Brown: the go-to man for appliance repair

Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Elna Seabrooks
NECESSARY MAINTENANCE — Dave Brown, owner of Brown’s Appliance Repair, does repairs for local landlords and homeowners. Here he takes apart a clothes dryer in a Houlton apartment complex to clean it and minimize the danger of a fire that could ignite from accumulated lint.
Two decades of experience serving the County
By Elna Seabrooks
Staff Writer
    HOULTON — David Brown has built up his repair business with a solid client base of homeowners and residential landlords in Aroostook County over the years. “It’s just by treating people right. And, they reward you by telling other people. And, word-of-mouth gets around. It’s worked out pretty good for me,” he said.
    While on a routine maintenance call in mid-January, what Brown calls his “slow time,” he said he was busy cleaning the clothes dryers at a Houlton apartment complex. “I do preventative maintenance for a lot of landlords.”
Dryer hazards
    Although no one was hurt, a Bancroft family recently lost everything in what is thought to have been a dryer fire. According to Brown there are several factors to keep in mind but it’s still important to have a dryer cleaned every two-five years. “Sometimes people have never had their dryer cleaned and the machine is 20 years old with a half inch thick layer of lint. It’s so dry and clogged that a spark from a motor switch just might be enough to get it lit on fire.” Brown added that long vents inhibit a dryer’s ability to blow out excess lint, dust and fibers which can lead to a buildup. “I take them apart and vacuum them out.” However, Brown said he does not repair vacuums.
    When warmer weather rolls around, Brown said his business ramps up with constant calls for repairs. “I’m really busy in the summertime with refrigerators because they’re working harder and breaking down.” He added that another very busy time for him is before Thanksgiving and Christmas because people want all their stove burners working so they can prepare holiday meals.
Transition into business
    Brown said he went to Northern Maine Vocational Technical Institute in Presque Isle for television repair in 1991 and then got a job in southern Maine fixing TVs. “I worked down there for several years. But, I always wanted to get back home from Augusta. Dunn Furniture hired me in 1994 to do the TVs but they didn’t have enough TV work to keep me busy so they started training me on appliances.”
Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Elna Seabrooks
LINT TRAP — Built up lint and fibers trapped in a clothes dryer can cause a dangerous fire. Dave Brown, owner of Brown’s Appliance Repair, pulls out a handful of accumulated lint before vacuuming the dryer.
    Eventually, Dunn Furniture started phasing out appliance sales. So, Brown and his employer came up with a deal for him to take care of the store’s customers in addition to having his own TV and appliance repair service. Brown said it was around 2000 that the landscape changed in southern Aroostook for his line of work. “When the last guy who was my competition retired, I quit doing TV repairs and went all appliances.”
    Brown said he can keep his prices low unlike national chains and big box stores that have employees. “I don’t have any employees. So, I don’t have to pay unemployment insurance or health insurance, benefits or anything like that. That’s why I can keep my prices fairly low.”
    Although he is not part of a multi-national corporation, the Houlton-based businessman stays current on the latest technology. “I am Maytag- and Whirlpool-factory-authorized. So, I get daylong schools a couple times a year in Bangor which keeps me up-to-date on all the appliances. You have to keep up because things change so fast, you’ll get left behind.”
    Brown also said consumers are seeing a lot of newer imports and brands they haven’t heard of at different retailers. “For some of them you can’t get service information and without service information, you can’t fix them. So, I  tell people to try to stick with brands they have heard of — American names or, at least, names they know.”
Uncommon service calls
    After 20 years of fixing and maintaining appliances, Brown has had his share of everyday garden-variety repairs and a few that are rather extraordinary. He said he is “always pulling socks out of washing machines that get caught in the pumps.”
    Every once in a while, there is an unusual call into Brown’s Appliance Repair. “I have had mice get caught in a refrigerator’s fan and a squirrel that crawled into someone’s clothes dryer vent and ate the blower fan. The owner had called me because it stopped blowing. The squirrel had tried to chew his way out of the vent,” said Brown.
    Perhaps the most remarkable service call was the one from a woman who told him there was a creature in her washing machine. “I went in and a big frog was in the washer. I took it outside. It was stunned. I think he was in a state of shock. He had been through the spin cycle and she saw the frog laying on top of her clothes,” said Brown. Apparently, the poor frog had slipped into the load of dirty clothes when the homeowner was distracted before loading her machine.
    How do you know when it’s time to call for service? Good natured Brown jokingly said it’s time for a repair “when you have to close the door because the appliance is screaming so loud it hurts your ears.”
    On a more serious note, he said don’t let things go too far. “A squeak in a dryer is usually a wheel or something that needs to be replaced or maybe it’s a small bearing. It’s usually not an expensive deal if you get it taken care of. If you wait and let it go, it causes other things to go bad and it ends up costing you a lot more.”
    Although Brown said he’s usually on the road, he does check his messages when he’s out. Contact Brown’s Appliance Repair at 532-2511. In addition to Houlton, Hodgdon and the surrounding area, Brown said he travels to customers as far as Oakfield, Island Falls, Sherman, Patten, Monticello, Bridgewater and the neighboring towns.