POD 8-14-19 WP Combo Ad with Dachshund

[tomturbomatic]

It is more stupid than ironic that CU, when testing combos, harped about the impracticality of the machines boosting the wash water temperature yet awarded best washing ability ratings to the WP and KM combos with the thermal hold for the wash water heating without noticing a correlation. The small amount of water (3 gallons to fill the sump after saturating the load) to the large amount of metal made water heating necessary unless you knew to wait to wash a load of whites until after a load had gone through the wash and dry program and left a nice hot machine. That was even true of the later 29" Kenmore combo which had a sump capacity of 7 gallons and a one minute purge of the fill line to clear the line of cold water. Once all of that metal was heated by a dry cycle, you could get warm water washing by filling with cold and hot water washing by filling with warm.

[this post was last edited: 8/14/2019-09:18]

 

[DADoES]

 
Sounds delicious.  Low-water fill and recirculation like a Calypso, plus heating.

 

[tomturbomatic]

My friend's mother used a cap of Wisk to wash a load, back when the cap was the small yellow one on the metal can. Looking through the round observation window placed on the front of the sump to show the water line at midpoint on the glass, the suds level was a quarter inch thick on top of the water.

 

[golittlesport]

old is new again

Very similar wash action to today's front loaders with recirculation spray. LG's Turbo Wash for example.

 

[henene4]

This machine is one of the reasons US washer history is so absurd to me...

Given 40 odd years of innovation on that design and the US would have a more than capable design of highest efficiency FL washer...

Yet it just vanished...

 

[tomturbomatic]

except that it extracted at less than 300 rpm.

You should read the ratings of these machines. The testing organizations pissed all over themselves dancing around the reasons for not liking tumble action washers. I did not know one person who had a tumbler washer who did not like it, but maybe because Maytag did not make a tumbler washer, they were always downgraded in performance reports; if it was not the necessity of using a low sudsing detergent, it was capacity or water extraction or vibrations etc, etc & so forth. So, in answer to your query, no innovations were made in tumble action machines until after hi-end tumble action washers from Europe started showing up here in the pages of high end shelter magazines.

 

[launderess]

Issue is very complicated

First and foremost Bendix owned and tied up many patents related to front loading washers in USA market. Other companies either had to pay royalties, or find ways around, all of which costs money for an appliance that wasn't in high demand.

You forget that prior to WWII many top loading washer designs were also popular in Europe for domestic use. It wouldn't be until post WWII that front loaders came to dominate. By that time American housewives had long grown used to top loaders both semi (wringer washers), and fully automatic.

Until low froth detergent came about post WWII soap was dominate on wash day. Soap and front loaders don't exactly go together which is why Bendix and others were dinged in ratings back then.

Top loaders are easier and cheaper to design/build, also sell (until rather recently), so American appliance makers stuck to what they knew would move.

Westinghouse sold front loaders well into the 1980's or so, but the market was very small so no one else bothered.

 

[gansky1]

I can literally count on one finger how many Westinghouse/WCI front-load washers I saw as a kid.  A neighbor of a friend in high school had a new set of them and was able to fiddle with them while she was babysitting once.   With basements and fewer condos/apartments than on the coasts and larger cities, the need for stacking sets was pretty rare, and then mostly favored the Whirlpool/Kenmore and Frigidaire skinny-mini type.  

 

[DADoES]

 
There was a Westinghouse dealer in the next town over.  Can't say how many were sold locally there but I only ever saw two (SpaceMates) sets in my home-town.  One set was in my (private) kindergarten teacher's garage.  The classroom was attached, with a restroom out the back door directly into the back of the garage where the set could be seen (and it was pink).  The other was in a cubby-space at the front/left of the garage at the local Chevy dealer's house (white).

 

[appnut]

There were some front loaders in my life growing up.  Friends of my parents had a Bendix in their kitchen that was probably about 1950 (modern looking cabinet).  My "other mother" had an L110 Laundromat.  Good friends in Dallas bought a low-end Westinghouse to replace a water fall filtered frog-eyed Kenmore.  Her mother had a 1954 or 1955 Bendix with the flip-top front over th3e console.  There was the 1960 and 1965 LK Combos next door.  The townhouse I had an earnest contract to build/buy (before I found out 2 weeks later I was being transferred across town) in 1978 was to have a W Westinghouse stacked set.  A buddy of mine from college bought a Galleria area 1-bed room condo that had a space mate set.  He called them the suzy home maker washer  and dryer.  When I moved here in 1986, one of the engineer's wife had a mid-1960s full size side-swing door Laundromat and it was just about rusted out.  He'd kept it running all htose years.  It died about 12 years later.  she cried because she couldn't get another front loader and it was all she'd ever had as well as all she'd grown up with from her mother's house too.  Saw one pink spacemates set in like 1962 or 1963 in a house at the back of the subdivision.  And the Norge combo at the end of the street.   

 

I just remembered, there was a secretary when I started working, her husband was an engineer and their family was buying their first home.  They ended up getting a Kenmore Combo (dryer non functional) but they used the washer part as their washer.  And another admin/financial person, they rented a house in West University and the house had a LK Combo too.  

[this post was last edited: 8/14/2019-21:21]

 

[DADoES]

 
I recall visiting there, one of dad's school friends living in Missouri City area (IIRC as to where we were, it was a different house than they're in now) had a KM combo of some late 1960s vintage stashed in their finished porch/mudroom coming into the house.  I don't think it was functional.  Could also have been in Crosby area, depending on which friend we were visiting (many years ago and I've slept at least twice since then, LOL).

 

[iowabear]

The only FL I ever saw in a residential setting was the Westinghouse with the oval window.

