1973 Poppy Frigidaire trash compactor

[combo52]

This was spotted almost a year ago in Elkhart, Indiana I believe on Facebook marketplace and Kenny Goatfarmer rescued it for me. It was kind enough to keep it until Justin Miller picked it up this past Friday.

I had never seen a Frigidaire compactor before the flesh it says Frigidaire GM on it. I’m not sure whether Frigidaire built it or not. Maybe somebody else knows. I think I want saw a compactor that looked similar that had the Tappan name on it. Justin Miller and I met up at Chris Moore‘s home in Ohio. Yesterday I took a whole load of things to Chris and Justin and others in the box truck and brought this compactor back. I took it all apart early this afternoon and lubricated it etc. seems to work perfectly. It’s an impressively well-made machine Maybe even overbuilt. I would have to think that they never made any money on this product they couldn’t have sold enough of them to justify the engineering that went into it.

This is what makes things like this so interesting to me. There were more than a half dozen different compactor designs that came out in the early 70s. They didn’t sell terribly well whirlpool invented it and brought it out in 1969 and they’re the only ones that still continue to build a home trash compactor.

Wow, you can’t patent the idea of an electric trash compactor you can pattern your design so all of these more than a half dozen different companies have completely different designs different ways of doing the same thing. That’s what makes it fun. Here are a few pictures of this one I’ve never seen one quite like it.

 

[combo52]

Frigidaire trash compactor

I looked through the Frigidaire repair literature today and found the manual for it. It was a fairly comprehensive manual in the typical Frigidaire fashion for the time.

I still can’t tell if it was built by GM Frigidaire or someone else, it is interesting as his typical the Westinghouse motor and it runs quite hot just compacting a load once makes the motor noticeably warm to the touch and the motor is only rated to run for a quarter of an hour before it would go out on thermal overload.

Whirlpool trash compactor had a continuous duty motor I’d even heard of customers that would come home and say the compactor was just running continuously when a switch failed and it didn’t hurt the unit at all.

John L

 

[gansky1]

 

Poppy.  I sighed every time I opened a women's or shelter magazine and saw this color in an ad or a featured home.  

 

Is the bucket removable?  

 

[askolover]

My childhood friend Scottie's parents had one like this. We used to love it when a bottle would explode in it.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

The Frigidaire with it being made by General Motors had as unique, car-like appearance that made it onto just about all of its appliances...

 

 

 

-- Dave

 

[vegabass25]

Almost forgot about these

Very cool machine in one of the best colors! Certainly seems made well. The 1/4hr motor rating is rather odd. It's motor nameplate rating of 7.2 amps, VS the Frigidaire tag stating 10.3amps leads me to believe they where running this motor a little hard in this application. Appears to have a fairly high start capacitor value as well. It's getting quite a kick on startup.

Did the Whirlpool built units use a motor of similar spec?

This unit brings back some memories. Haven't seen a compactor in ages. My aunt and uncles house up the street had a beautiful, extremely well kept late 1970s/early 80's high end kitchen. Big Sub-Zero fridge, Jenn-Air downdraft with matching double wall oven, Kitchen Aid dishwasher and garbage disposal, and of course, the Kitchen Aid trash compactor. First thing I'd do when I'd visit as a kid is see if there was anything in there to squish lol. I remember seeing the gap between the top door and bottom drawer expand a tiny bit as it reached the end of it's stroke.

It had a smaller door up top that opened a "chute" into the compactor bin. It also had a tubular lock on it, I guess to keep kids from tampering.

Sadly they downgraded that kitchen for no reason 20 years ago. I was too young to save anything, and still really wish I could have gotten a much more "educated" look at the intricacies of those appliances. That kind of stuff is rare around here. The house was smallish and rather basic to have a kitchen this well outfitted.

Anyway, Thats a really cool machine, John. Hope it goes into service.

 

[combo52]

Frigidaire trash, compactor motor, etc.

Hi Landon, thanks for your observations. Yes, it’s sort of odd that it has such a big capacitor on the motor because the compactor never really starts under any load. The ram goes down until the motor stalls as soon as the start winding engages it immediately reverses smoothly without any fuss, all of the compactors work this way.

I never saw a Westinghouse major Appliance or a Westinghouse motor that was really any good from the time I was born at least they must’ve made good Motors at some point.

The service manual for this compactor states that the overload will reset in three or four minutes at normal room temperature but it would take over an hour for it to reset at 167°F ambient temperature. I can’t quite figure out how you could ever get a temperature that high in the area where the compactor was.

Whirlpool and I think every other compactor I ever saw used to continuous duty motor that could run all day, but of course, in reality would never need to.

This compactor will go into the museum. I’m gonna have a line of all the compactors built for home use currently I have all but the 12 inch Thermidor waste king unit if anybody sees one of those I’d be interested in buying it.

The ISE built compactor is interesting. The motor looks like the bottom of a garbage disposal. You can even put the anti-jam wrench in it and turn the motor. It’s a very heavy duty affair.

Most of the compactors were 15 inches wide the Amana stor-more compactor and the KitchenAid compactor were both 18 inches wide.

Hi Greg, yes the bucket is removable and has handle openings so you can pick it up easily although I think for the most part, you could also take the bag out without removing the bucket. The nice thing about this Frigidaire is you could use it with out bags, if you don’t put a lot of sloppy junk in it, the KitchenAid also had that advantage because it had a heavy duty plastic liner and you could just lift it out and take it out and dump it into the trash receptacle. I bought a plastic liner that whirlpool sold for their compactors for a brief period of time more than 40 years ago and it’s still holding up just fine. I’ve never used bags in mine. It goes against my philosophy about buying things just to throw them away.

