Appliances (4) Westinghouse RETRO 1970's Harvest Gold
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The ad copy says it all: "Woman stayed home 7 days/year." No wonder those appliances look un-used!
With the exception of a self-cleaning oven, those could have been from the condo where I lived in Annandale, VA, although this is a better dishwasher. It also had a Kenmore Trash-Masher. I was the only resident that used one. When it was trash day and I had stuff to put out, I would put the little bag out, all nicely folded shut. Everyone else had a big bulging plastic bag, but I guess because I used my disposer for wet stuff and rinsed out cans & jars, I could make good use of the compactor in the ancient days before recycling.
Real WH Appliances
This DW was a great performer [ reliability was a completely different matter ] and in fact they copied some aspects from the KD-15 KA DWs and in CRs tests in 1966 it equaled KA and WP and all three of these brands had a check-rated rating.
The range was a good performer but unfortunately it is the continuous cleaning model, WH had lots of problems with the CC porcelain finish flaking off the metal oven liner so you could end up with bits of glass in your food [ covered casseroles only ] LOL.
There refrigerators were so so, you could usually count on soft ice cream and frozen lettuce in there refrigerators and frozen evaporator drain pans, I must have added a hundred auxiliary drain heaters to these refrigerators back in the time any were actually still in regular use.
This DW was a great performer [ reliability was a completely different matter ] and in fact they copied some aspects from the KD-15 KA DWs and in CRs tests in 1966 it equaled KA and WP and all three of these brands had a check-rated rating.
The range was a good performer but unfortunately it is the continuous cleaning model, WH had lots of problems with the CC porcelain finish flaking off the metal oven liner so you could end up with bits of glass in your food [ covered casseroles only ] LOL.
There refrigerators were so so, you could usually count on soft ice cream and frozen lettuce in there refrigerators and frozen evaporator drain pans, I must have added a hundred auxiliary drain heaters to these refrigerators back in the time any were actually still in regular use.
I had a WH dishwasher like this but portable. It was a great cleaning machine as long as you had copious amounts of very hot water available. I gave it to my first ex-husband that lived in an apartment building with water temps around 160F and it washed great! You could get a lot in that machine, too.
Westinghouse: "Solid Gold 70's!"
Yeh, these are BOL-to-MOL Westy's...!
What's nice about the fridge is you got a lot of drawers, shelves & bins for the money, with it being a top freezer model (and those nice wide doors & shelves are what I like & miss! --Probably because space needed for Holiday food storage is coming!)...
I'm disappointed that the range isn't the next higher up w/ two 8", a cook top light & self-cleaning oven; otherwise it's very much reminiscent of the electric ranges used in my grade school Home Economics classes (never actually took Home Ec', just saw the app's used on occasion & the B/I's used by the teacher--& many years later after I'd graduated, no telling what must be used in the class rooms now...!)...
The D/W seems to be the one-knob Westinghouse my aunt had in her apt. & very much like my folks' D&M-built Bradford (a universal design, used by a lot of manufacturers, who weren't Maytag, Whirlpool or GE) and a plus if it cleans decently, though not much can be expected of reliability, if my parents hardly kept theirs, after the one small break down that must not have been worth any bother to fix...
-- Dave
Yeh, these are BOL-to-MOL Westy's...!
What's nice about the fridge is you got a lot of drawers, shelves & bins for the money, with it being a top freezer model (and those nice wide doors & shelves are what I like & miss! --Probably because space needed for Holiday food storage is coming!)...
I'm disappointed that the range isn't the next higher up w/ two 8", a cook top light & self-cleaning oven; otherwise it's very much reminiscent of the electric ranges used in my grade school Home Economics classes (never actually took Home Ec', just saw the app's used on occasion & the B/I's used by the teacher--& many years later after I'd graduated, no telling what must be used in the class rooms now...!)...
The D/W seems to be the one-knob Westinghouse my aunt had in her apt. & very much like my folks' D&M-built Bradford (a universal design, used by a lot of manufacturers, who weren't Maytag, Whirlpool or GE) and a plus if it cleans decently, though not much can be expected of reliability, if my parents hardly kept theirs, after the one small break down that must not have been worth any bother to fix...
-- Dave
danemodsandy
Well-known member
Hmm.
"WH had lots of problems with the CC porcelain finish flaking off the metal oven liner so you could end up with bits of glass in your food [ covered casseroles only ] LOL."
I had a '73 40-inch Westy with CC for quite some time, and never had that problem. That was in spite of many, many cleanings of the coating*. That range gave several problems, but not that one.