 

It was installed in a mobile home.  An older couple my parents occasionally played cards with lived there.  I was fascinated by it. It was one of the models that made a really loud "clunk" as it went through the cycles. 

 

This would have been around 1974 or 1975.

 

 

[launderess]

By 1970's there was only one front loader

Game in town; Westinghouse.

Things would largely remain so until a decade or so later when various European imports (Creda, Miele, Bosch, Asko) began showing up on this side of pond. Then you also had combo units from Equator and Malber arriving as well. Then came Maytag with their "Neptune" washer. Less said about that hot mess, the better.

Pity once WCI got their mitts on Westinghouse appliances things began going down hill IIRC in terms of quality.

Interestingly CBS still technically owns Westinghouse trademark. Though now Electrolux (who purchased WCI) makes appliances with that brand name. [this post was last edited: 8/14/2019-22:15]

 

[tomturbomatic]

The main thing that kept the WH FLers going in the years when FL market share was at its lowest was the apartment/condo market, especially the high rise buildings, where the architects specified them to be able to offer in unit washers and dryers while saving space. That led to a replacement market. In Georgia, the Georgia Power company sold WH until appliance sales were ended after the first energy crisis. In the early years, payments could be put on the power bill, just as gas appliances could be paid for on the gas company bill, so many homes had WH FLers.  

 

[frigilux]

Funny you should mention that, Tom: My second front-loader, a Gibson-branded WCI was purchased at the local natural gas company. This was probably 1989 or early '90. I'd had an '86 or early '87 Frigidaire rear console model that was old-school Westy. It started tumbling in one direction when you set the cycle and didn't stop until the end.

Anyway, that set was sold when I moved to an efficiency apartment for a year. Following another move to a huge warehouse apartment I had a KitchenAid top loader for a few months, but when the Gibson stack appeared in the storefront window with easy payments tacked onto the gas bill, I went for it. This model had reverse tumbling, but no dispensers. A buzzer would sound and the washer would pause when it had filled for the final rinse. You'd open the door and pour in some fabric softener. It came with a 2-quart pitcher to dilute liquid chlorine bleach which was poured in after the wash fill.

The gas company had a storefront in our little town back then. These days, one has to jump through hoops just to talk to a living human being on the phone...somewhere.

 

[launderess]

Did any of these vintage combo/front loaders

Offer reverse tumble? Seems to me that would have made less "rope maker" machines and increased sales.

 

[frigilux]

The top-loading horizontal axis Launderall had reverse tumbling. The POD Launderall ad that crops up now and again has drawings of the revolving tub with little gymnast guys tumbling one direction, then the other.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Westinghouse offered the two baffles that were in an offset position to interrupt the tumbling pattern while tumbling in only one direction to reduce tangling. I don't remember that being a problem with my WH washers. Kenmore offered the Dual Tumble washer in the late 80s or early 90s, I believe, which was the first of the Italian input design WCI/Electrolux machines and these machines, while keeping the two baffles, did reverse tumbling. It was funny how after the machine drained from the wash, the tub tumbled in only the clockwise direction for the spray rinse and kept tumbling clockwise after the pump shut off and it filled for the first deep rinse. The second and third rinses had reverse tumbling.

 

[launderess]

Thor "Cylinder" washer reversed as well.

Maybe Westinghouse did not see the benefits of reverse tumbling.



Neither did "Lady Kenmore"

 

[combo52]

US Combination Washer-Dryers From 1952-1972

There were 10 different Combo designs during this time, only GE combos reversed at all in their 3rd redesign models [ 1964-1972 ] and none of these combos tangled at all except the Easys with their slanted tub.

 

Reversing has no benefit when it comes to possible tangling, it can very slightly improve the washing pattern and how evenly items dry in small or over crowded dryers, although the worlds best dryers all have one thing in common, NONE reverse.

 

John L.

 

[frigilux]

Dryers that reverse: The first Electrolux-built Frigidaire reversed. The drum was SO small that a maximum capacity load from the washer filled the dryer almost 3/4 full. The warehouse apartment had only a gas connection in the designated laundry area. It reversed about every 6 minutes. The electric version reversed much more often—maybe every 2 minutes.

That dryer scorched two queen-sized comforters (yes, I was stupid enough to try it again) and a few times I noticed the ends of fibers on bath towels were scorched. The only benefit of the reversal was the flat sheet and six pillowcases never bunched up inside the fitted sheet.

The second version of the pair had a bigger drum and no reversing. Still, it was maybe only 5.5 cubic feet. It wasn’t until the 2010 redesign that their dryer finally had something close to a 7 cu. ft. drum.

 

[maytagbear]

Back to the original post

I love this ad, too. The Doxie is so adorable!

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[iowabear]

I wondered about the cost of this WH FL, found this ad from Feb 1974.

 

$399 for the pair or about $2200 in today's dollars.

 

[tomturbomatic]

If the KM combo had reversed, the load would be out of the spray half the time--not good.

 

The WH FL had something even better than reversing the tumble, a motor that ran in one direction all the time and drove the pump when the solenoid engaged engaged it, so the motor and pump ran through just about anything, suds locks be damned, unlike more modern machines with puny self-powered drain pumps. 

 

The reversing of the GE combo allowed the pump to run in the direction necessary to drain the machine which is why it drained, spun and dried in the reverse direction from washing and rinsing. Drying had to pump out condenser water.

 

[jeb]

tangleing with non-reverse motor

The first Westinghouse slant fronts did have tangling issues but once they went to the straight tub-off set baffles it was not an issue. I grew up with the later version and it was never an problem. The 1958 slant front in my laundry room that I use every so often will tangle probably 60 percent of the time. The 1958 Spacemate front loader doesn't have too much issue with tangling but it has the straight tub with evenly spaced baffles.