POD 8-23-17 Waste King Dishwasher

[tomturbomatic]

It would have been nice if all that they promised actually came true in the operation.  One 7.5 minute wash without any pre-rinse to warm the load is not going to do heavy cleaning. The repeated use of "Float" made me think more of dead bodies floating in water than cleaning dishes. I do know that the suds flush between the wash and first rinse worked to knock down the foam generated during the wash cycle. I guess that for loads with baked on or cooked on soil, if you were smart enough to think of it, you could add detergent to the final rinse water for a second, longer wash, a sort of pot scrubber cycle, as the water was heated to 155F. You would then have to reset the timer for rinsing. That long exposure to the alkaline detergent might chew up all of the aluminum parts inside the machine, though.

 

They were right about it being a quiet machine. As I wrote earlier this week, the steam inside did, for the most part, condense on the walls of the tank and was pumped out during drying.

 

[turquoisedude]

This is a fascinating dishwasher nonetheless...  Would this be a 1958 model?  

 

It's certainly an early instance of the push-button multicycle dishwasher - Hotpoint would have more or less tied with Waste-King, also introducing a multi-cycle machine in '58.  Of course Hotpoint had 2 wash levels.... 

 

At some point, Montgomery Ward's built-in dishwashers looked an awful lot like Waste-Kings (late 50s into the mid-60s from what I could see in catalogs).   I've never gotten to see one of this vintage - I can't imagine that many are left out there!! 

 

[tomturbomatic]

We have two in Beltsville.

 

[appnut]

I believe there was a prewash as ours did. The non button model didn't have one. This timer appear to rotate counterclockwise. Ours rotated clo kwize. In start position this looks like wash is on top. On ours dry was on top. There appears to be amm prewash segment on dial at start nefore wash segment jusy like on ours. Ours did not circulate water during R2 sani heat.

 

[Unimatic1140]

Yes it appears by the description that there is a pre-rinse, along with a main wash and two rinses after, including a 155 degree sani-rinse. This is three years before Kitchen-Aid introduced the KD-14 series with their own pre-rinse.

I believe that the Waste King and Hotpoint came out with their first centrifugal spray-arm dishwashers around the same time about 1957 for the home. KitchenAid introduced their DW in 1949.

I would love to find this dishwasher!!!! I'd put it in the kitchen instantly, it's super cute!

I've been researching early spray-arm (versus impeller) home dishwashers, I'll make a separate thread about what I found. Some interesting designs.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Waste King did not have an electrically-operated detergent dispenser for a few years. Even an early model of this machine just had a little plastic platform on the door for detergent. The Pre-rinse in many models was a spray to warm and maybe incidentally flush some food off dishes. The spray arched almost to the bottom of the upper rack if nothing in the lower rack blocked it.  If the water heating in the final rinse was static, then you could turn the timer back to wash after the water was hot and then add detergent for a really hot wash. The two owners of these machines that I saw used to rinse the dishes, especially plates, under hot running water before loading them so cleaning was not an issue.

 

[brucelucenta]

I do remember seeing this very machine in someone's home in the 70's. I am in question of what year it is though. I am thinking it was an early 60's model since consumer reports never showed another machine with spray arms other than Kitchenaid until the early 60's.

 

[Unimatic1140]

Today's POD comes from 1958, but this machine was started to be advertised in October of 1957. I believe Consumer Reports tested dishwashers in 1959, I'll have to find that issue, maybe they didn't include the WK for some odd reason.

 

[Unimatic1140]

More interesting information. I found both the 1952 and 1959 Consumer Reports Dishwasher ratings. I believe CU only rated dishwashers twice during the entire decade, but I could be wrong.

Here are their 1952 findings, in order…
Hotpoint (Impeller) – Dishwashing ability best of all machines tested.
KitchenAid (Spray Arm) - Dishwashing ability excellent
Westinghouse (Impeller) - Dishwashing ability excellent
James (Impeller in a tube)- Dishwashing ability good
General Electric (Impeller) - Dishwashing ability good
Kenmore (Impeller) - Dishwashing ability good
Apex (Impeller) - Dishwashing ability poor
Youngstown (Spray Tube) - Dishwashing ability poor

I have personally had the Hotpoint and KitchenAid 12 hooked up simultaneously in my kitchen, I found the Hotpoint to be the best cleaning impeller dishwasher I ever had, but I still felt that the KA was slightly better. Interesting that their results were reversed. I'm curious as to why, maybe it has something to do with greatly improved dishwasher detergent of the 21st century compared to early 50's detergent? Could be the Hotpoint pre-rinse as well.

