1962 whirlpool poly clean dry cleaning center

[combo52]

Today’s picture of the day, can you imagine getting this dressed up at a laundromat, it’s a great picture though.

The dry cleaning machines were all based on the 33 inch whirlpool combos that had been discontinued two years earlier they kept them in production through the 60s as dry cleaning machines.

It’s also neat. You’ll probably notice they use the 24 inch automatic washers in this laundromat to save space space was always very important in laundromats because the more machines you could get in the more potential profit you could make.

When we first started this business, we were still working on whirlpool dry cleaning machines like this around 1980, they used a refrigeration system to condense the Dry cleaning fluid back into the tank and we had to change a couple compressors on those systems.

It was not generally recognized how dangerous dry cleaning fluid was back when these machines were being installed.

When I was looking to buy commercial property, I found two beautiful buildings that would’ve made a great business location and museum that were basically all boarded up because they had so much contamination from dry cleaning fluid, one is right here in Beltsville. I don’t know what will be done with them eventually, The building will probably have to be torn down in the Earth underneath. It hauled away before anything can be built there again.

John.

 

[bajaespuma]

Thank you for this explanation

We had one of these self-serve dry-cleaners near us on First Avenue in NYC. I'm still unclear how conventional dry cleaning works, but being interested in washing machines I always wondered how these worked.

Mother wasn't.

 

Those machines looked very spiffy and, like most kids, I was also a fan of anything coin-operated. Another reason I love Japan.

 

To be fair, her Mother did her own dry-cleaning, by hand, in their back yard. Probably with a lit Pall Mall in her mouth. Mom was happy to send her duds out to the regular dry-cleaners around the corner.

 

[mrsalvo]

One of my favorite pictures of the day! Check out those waxed floors. The cigarette ash tray, table with magazine and plant. I could only imagine all the different wonderful smelling vintage detergents being used, I wonder which little boxes of detergent were sold in the coin detergent dispenser.

The old Norge Villages were very, very popular when I was a kid, there were alot of them around. And I remember new, clean laundry mats with the then-new avocado green Maytag washers. Speed Queen laundry mats were not as clean and spiffy. One, and only one, laundry mat had the Philco top loading washers.

I’m wondering what year, or about, this ad came out. I do remember housewives going grocery shopping wearing hair curlers and the jar of Dippity Do, or Alberto VO5, in their grocery carts. Aww, the smells of yesteryear.
Oh, and don’t forget that can of Sudden Beauty hairspray!

Barry

 

[bpetersxx]

John is right about the dangerous fumes of dry-cleaning

Wonder when it went to attendant done

Late 60 early 70's it was that way at the Laundry where Mom and I went after the LK get destroyed by lightening

Oh and yes the perm stench

 

[tomturbomatic]

Rollers

In the south, the Holiness Church of God women used to come to the grocery store with their long hair set on frozen orange juice cans. The also wore ankle-length black skirts. We did not know where they came from. They just started showing up at the Treasure Island grocery section in the late 60s-early 70s.

 

[launderess]

So many former dry cleaning plants or places are either brownfield or full fledged superfund clean-up sites.

https://planetforward.org/story/the-dry-cleaning-disaster/

https://www.environmental-law.net/k...program/ny-contaminated-dry-cleaner-database/

https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/S...fuseaction=second.Cleanup&id=0204241#bkground

You hear stories of workers in these self-service dry cleaners simply taking dirty solvent and dumping it "out back" into soil.

On a human scale it's likely scores if not hundreds of workers at all sorts of dry cleaning plants came down with cancer or other diseases as result of exposure to solvents.

 

[ragnboneman]

I believe they still use Perc to dry clean.
I used it to clean electrical equipment.
A lot of guys in my dept with my seniority and higher went on to develop what we thought were a lot of abnormal cancers.

I never dumped any, but I do remember letting a lot of it just flash off and dry up.
You could smell it through the shops...

There was this other stuff we had.
I cant describe the smell other than to say it faintly familiar to brake clean, and other similar cleaning fluids.
We knew that was very bad it even dissolved carbon residue from armatures.

But after a while you get comfortable with these things.
We would clean spots off our clothing, ink or grease off seat covers and grease off your shoes.
rope grease off your hair where it stuck out under your hardhat...

Recently the local Henkle/loctite guy came in to show us the current products.
I asked what they had for cleaning carbon varnishes things normal cleaner can't
You know stuff...
And if they had anything that would life varnish and carbon like the old days...

Yes we have SF-790 he said.....
Guys like you still ask for it

 

[helicaldrive]

Looks like

Dry cleaning fluid is still available for purchase on Amazon…..

 

[launderess]

Perchloroethylene (PERC) is still out there for most part, though at least one state (California, surprise, surprise) has banned the stuff.

On federal level EPA seems on track to phase out PERC as well for most applications.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-proposes-partial-ban-on-toxic-dry-cleaning-chemical/

 

[launderess]

"Dry cleaning fluid is still available for purchase on Amazon….."

You have to read ingredient labels as not all things flogged as "dry cleaning fluid" nowadays contain PERC. Some are petroleum distillate based while others use limonene and or other "natural" solvents.