* A CC coating that's "overloaded" (meaning so much soil it exceeds the catalyst's ability to burn it off) can be restored to function with straight sudsy ammonia and a soft-bristled scrub brush. After scrubbing, run the oven at 500 degrees for a little while to burn off the ammonia smell and any remaining oven cooties.
"WH had lots of problems with the CC porcelain finish flaking off the metal oven liner so you could end up with bits of glass in your food [ covered casseroles only ] LOL."
I had a '73 40-inch Westy with CC for quite some time, and never had that problem. That was in spite of many, many cleanings of the coating*. That range gave several problems, but not that one.
* A CC coating that's "overloaded" (meaning so much soil it exceeds the catalyst's ability to burn it off) can be restored to function with straight sudsy ammonia and a soft-bristled scrub brush. After scrubbing, run the oven at 500 degrees for a little while to burn off the ammonia smell and any remaining oven cooties.
self clean vs. continuous clean
I have never heard of anything but self cleaning ovens. I have seen some marked continuous clean but thought it was just another way of saying the same thing. What were the differences?
I have never heard of anything but self cleaning ovens. I have seen some marked continuous clean but thought it was just another way of saying the same thing. What were the differences?
Continuous clean has (or had, since they're no longer on the market far as I've noticed) a special porous (enzyme?) coating that spread, absorbed, and dissipated grease & food soils at "normal" oven temperatures. There was no high-heat pyrolytic cleaning cycle involved. They were advertised with taglines such as "your oven is always clean" ... which wasn't so much the case in real-world conditions.
redcarpetdrew
Well-known member
Most CC ovens I saw were in the rental homes. Ok in theory but tenants for the most part didn't understand or flat out didn't care about how to make the best use of the system and scraped the ovens or worse used spray on oven cleaner and ended up trashing the coatings and rendering the system useless...
RCD
RCD
pierreandreply4
Well-known member
when i was a kid growing up a neighbor that live right in front of my house had that particular harvest gold westinghouse stove
In truth...
The oven was always sorta dirty lookin', but then the coating on the porcelain did not look that good, even when new, with that flat brown coating, so it was a toss up, not which looked better, but which looked worse, clean or grungy. They were insulated like a regular oven so if you ran one for a few hours at 500F to get rid of stains & stuff, it put a lot of heat in the kitchen. I never saw one that looked like it had gone through that kind of treatment.
The oven was always sorta dirty lookin', but then the coating on the porcelain did not look that good, even when new, with that flat brown coating, so it was a toss up, not which looked better, but which looked worse, clean or grungy. They were insulated like a regular oven so if you ran one for a few hours at 500F to get rid of stains & stuff, it put a lot of heat in the kitchen. I never saw one that looked like it had gone through that kind of treatment.
danemodsandy
Well-known member
RCD:
Here's how you fix a CC oven that has been sprayed with oven cleaner:
1) Use the ammonia trick described in my previous post. This loosens up and re-dissolves the dried oven cleaner.
2) Now re-scrub with straight vinegar. This neutralizes the oven cleaner and the ammonia. Rinse very well with lots of clean water.
3) Run the oven a while at 500 to burn off residues. If white traces re-appear after doing this, it may be necessary to re-clean the oven starting again with Step 1.
4) Tell the tenant they may not be bright enough to live with humans.
Here's how you fix a CC oven that has been sprayed with oven cleaner:
1) Use the ammonia trick described in my previous post. This loosens up and re-dissolves the dried oven cleaner.
2) Now re-scrub with straight vinegar. This neutralizes the oven cleaner and the ammonia. Rinse very well with lots of clean water.
3) Run the oven a while at 500 to burn off residues. If white traces re-appear after doing this, it may be necessary to re-clean the oven starting again with Step 1.
4) Tell the tenant they may not be bright enough to live with humans.
CC oven linners
Glen, CC oven liners are porcelain enamel fired on at approximately 1500 degrees, and there are no enzymes involved.
Glen, CC oven liners are porcelain enamel fired on at approximately 1500 degrees, and there are no enzymes involved.
Always wondered about that. How is the coating engineered to act in a continuous-cleaning fashion, as compared to a standard- or self-cleaning surface?
The surface is porous and will spread out a splatter of grease (rather than letting it create a droplet), which will, over time, allow the grease to oxidize and disappear. I had an aunt with a continuous cleaning oven which inevitably would smoke and smell when she was doing the turkey on Thanksgiving (the extended baking time did the "cleaning".
