Looking for Appliance recommendations please

Hi everyone,

I'm having a 792 sq ft strawbale home built and I'm looking for some recommendations on the following appliances + whatever isn't listed either;

Refridgerator
Stove (electric or induction)
range hood
dishwasher
we're looking at getting a 2 in 1 clothes washer / dryer
fans
lights
blinds

its a 1 bedroom , 1 bath.

thanks everyone.

*based in Tucson, AZ

When we were building our house, money was tight so I got my appliances off Craig's List.  Is that available in your part of the world?

Otherwise all my appliance have come from Sears which sells Kenmore.

For lights, fans and blinds I bought what was cheapest at the local hardware store or lumber store.

Hi Etienne, Welcome to Permies!
Since I'm UK based, my recommendations would probably be of little use to you. Generally I like to buy once, and buy good quality if i can. Something as simple as possible, that uses few resources, and has good spares availability so can be fixed when things wear (as they do).
I like Bosch for 'white goods' here, they seem to be pretty robust.

We'd love to hear more about your strawbale tiny home adventures! A thread in our straw bale house forum would be awesome!

I too would love to here more about your straw bale tiny house.

Straw bales are intriguing as they offer so much great insulation and seem easy to build.

I would like to recommend Maytag for washers and dryers.  I only have experience with that.  Do they make other appliances?

I got mine used and they are from 1993 and just keep going ...

Another suggestion is to look at RV appliances.  Our daughter has a AirBnB and those are the kind of appliances they bought when they were doing their build.

when we moved onto a boat, we were confronted with top-loading refrigeration - which was kind of weird. But it makes a lot of sense; when you open the "door", the cold air does not sink out to the floor. It is more energy efficient (though it is a little harder to organize - top-loading refrigerators often come with only one or two "baskets" that give you storage above the floor - you will have to devise your own internal shelving solution. But if you go looking for a top loading refrigerator you will most likely come home empty-handed. Almost nobody seeks them. On the bright side, chest-freezers come in many sizes and they tend to be better insulated that refrigerators! If only you could operate a freezer as a refrigerator. Well, you can. Refrigerator thermostats are different from freezer thermostats in two ways: the range of temperature they control is different, and the knob that is used to adjust the temperature has a different shaft profile. But the compressor and coolant and other hardware is exactly the same. If you replace the freezer thermostat with a refrigerator thermostat, you turn the freezer into a refrigerator!.

We have two Kenmore "freezers" in our kitchen, a smaller one that is still a freezer, and a bigger one that is now a refrigerator.

I quite like my single-pot induction cooktop, but note that induction cooking requires cookware that has heavy iron bottom. This cookware, while generally of excellent quality, is also often more expensive and hard to source. But once you have it, it works fine on induction or conventional cooktops. We have a conventional gas stove, because we live in a land of frequent power failures and we do not have a sufficiently large solar system to power electric cooking and gas can be stored and stockpiled.

Cade, thank you for posting this information about changing out the thermostats.

I'll check with some appliance repair people about this, to see how I might be able to use this idea, as I'm looking to replace my current refrigerator (for a much smaller one).

Peace

I know that electrical repairs can be daunting, and thermostats are mysterious-looking with lots of places to connect wires, but they are really very simple devices: There are only two wires that are active, and a ground wire. The two wires either connect or disconnect; the thermostat functions as an on-off switch and the order of connection makes virtually no difference (if you get it backwards, it will still work). The thermostat also has this great long wire-like thing which comes wound up in a coil. That is a "capillary tube" - hollow inside and somewhat delicate. When you remove the old thermostat, you will pull the old capillary tube out of its passage and when you install the new one, you will carefully unroll the new tube (not twisting it or making sharp bends) and insert it into this passage. The wires that connected to the old thermostat will very likely be connectable to the new thermostat without modification, but sometimes creativity is required. The old knob will probably not fit onto the new thermostat and you will have to glue it, or maybe drill it and glue it (again, some creativity is needed). Thermostats come in a wide variety of mounting options and you might have a new one that mounts differently (more creativity!). But even if it isn't mounted at all, it will still work; the capillary tube is sensing the temperature inside the cold box and the thermostat device is turning on and off the connection between the two wires to tell the compressor whether or not to operate.

Thank you everyone for your recommendations. I'm extremely  excited for this project. It's being built on a plot with raw desert (we chose a spot with the least vegetation to clear out (replant what we can). I believe sourcing sustainable and recycled material for the project really respects the earth.

Etienne Gui wrote:we're looking at getting a 2 in 1 clothes washer / dryer

We bought an LG 2-in-1 laundry machine a few years ago when we were living in an RV. We got the smallest, ventless, 120V model they sell. I think it cost us $1100 at the time which seemed a bit high for me, but it has been working like a charm. It has required some maintenance (specifically replacing the drain pump a couple of times), but the repair parts aren't too expensive and can be found on Amazon. There is a good library of YouTube videos as well showing how to do your own maintenance. It's fairly accessible to work on yourself as well. Once we moved into a house we just took the machine out of the RV and reinstalled it in the house.

Being in Tucson though... do you need a dryer?? Perhaps just a washer and then line dry? We are slowly moving that direction ourselves now. Of course, the 2-in-1 has the option just to wash as well. You're just paying extra for the dryer part. And most of the electricity use come from drying.