Sears Fall/Winter 1940 Catalog

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Tying two threads into one

Thread on "energy savings" in home sent one down a rabbit hole of vintage YT videos. Came upon this gem from Con Edison (New York power company) about home wiring.

Amazing thing film is correct. There are supposed "new" apartments or homes built say post WWII that have same wiring as places done earlier. Problem is there are scores more electric mod cons that need juice.

 
We fortunately never had any issues with our oil-fired boiler. It was located in the basement, and connected to a good chimney, so no smell or dirty residue in other parts of the house. However, I knew people that did have trouble with their oil heating. My friend Glenna D. and her family lived in an old house that had an oil heater in the living room. One day it blew soot out all over the place, requiring them to spend more than a week cleaning everything. They weren't pleased to say the least. Another house down the street had the oil forced air furnace blow up, covering everything in it with oily black soot. They had to move out for a couple months while it was being cleaned. Another neighbor had to spend several weeks cleaning after their coal furnace blew out soot. Upholstered furniture and rugs had to be sent out for cleaning, clothes washed or dry cleaned, every dish in the house washed, and walls and ceilings scrubbed. Wasn't covered by insurance either, as a malfunction of the furnace not resulting in a fire was not included in their coverage.
 
Don't know if you saw but >600 pounds for a refrigerator (the gas-fired Servel refrigerators were infamously heavy)

Detroit Edison had a lot of off-peak capacity so did a big push in the 30s-60s to install electric water heating using the offpeak power with a second meter to offer essentially a flat rate. You see sometimes in houses of the era a switch next to the fusebox that allows the owner to override the offpeak switch and get a jolt of hot water if you ran down the supply heated overnight.

Saw a recent ad from the early 60s that touted the fact that you could heat your water to 180 degrees for good laundering without causing deterioration of the equipment (as it would with a flame-type water heater).[this post was last edited: 2/3/2025-16:00]
 
Launderess, One thing differentiating the Four Star model of Kenmore washing machines is visible at the right hand corner of the picture you posted: it's the manual clean filter instead of the self cleaning filter on the Lady Kenmore. When the tape kit on our 58 Lady lost traction, Sears came out and put the control panel from the Four Star Cycla Fabric on the machine. All the features were there, but no more of the A-G programs, just the speeds and temperatures and the three cycles with the same colors, orange, yellow and violet.
 
GE Booklet

That's a comprehensive and interesting publication. I didn't see a date anywhere, but it's most likely from late 1948 or 1949. This is based on the appliance styles, and that they mention an AM-FM radio, but don't say anything about the record players having three speeds.

Jamie mentioned the off-peak electric water heater setup. That wasn't ever offered in my immediate area, as we have a municipal power system. However it was nearby, as I knew people in the CG&E and DP&L service areas that had such. I used to think houses that had two meters were two-family houses, until friends of the family explained that the second meter was for the water heater. As far as I know, theirs didn't have a transfer switch, only the time switch.
 
Those oil fired boilers by GE were very popular post WWII. Scores or hundreds of them went into the vast amount of new homes being built such as the various Levittown developments. That and those converting from coal fired boilers or furnaces to oil.

https://heatinghelp.com/assets/documents/162.pdf

And oil it would have to be or perhaps kerosene. New home construction was far out pacing bringing natural gas (where available) to areas. In many suburban or other areas local gas utilities would only run pipes into a street or area if enough customers signed on in advance.

Issue with early oil burners of all sorts used in everything from home heating to steam locomotives was they didn't burn all oil. It was the residue from unburnt oil that wafted through area where boiler/furnace was located and elsewhere in building.

GE claimed their new "down flame" oil burning boilers solved that problem.
 

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