POD 8/19/2017

[brucelucenta]

This Whirlpool was a fairly early model from the mid 50s it looks like. Maybe '56-'58 would be my guess. It also has the lid that you push a button on the front to release. I think the introduction of the lint filter was probably due to GE's FilterFlo models. This machine had the lint filter that was mostly used on Kenmore washers and not the bristle brush filter that became so commonly associated with Whirlpool machines. Whirlpool was one of the very first to have a 2 speed washer also. Many machines of this vintage were only one speed at the time. This model also was using the RCA emblem too. I was told an interesting story by one of the top Whirlpool dealers in Oklahoma. He said that back in the 50's Whirlpool struck a deal with RCA to use the emblem for a 10 year period to help boost sales of their appliances, since everyone was well familiar with RCA and trusted the name. He said they paid a hefty 1 million dollars for that privilege. Whether or not that is true, I do not know. I found it interesting though. These were really very good machines that lasted a long time. I think many of them were replaced after belts wore out instead of just replacing the belt and pump, which really was a major ordeal to do. People could have gotten many more years out of them with just a little maintenance.

 

[mralex]

What is the thing they refer to as suds-miser?  

 

[brucelucenta]

It is just their way of saying suds saver. So it reuses the soapy water again for the next load if you choose to do so.

 

[mickeyd]

What a truly beautiful and magnificent washing machine.
Bruce, this one may have actually popped that lid and buzzed at cycle's end. I know an earlier one did buzz and pop which my neighbor Tom had when I was a boy.

Alex, "Sudsmiser "was the term Whirlpool coined for the hot sudsy wash water re-use/return protocol. Whirlpool was the first company to invent a suds return, and they delayed the production of their first line of washers until they perfected the system. Theirs was the best, least error prone, and fool-proof. They knew that people transitioning from wringers would expect to re-use still clean water. Dumping the wash water after one use was counter-intuitive and unheard of unless washing crappy nappies.

Most other manufactures followed suit with their one version of the suds-return. Always got a kick out of the ever elegant Kevinator calling it the corny homey "Suds Back."

What a wonderful way to start a Saturday. Thanks.

 

[mickeyd]

OWN version

;'D

 

[mralex]

lol.. Please excuse my stupidity.. But.. Where did that water go if you were continuing to rinse and spin? Am I missing something!? Or did you take the laundry out after washing and continued with another load and then put them in separate rinses and spinns?  

 

I shouldn't have had that second glass of wine.. I feel so confused lol

 

 

 

[brucelucenta]

Now that you mention a buzzer, yet another story... My grandmother told me that she had the first model Whirlpool came out with. It had knobs on the front. She said it whistled when the cycle was ended and she hated the sound it made, so she got someone to bend the whistle so it would quit! LOL

 

[swestoyz]

I believe this is the '57 Imperial Whirlpool. In 1958 they had a similar timeline model like the '58 Lady Kenmore, badged as the Mark XII, with the '58 Imperial lacking certain feautures.

Ben

 

[swestoyz]

Mechanical lid opening switch

Funny this was mentioned. The '57 service doesn't talk about this, but the '58 manual does. It looks like it was used on the Seventy, Imperial, and Mark lines. Very cool!

 

[tomturbomatic]

Our 1952 Kenmore waterfall front model had the sudsaver which was a help when we had an electric water heater. When we moved to Georgia, daddy had to buy one of those white tubs on wheels from Sears to hold the wash water since neither the house we rented while ours was being built nor the one my parents bought had set tubs. We lived many miles from Stone Mountain in a suburb of Decatur, but there was so much granite underlying the area that they could not go down far enough for the sewer lines under the street to allow the main sewer line for the house to go out of the basement lower than about 40" above the floor so no set tubs.  Most people had their washer in the kitchen. The builder even had to build a wooden platform for the Kenmore to satisfy maximum pump out height. With a gas water heater saving the wash water was not such a priority so when the suds valve started leaking, it was removed.  After that, the bearing started making noise so they bought the 58 Lady and it did not have to be up on the platform so that was taken out.

 

This ad appears in a May, 1957 issue of Better Hams and Giblets so I guess it is a 1957 model. Did it use the Super Surgilator or the agitator with the three vanes at the bottom?  A neighbor's frog eye Kenmore had the agitator with the three straight vanes at the bottom and this cap with a K instead of a W. I liked that agitator cap with the three little ears. It is interesting that they use the term "three heats" instead of three temperatures.

