London Wash-In

[vacbear58]

This last weekend was a holiday weekend here in the UK which is always a good excuse to have a get-together and do some laundry. Unfortunately circumstances contrived that a few old faces were not able to make it, but the compensation was that we had some new ones instead. The oldest face of all (mine) stayed behind the camera!

(Lavamat)Jon and his partner Jack arrived on Friday with a HUGE stash of detergent and plenty of laundry but we contained ourselves until Saturday when we had some Keymatic and Servis Supertwin action. Unfortunately I did not get a snap of the Supertwin but here is Jon loading up the wide body Keymatic. This was one of the machines which was adopted from Gary last autumn and in spite of it being around 45 years old it still washes like a champ.

This machine is on wheels and is designed to be moveable although it is pretty heavy. But all of this is solid metal as the whole drum is mounted on springs without a bit of concrete in sight. You and see one of the hand pulls on the side of the machine and the whole top, including the control panel, is hinged at the rear

 

[vacbear58]

The first new face

arrived on Saturday afternoon - Pete(London) and his partner Damien. Pete has posted over in the Super forum about Moffat cookers and needless to say he arrived with ..... a Moffat cooker in the back of his Volvo. Unfortunately I really only got a glimpse of the Moffat as I was being too focussed on being the hostess - he bought it as a donor for parts for the Flair style Moffat he recently bought although it looks like it would be pretty good under the grime.

Believe it or not I snapped up a Moffat instruction book on spec from ebay a couple of weeks ago, well it so happened that this was the book for the model he had just bought! How weird is that?

Something tells me this might end up a keeper.

It was a real pleasure to meet them both - I just wish I had got a picture[this post was last edited: 5/9/2013-08:01]

 

[vacbear58]

Lint testing

Which brings us to Sunday

You may recall there was a discussion a few weeks ago about a Hoovermatic with a recirculating water system and lint filter, which was a big surprise to those of us who had never heard of such a system in a Hoover twin tub.

The thread is here:

The justly famous Hoover Rinse-O-Matic !

Hey everyone! There it is: My own 'Rinse-O-Matic' (Model # 0632) once made by Hoover. On quite a few occasions it provided a cool and fun washday experience. I took a ton of photos of that one so here are a few of those to share:

www.automaticwasher.org

 

[vacbear58]

Single tub

I was not about to take a chain saw to my Hoovermatic but it was quite easy to check out with a Hoover single tub which always retained a constantly running pump driven off the main motor. I just pulled off the hose from its stopper and let it drain through a sieve like so:

 

[vacbear58]

And the results

were a bit inconclusive. I had a good load of clothes in the machine but perhaps as they were all reasonably old there was not actually a lot of lint to be seen. I tried again with a dark blue towel which produced some, but not a lot, of lint. If I am honest as lot of what you see in this picture is scale from the heater. Still it was fun to try out

 

[vacbear58]

Supermatic

Sunday's twinnie action was courtesy of a Hotpoint Supermatic. Although a very common machine in the UK it was a surprise to find out a few weeks ago that it was sold as a McClary in Canada about 3/4 the way down the linked thread.

From the outset this machine used a Filter-Flow style recirculating system.

Twin-Twin Tubbin' Now Playing on YouTube

I finally got around to making a video of the 'new' Maytag A50 "Porta-Pair" I recently acquired. There's also a quick view of the matching DE50 dryer in there as well. In the end I wound up doing a 'Twin' session with both the Maytag and the Simplicity-it's kinda fun. Since my phone's memory...

www.automaticwasher.org

 

[vacbear58]

And without the filter

 

[vacbear58]

And after the wash

into the spinner - apologies, this was a screen grab of a video

 

[vacbear58]

And rinsing

We are probably familiar with the Hoover and Servis (Speed Queen/Simplicity) rinsing mechanisms which come from a single point. The Hotpoint uses a multipoint system

 

[vacbear58]

Lunch time

Nothing like a morning's laundry to build up an appetite so it was time for lunch - oh, and some more new faces

From the left Colin (vacuum collector), Keith(Keymatic), Steve(SESteve), (Lavamat)Jon and (VintageHoover)Jack.

 

[vacbear58]

And dessert

Steve said he had to go to another appointment in the afternoon, but I think he was just watching his figure LOLOL

 

[vacbear58]

Bob Load

And the Miele was once more pressed into service

 

[vacbear58]

Bobload 2

 

[vacbear58]

Bob load 3

And it did its usual good job. I really wondered how it would do with that white dish, but it was spotless

 

[vacbear58]

as was the glassware

 

[vacbear58]

Conservatoire launderette

After lunch it was back to the machines:

From the left: Philips Variotronic, Keymatic 3062 (I think!) and Keymatic 3203.

In front is my "drainage device" which is an easy, and portable way to allow the machines to drain without having to hump the machines around. It is simply a large bin on wheels which drains by gravity to a drain outside. It occurred to be during the weekend that an old single tub washer with a shot motor might be a good alternative as long as it was water tight

 

[vacbear58]

Close up Philips

This machine is special to me as this model was the first washing machine I ever owned. This is the machine which ramps up into its spin cycle when full of rinse water

 

[vacbear58]

Keymatic 3062

This is the other washer adopted from Gary last year. The programme progress indicator is s series of lights under "Keymatic 1100". And yes, it DOES need a clean!

 

[vacbear58]

Keymatic 3203

And old faithful. This has done 5 loads over the last seven days and apart from some alarming noise when it ramps up into spin works quietly and well - I am rather fond of it