The Hidden Costs of Autism

There are some costs to being autistic, especially when both of you in the houshold are on the spectrum, that you just don't think about - untill they happen.

The other day the drum-bearing, probably the inside bearing since it's right behind the seal which had probably been letting water slip by, on our front-load washing machine failed. No warning. No slightly unusual noise getting louder over time. Just suddenly a full-blown classic failure - the machine sounds like a jet engine during spin cycles.

A loud jet engine!

Loud enough that I couldn't deal with standing at my workbench during wash-loads, having to wander off and find something else to do untill the commotion was blissfully over.

The replacement bearing kit (two bearings and a seal) is only about $30 but the repair itself requires a full teardown/rebuild and takes an experianced person with the proper tools a good 4 - 5 hours.

Me? Longer obviously. Probably twice as long.

And I just didn't feel like tackling that job.

Because of the labor involved getting it repaired on site by a 'professional' is around $450. Not great, but still about half the (today's) cost of the machine. 

But then again neither one of us is emotionally prepared to have a stranger in our house for that long (The Wife usually goes for a drive when this is unavoidable but this would require a full-blown road-trip!)

 So instead we scraped our 12 year old ($700), otherwise perfectly functional washer and bought a brand new one ($1000). Not the most financially responsible course of action, but one that we were willing to pay for because was a lot easier on us emotionally since the delivery people are only here for 5 minutes. 

Yes, The Wife still makes herself scarce when we hear the truck at the top of the driveway. But I can deal with it reasonably well because it's a technical interaction rather than a social one and those hardworking independent contractors have many other deliveries to make before earning enough for their families to make it through another day, so they don't hang around any longer than neccessary.

That was 24 hours ago.

By my count the new washer has done 4 loads already. The US average for a family is 6 loads per week. Around here we easily hit a weekly average closer to 10-12.

Sidebar: I know the failed washer was 12 years old because, looking back through our water consumption data (we have a meter, a private meter for our own use, on the well.), 12 years ago we suddenly went from an average of 110-120 gallons per day to 60-70 when we replaced our rusted out top-load machine with a much more eco-freindly front-load.