How To Determine The Age Of A GE Appliance

By Tim Plaehn Apr 30, 2011 3:21 pm EST

Things Needed

Writing utensil
Paper

Tip

To help determine the correct year of manufacture, the style of the appliance and your knowledge of its history should allow you to pick the appropriate year. If you have a really old GE appliance, the year letter started at A in 1944 and stepped a year for each letter to T in 1959. Appliances manufactured in the 1960s had two letters for the year, such as VU for 1961.

The manufacture date of a General Electric — GE — appliance will probably not be found anywhere on the machine. Like many manufacturers, GE uses a code to indicate when an appliance was produced. Any appliance produced by GE since 1970 uses the same date code system. Decoding the production date is easier if you have a general idea of the age of the appliance.

Step 1

Locate the serial number tag of your GE appliance. The tag includes the model number and serial number of the unit and may be located in several places, depending on the appliance type. Refrigerator and microwave tags are typically on an inside wall. On other appliances, check door edges, the back of the unit or inside the door opening. For stoves, the tag may be under the cooktop.

Step 2

Write down the serial number of the appliance. The number will be on the right side of the model number/serial number tag. The serial number starts with two letters followed by six digits. The two letters are the code for the manufacture date.

Step 3

Determine the month of manufacture based on the first letter of the serial number. The letters correspond to the month in this order — A: January, D: February, F: March, G: April, H: May, L: June, M: July, R: August, S: September, T: October, V: November and Z: December.

Step 4

Begin to determine the year of manufacture based on the second letter. GE uses 12 letters, which repeat every 12 years. The letters used and the initial year for each letter are as follows — A: 1977, D: 1978, F: 1979, G: 1980, H: 1981, L: 1970, M: 1971, R: 1972, S: 1973, T: 1974, V: 1975 and Z: 1976.

Step 5

Add multiples of 12 to the letter date year of the appliance until you obtain an appropriate year of manufacture. For example, if the second letter is an R, the appliance was produced in 1972, 1984, 1996 or 2008.