John L

 

[combo52]

Motors start capacitors on trash compactors

Hi Landon, interesting point thinking about it now I don’t think I’ve seen any other trash compactor that used to start capacitor, as I mentioned, these compactors always started with no load on them, and the capacitor would normally be wired with the start winding and when the compactor actually compacts it gets to the stall state, it’s only got the run winding running until it stalls, and then it immediately reverses and travels back up.

 

[vegabass25]

Neat!

John

Fascinating how the compactors uses the centrifugal switch and start winding to reverse and complete the cycle! I never would have guessed thats how the circuitry works. Brilliantly simple and reliable. a novel way of controlling when to stop based on whats being compacted, and the depth of travel. I could see how this could be a little hard on a more economically constructed motor, though. It also explains the high current rating on motor and especially Frigidaire label. The motor is reaching an almost locked rotor state and quickly reversing if its operating like that.

The high value start cap could be simply due to desiring a very fast response in reversing to mitigate high current draw popping breakers/fuses. Perhaps there is some more substantial start load on the motor when its reversing with pressure from the trash behind it. Do the other brands use a 1725RPM motor as well?

Westinghouse motors aren't the best, but thats such a difference in behaviour from the other compactor motors you mentioned. Did they use regular split phase motors with no cap? Note the Westinghouses 1.0 service factor as well, most open housing fractional HP motors have 1.15 or higher. Even the 1990's GE 1/3hp belt drive fan motor on my bench right now is 1.35, and alot of times this type of motor also operates with little to no airflow near it.

Westinghouse quality fell off in the early 1960's based on my almost two decades of fan and air conditioner collecting. Never bad, just always better options out there. Cheers! I really want a compactor now!

 

[ozzie908]

Westinghouse wormhole

Have been watching and learning about trains back in the early 60's and yesterday was all about electric trains and nearly all the switchgear was made by Westinghouse, So some of their goods not only worked but worked over here too Who knew?

 

[combo52]

Household trash, compactor

Hi Landon, neat observations about the motors used in these machines you know more about Motors than I do obviously.

Trash compactor’s can still be found around here for next to nothing. A lot of people put them in and never use them. The whirlpool design is by far the most common one it was sold under a half dozen different names, if you can figure out a way to get one from here to there, I come across them all the time.

When I had my first compactor, a whirlpool Coppertowne model back in the mid 70s I figured out that you could get a lot more life out of the Load in it by turning the compactor on and letting the ram travel to the reverse point then quickly, switching it off and leaving it that way for a short time or even overnight you could get a lot more in the container. I should have patented that idea because then a few years later whirlpool thought of it and put a patent on it. They called it a number of different things like extra pack, but it really makes a huge difference. You can do it with any compactor by just quickly hitting the off button when it reverses and leaving it in that condition for a while, it works especially well with plastic things that are a little bit springy.

Hi Austin, I think Westinghouse‘s commercial division was a lot better. I still see a lot of Westinghouse elevators and escalators and things from the early 60s around here that are working just fine. I always thought they were one of the better companies in certain areas, it’s just their household electrical products really started to go downhill And ruined the company for household major appliances leaving them with the money losing company that they sold in 74 to white industries.

John L

 

[vegabass25]

Motors

Hey John

Yes indeed, I have good amount of experience rebuilding and rewinding fractional HP motors. Mostly those used on older fans, pumps and tools, and even the ones GE epoxied together. I sometimes do it as a service, but it's mostly something I've always enjoyed doing to restore older equipment for myself, family, and friends. It's what has brought me into enjoying working on larger appliances as well!

As always, my mind continues to be boggled on the cool appliances people have installed only to sometimes never use. As someone who grew up where central vacs are very common- it's something I see alot with them as well lately. Especially now that everyone has a toy cordless vacuum they have fooled themselves into thinking is effective for proper cleaning.

Letting the compactor sit compressed for awhile is brilliant to get more in there! I'd love to figure out how to get one shipped somehow. New ones are like $1600 here, and KitchenAid models are around 130lbs. Heavier than I was expecting. I can imagine an older one is probably even more heavy so it's likely not an easy undertaking.

Cheers
-Landon

 

[combo52]

Household kitchen, trash, compactors

Hi Landon, I run into compactor pretty regularly many have hardly ever been used so they’re usually pretty good shape. We’ll have to figure out a way to get one shipped in your direction.

It is amazing how few people have decent vacuum cleaners anymore when I’m working in these million dollar plus houses which is the normal house here, I’ll ask the customer occasionally to use the vacuum cleaner when I’m under the refrigerator behind the dryer or something and they come out with this little portable thing that is lucky to suck up a cornflake. People literally don’t own vacuums at all and some of these houses because they have a cleaning service that comes in and brings their own junk in and everybody else is dust with it.

The best thing I ever did was put in a central vacuum. It Does work in a superb manner as there’s absolutely no odor or dust circulated because it vents outdoors anything that doesn’t get captured. My business partner Jason installed one in the 4000 square-foot building where the business and museum is. It makes it simple to keep a huge commercial building clean, we even drag the hose out and vacuum out the back of the trucks sometimes I even vacuum the parking lot with it.

John L