POD 6/5/15 30" GE Empress

[tomturbomatic]

That would have been a wild machine as a top loading portable. The first three letters of the model number should have been BAD for Big Ass Dishwasher.

Did you notice in the ad for the Disposall that they have the nipple adapter for the portable dishwasher on the faucet?

 

[turquoisedude]

Yep, I noticed that too!  The same photo appears in the user booklet for the '57 Mobile Maid - my guess it may have actually been taken in a GE test kitchen.  

 

[spiralator60]

Calrod Drying

The ad in this machine mentions the Calrod unit as heating the air for drying the dishes.

About a week or so ago there was another GE dishwasher from another year featured in the POD that specifically stated that there was a fan in the machine that circulated the heated air for the drying portion of the cycle.

When did GE use a fan its machines, and when did it stop including this feature?

 

[retro-man]

It wasn't really a separate fan per say. It was the bow tie impeller that would spin from the motor that was used for the spray on the dishes. This spun during the dry cycle with the heater on. Other manufacturers used this method also. I remember Whirlpool used this in their early dishwashers.

Jon

 

[tomturbomatic]

When GE used the fan to circulate hot air during the drying, it was when their dishwasher timer was operated off the main motor so the timer only worked if the motor was running. In the early top loading machines, the cycle ended when the lid popped. The pre-1957 rollout machines used the fan to dry because they had the same timer arrangement and the Bakelite impeller. In none of these machines was the impeller a part of the drain pump; they all had a separate drain pump and the earliest machines were gravity drain. After the redesign for the 1957 machines, the timer had its own electric drive and the stainless steel impeller, which was mounted on the top of the pump. The pump was driven by a reversing motor which was not operated during drying because the motor no longer had to run to operate the timer and they probably did not want to put extra wear on the pump by running it for 20 minutes or so during dry, even though water remained at the very bottom of the tub to keep the seal lubricated. Drying was accomplished by convection with a sizable air intake baffle at the front of the machine through which room temperature air was pulled into the machine to replace the hot steamy air that left thought a vent at the top of the builtins and through the one inch space round the lid when it popped open a few minutes into the dry portion of the cycle.

Making the change to an electrically driven timer offered many advantages. They could use a reversing motor to turn in one direction to wash the dishes and then turn in the opposite direction to pump the water out of the machine, just like in GE's washer-dryer combination. In the dishwashers previous to this, the impeller kept running during the drain periods, giving the soil no opportunity to settle out of the water before the drain. In the reversing motor machines, the pause between the circulation and the drain allowed heavy soil to settle to the bottom of the tank so it was the carried away in the first rush of water instead of being part of the water being flung at the dishes by the still spinning impeller. The stainless steel impeller was also designed so that it did not throw water when operating in reverse.

 

[spiralator60]

Thanks, Jon and Tom!

 

[bajaespuma]

Although I would have loved having this model as a portable, it would have been a little too huge for rolling around (although not much bigger or heavier than my coveted Maytag WP-600). My dream dishwasher would have been an SU-80V (AFAIK, never existed); an Empress with all of the improvements of the 1961 line including 4 cycles, a Power Shower and cup racks.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Outside of a replacement for Youngstown machines, for which this would be perfect if one was mounted at floor level, I don't know how much the 6" addition width increased the capacity. For large families, two 24 " machines would have made more sense. Fill one with preparation and maybe serving stuff and the other with dishes. I remember the story done on the early 60s kitchen remodel for the Dennis Day family and it was the first time I saw two dishwashers shown. All of the appliances were Frigidaire so they were spray-tube machines and you can understand why two were needed.

In your picture of the inside, what are the two feeds for?

 

[bajaespuma]

The one on the left goes to the Power Shower from the pump and the one on the right goes to the drain. When the Power Shower  machines were introduced in 1960 the drains went up and out through those same spring valves, so once one unplugged the electrical service from the junction box, the tank was completely separate from the housing and could be serviced away from its installation. All the earlier machines had a drain hose that went through a hole in the housing to an air gap or an elbow somewhere.

 

I agree that two dishwashers ALWAYS makes more sense in any kitchen and I recommend that arrangement when I design kitchens, especially if one is lucky enough to find a Hobart undercounter machine. Real cooks always go for it (although it amazes me how many people opt for two identical machines instead of one for dishes and one more like a pot-washer), non-cooks can't understand why it's advantageous.

 

Somehow, the 24" square dishwasher adheres to that Da-Vincian ideal of the circle in the square that makes these machines work well (it's another reason I've always admired Newtonian Maytag design). Once they're bumped out to 30", performance seems to suffer. I think most of us are fascinated by the existence of the 30" machines because they're, like myself, an oddity.

 

For some reason the color is completely off when I export my Adobe illustrations into JPEG format to post them. Those pinks need to be toned down a lot and the blue tones have shifted over to green. I must be using the wrong palettes.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I don't think that the performance of a 30" X 24 " impeller machine would suffer as much as if it were a wash arm machine, although I am not speaking from experience with using one.