-----

1959 ratings were also very interesting. They loved the new Whirlpool spray-arm designed machine so much that they stated:

"CU rarely finds one particular model of a major appliance that performs it’s chief function so much better than the other tested models that it is clearly established as being in a class by itself. Such; however was the case of one basic design of the RCA Whirlpool . About half of the other machines included in CU's project, as well as another type of Whirlpool proved that they could wash dishes reasonably well, but they were clearly no match for the check-rated Whirlpool."

They also stated: "Automatic dishwashers provide scrubbing action by throwing water forcefully against the dishes. Three basic types of mechanisms are used to accomplish this action. Wash-Arm, Spin-Tube and Rotary Impeller. None of these types proved inherently better or worse than the others, though the check-rated models had wash-arms." Another interesting if not questionable observation.

As for our POD today, the Waste King, they said it would have been at the top of the good rated group, except it was penalized for it’s poorly designed detergent dispenser which didn’t always open properly at the correct time.

The Ratings:
Excellent:
Whirlpool FU-70

Good:
Hotpoint DEF-1
KitchenAid KD-12
Wards Fairway
Whirlpool FU-60
Genera Electric SU-70S/SU-80S/SU-60S
Waste King UC-3D

Fair:
Frigidaire
Hotpoint
Admiral
Preway
Youngstown

 

[turquoisedude]

Interesting!  That Whirlpool model was no doubt the first 'true' Whirlpool design with the fancy filtering system and narrow bakelite wash arm... 

 

[appnut]

Here is what our control panel looked like.  Notice the difference in control knob, outline of panel. 

 

 

I'd say I was about 10 or so and did the breakfast dishes, didn't prerinse, hardly scraped.  My mom had a cow when she saw the scrambled egg remnants in the filter. 

 

She ran the whole load again  after she had me clean the filter. 

 

[lotsosudz]

Loved Waste Kings

We had the same era machine, but owned the plain Jane model. If you pre-rinsed the dishes, ours did a good job overall. Ours did not have pre-rinse, and the soap dish was an open tray, that dumped the soap when you closed the door. I do remember that the dry was extremely hot, and cheap plastics came out as molten blobs. loved that bow tie knob.

 

[panthera]

Hotpoint vs. KitchenAid

It's always a shock when CR rates a GE dishwasher higher (the Twenty-Eight Hundred was, too), but the simple truth is (and it hurts, dah-links, it hurts), KitchenAid, while good machines, just plain and simple were not all that great at cleaning until that second spray arm arrived. Even then, and I speak as someone who has several vintage ones (and loves his 16), we do tend to over-romanticize them.

Nothing cleans as well as a three-level GE Potscrubber I/III (I so am not talking about the II here) and that's just the facts of the matter.

When did Hotpoint become GEs 'builder-grade' line? Once upon a time, they were upscale. This dishwasher is an example.

 

[appnut]

Kevin, I 100% agree with everything you said above.  The high rating by CR on the GSD2800 is exactly why I bought the GSD1200 in May 1987.  (I just didn't trust longevity of the electronics).  If GE hadn't had the high rating, I would have bought a WP PowerClean or Kenmore UltraWash equivalent.  Neighbor across the street got a KDS16 in like 1968 or 1969.  I loaded it once, and given its "reputation", I put a saucepan that had cooked rice in the bottom rack, Heavy Soil.  It didn't come clean.  The few times I snuck in dirty stuff in the 1968 WK, it did a better job on the Cook Ware cycle.  Plus the hassel of 1-arm wonder, I didn't see that it was such a big deal.  And still felt even moreso with the 1973 rotorack.  The GSD1200 is still my most favorite of all dishwashers. 

 

[combo52]

Best Cleaning DWs Of All Time

The early HPs out cleaned the early KAs mainly because of HPs heater and the prewash in spite of KA having a much better water distribution system.

 

While KA was always the best DW in construction and had the potential for the longest life they never really built a DW that was the top performing in overall cleaning.

 

The early KAs lacked water heating, lacked detergent dispensers etc, Slowly KA improved performance but they were always a step behind other brands. They added Det dispensers on the KDI-S 14s, then they added water heat on TOL KDS-15, 16, and 17 models. Then they added an upper wash arm on the KDS-18 and better water heating, but they never got the cycling right till WP bought the company and started to redesigning things.

 

Even in the early 80s when DWs in general had reached there highest overall preformance levels GEs, MT and WPs DWs were out performing KA machines mainly due to KA machines inability to actually guarantee a hot enough wash and final rinse.