A question for 50's, 60's, & 70's Frigidaire owners,

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Some Frigidaire solid-basket models had a spring-loaded ball attachment to optionally block the drain hose. Wash water would be retained in the outer tub / cabinet, and could be pumped back into the inner tub for use by removing the ball, aiming the drain hose into it and setting the machine to either spin or agitate so the pump could run.
 
Has anybody ever seen a 1-18 with this feature?

Variflexpgh has a Frigidaire WCIR-60. But I have never seen a 1-18 with the SudSaver feature in real life, although I have seen the consoles and schematics in the Tech Talks.
 
My round body Frigidaire manual machine has the spring loaded ball over the hose end to block the pump outlet, so water is trapped in the outer casing.
Here's how you use it:
Fill machine, wash first load.
Place ball over hose outlet to save water.
Spin out first load and remove it from the tub.
Place hose so outlet water will be returned to tub.
Remove blocker ball from hose outlet, set machine to wash. It will refill using saved water from inside drum. (It agitates at the same time and you can't refit the lid as the hose is in the way, so it splashes quite a bit.)
Add second load of clothes to re-used wash water.
You have to repeat the whole performance with fresh water to rinse.

Chris.
 
Oh No Gizmo, we aint doing that. Way too much work, but thanks for the information. It would not be an "Automatic" would it, with all that switching of clothes etc?

Steve
 
My grandmother used her Maytag Highlander as a suds-saver, but the machine didn't have this feature so she improvised - for years and years. When she bought a new Maytag in May 1975, she continued this process but it slowed down somewhat as she got older.

She would wash the first load, fish them out of the tub with her "wringer stick", put them into a plastic tub - squeeze the water from the tub back into the machine then put the tub on the floor to wait it's turn at spinning and rinsing later when all the clothes were washed. Continuing this process until the water was too dirty to re-use, the last wash-load was allowed to complete the entire cycle. The clothes from each tub would be placed back into the machine and the dial set to post-wash spin and allowed to finish. I remember how flustered she'd get if she strayed too far from the machine and it spun out the wash water before she could catch it. Each tub was rinsed and dried, the floor mopped and dried and the clothes hung on the line or dried in the dryer depending on weather, clothing content and her mood. Things that needed to be ironed were sprinkled, rolled and went into a plastic bag and put into the refrigerator for ironing the next day (Tuesday).

She never believed that any machine was truly automatic - they all needed a bit of "help" from time to time and always maintained that her Maytag wringer washed clothes much better - as many wringer owners did. Her wash-stick was kept handy at the top of the machine behind the lid, to push down air bubbles in the washer, fish out clothes, etc.
 
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