[this post was last edited: 8/19/2017-16:58]

 

[frigilux]

Mr. Alex-- In washers with a suds-saver/suds-miser, the wash water is pumped into a large sink or laundry tub. The rinse water is sent out a separate hose to the drain. When you're ready to wash the next load, the washer's pump sucks the water back out of the laundry tub and into the washer.

In this photo: The tub on the left, with the long hose reaching the bottom, is the suds-saving tub. The tub on the right has the shorter rinse water drain hose going to it. The rinse water drain hose would go to a traditional standpipe drain if the user had only a single tub/sink.

 

[mralex]

Frigilux - Thank you so much! That's so clever! Would've been great to have! 

 

[lordkenmore]

Yes, I have to agree that suds saver/suds miser type system would be nice. It's on my list of dream vintage washer features...although I'm not sure how common such machines were around where I live.

 

One of my grandmothers had suds saver on her Kenmore, and I thought it was the neatest idea.

 

On the other hand, I asked my mother once why she didn't get suds saver on her KM. She said there was no tub in the laundry room she had at the time of purchase. Then, she suggested that she thought saving wash water was a revolting idea.

 

[brucelucenta]

Whirlpool really made pretty remarkable machines. From the beginning they had a perforated tub and didn't have the issues others did with sediment. They had this same basic design up until sometime in the 80's and by then you could get certain models of the BD and the rest were DD until they quite making the BD entirely. As I recall, they were still available in 1986 because I remember someone getting a new BD. Glad to see that "youngins" like MrAlex are interested in these old machines. A whole new generation and we can warp their little psyche!!! LOL

 

[frigilux]

Lord K-- I grew up with a suds-saver so it is a completely normal idea to me. A few common sense rules do apply, of course. Since the saved water cools down, wash a hot load first, then one requiring medium or warm water. Don't reuse water that washed diapers. Ours was an HE laundry room decades before the term existed.

MrAlex-- As laundry equipment moved out of the basement and into kitchens or closets, large tubs/sinks to hold the saved wash water became scarce. Suds-savers were extinct, for all intents and purposes, by the middle of the 1980s.

 

[circlew]

I remember my neighbors the McLaughlin's (the ones whose house caught fire recently) had a Whirlpool washer like the DA-30 pictured in the 1957 service page. It wasn't a Suds-Saver.

I find it interesting that Whirlpool had two cabinet styles - the old type for the less expensive, and the new style for the costlier models.

As for laundry sinks, many newer homes have them. I just went to Homearama about a month ago, and all the houses had a laundry room with deep sinks. Maybe separate laundry areas aren't as commom where Frigilux lives. In this area, it has never been common to have laundry equipment in a kitchen. I occasionally have seen them in a closet, but that was usually in a mobile home.

 

[mralex]

Here in U.K. it’s very common to have laundry appliances in the kitchen, I do too. In a perfect world we’d have a laundry room but I don’t see the happening this year lol

 

[akronman]

suds

I have a 1959 Whirlpool Suds-Miser, a 1975 Kenmore Suds-Miser, and a 1979 GE Filter-Flo suds model. I also have a 1916 basement with a big cement double-tub laundry sink.

Here in Ohio, it's very hit or miss as to newer homes with or without tubs, seems to depend upon the builder and successive owners. Almost all basement laundry installations have a tub, single or double. Upstairs, first floor laundry rooms just seems to depend on space. Smaller homes just allow for washer and dryer, larger homes are very frequently built with a big tub.

Modern convenience of just setting a few buttons and walking away from the washroom seems to suggest that suds models are a thing of the past for sure.

For the worst and greasiest dirty laundry, no I do NOT save suds. But for sheets, towels, shirts, pants, it works out well for me , 2 loads from one hot sudsy wash.

 

[cornutt]

Laundry rooms started disappearing from homes in the southeast U.S. in the late 1960s. By about 1975, the trend was to either put the laundry in a separate, unheated room off of the carport, or cram it into the smallest possible space in a basement hallway or some such, with bifold doors that closed to hide them when not in use. Laundry rooms started making a comeback around 1990, ironically just as the last suds saver models were disappearing from the market.

One thing about the Whirlpool system was that it *always* drained the wash water through the suds hose (unless you used the wash-n-wear cycle); you didn't have any control over whether or not it saved suds like with some other brands. I recall a friend of my mother talking about how she had flooded her basement by saving suds from one load, intending to use them later, and then washing another load from which she had not intended to save suds. Of course, the second load overflowed the laundry tub. If you wanted to do that, the only to do it was to move the suds hose.