeters (simplified, of course!)

Q: Does the refrigerator manual cover icemakers?
A: No, that's a subject for a whole different book (we're working on it!) There is one exception, though. There is a Whirlpool/Kenmore icemaker that was built with defrost circuitry in the icemaker head. These icemakers have a white, flexible plastic tray (ice mold) that turns over and twists to eject the ice. If you have a Whirlpool/Kenmore icemaker with white rotating fingers that eject crescent-shaped ice cubes from the mold, your icemaker is not covered.

Q: Do you have any other manuals (microwave, air conditioning, etc?)
A: No, just the five for now. We have a sealed system manual in the works, that will cover sealed system problems in household refrigerators and air conditioning units, chillers and other relatively small refrigeration units. But it will not be much help to the Do-It-Yourselfer. Nowadays you need a license to buy Freon and work on sealed systems.
As for microwaves, there is not much a weekend warrior-type Do-It-Yourselfer should be doing to a microwave, in my opinion. Besides the fact that they usually require fairly expensive testing equipment, there are extremely high voltages and currents and radiation, and it's too easy to hurt yourself badly, either during the repair or afterwards. If you are dead set on trying to fix your own microwave, check out this website. It might help you out. Good luck.

Q: Can you send me a catalog?
A: Sorry, we have no catalog... frankly, we're not sure what information we could put in printed sales literature that we couldn't put on a web page. We're always open to suggestion, though...!   : )

Q: Are your manuals in any other languages?
A: We currently have Spanish language versions of the refrigerator, washer and dishwasher manuals. Dryer and Oven manuals arfe currently being translated and will be available in Spanish soon.
Aside from the Spanish manuals, we currently have no other languages available.

Q: What do you mean by "the most common problems with the most common machines?"
A: One of the things that sets our manuals apart is what we don't discuss in them. We don't even try to be the one manual that solves every problem that you could ever experience with a particular machine. We've seen that in other service manuals and frankly we find it confusing. You spend a lot of time reading about how to diagnose problems that you might see once in a blue moon. And how to perform repairs that, as a Do-It-Yourselfer, you won't ever be called upon to perform.

Instead, we focus on the problems that you're most likely to see. And we recommend the fastest, easiest solutions to the problem. We assume that you are not a student of appliance repair; that you really just want to get the thing fixed and get back to what you were doing before it broke.

For example, if your fridge is suddenly not as cold as it should be, the odds are 90% or better that the problem is that one of about seven parts has failed. Why not just go there first? Narrow the problem down, then test the possible parts in sequence? Why waste a bunch of time (and effort, and patience...) reading about the vapor compression cycle, and the thermodynamic properties of Freon, and how to make sealed system repairs, like you do in other service manuals? The same is true of virtually all major appliances; washers, dryers, dishwashers and ovens... the same things tend to break. They are easy to diagnose and repair, if you have a logical sequence to follow.

As for repairs that don't fit the mold, we take a different tack. We feel that before you can diagnose what is not working properly, you must first know how things are supposed to work. So we give you a really rudimentary view of what is supposed to happen; the specific sequence of events that occurs when a machine's cycle starts or stops. Once you know that, you can usually observe the machine in operation and figure out for yourself what isn't happening.