Westinghouse fires?

[classiccaprice]

I was showing an older fellow my Westinghouse slant fronts and his first response was that "Oh, those were the machines that caught on fire." When pressed, he said that they caught fire all the time back in the day. News to me. Is he right?

 

[turquoisedude]

I guess he meant the dryer... To be fair those should have been the Acme 'Hotter N Hell' brand.  The heat generated is pretty intense and if the thermostats and the safety cut-off in the outflow box were to fail, I could see how these dryers could set the clothes on fire!

 

Westinghouse had a line of dishwashers, portables I believe from the late 50s early 60s that had an electrical defect that sparked a house fire or two, IIRC...

 

[whirlykenmore78]

I would think

This would be a failing thermostat in the dryer. Unless they are shorting out I can't see where the washer would burn up.
WK78

 

[arbilab]

OURS never caught fire BUT the dryer built up so much lint between the inner and outer basket that the lint would lift the drum off the drive puck. I would know, I was in charge of cleaning it out with a bent coathanger.

The washers 'are said' to have had motor problems but ours didn't and a family of 6 including infants (diapers) ran the poo out of them, pun included. Whether the 'said' problems involved smoke I can't say.

 

[easyspindry]

I have never heard of . . .

. . . or seen a Westinghouse slant front washer or dryer catch fire. Obviously, a dryer produces heat to dry the clothes, and i would imagine any dryer could catch fire under certain circumstances.

As for the washer, any washer with a short or improper design could catch fire.

The slant fronts were good cleaners and very quiet while running. But they tied everything in knots in the washer.

My 2 cents worth . . .

Jerry Gay

 

[twintubdexter]

I saw a lot of those Westinghouse dryers where the blue plastic above the window had melted pretty severely. Of course that's not the same as a genuine dryer fire. I saw several of those too. When your clothes dryer looks like a scene out of "The Towering Inferno" it's trade in time.

 

[lotsosudz]

Thermostats

My parents bought a 56 slant front dryer. This one every 2-4 years, would eat a thermostat, and would either not heat, or overheat. When running normally, these were very hot dryers. My paternal grandmother also had 1948ish slantfront, that also ran hot. I can remember reaching into my mom's, and burning my hand on sheets, and towels, and as a result, most things were dried on low heat, unless in a hurry. But you can be sure with a Westinghouse.
Hugs,
David

 

[norgeway]

We had one!

My Aunt and uncle bought in 51...they used it until 67 and we used it until the early 80s, other than replacing the element once, it never had a screw turned on it, it didnt overheat,and never scorched anything, the only reason we got rid of it was that it got to where the belt wouldnt stay on..If I knew then what I know now I would still have it!

 

[jetcone]

I;ve never heard of that

and I've had 3 sets through my hands. And these seem to be the most abundant 1950's washer / dryer sets around today. If you think that wouldnt be possible if they were always catching on fire in the 1950's.

 

Now if you want a really hot dryer try a 1955 GE Flambe-matic that melts the elastic in your tighty-whitey's !

 

[classiccaprice]

I know some people have debated on their washing ability, but I think it's an awesome set. I guess he must be confused with something else. Any orher mid century set prone to fires?

 

[tomturbomatic]

The auto-dry Westinghouse dryers were pretty ferocious. They heated to 250 or 260F and then wham! they just stopped, no cool down, nothing, just off with the hot load sitting there wrinkling and waiting to burn hands.

 

[combo52]

All older Clothes Dryers Posed a Much Greater Risk Of Fire

And while few actually ever burned or caused an actual fire, they did run hot.

WH had two real problems going against it, the heater box was not only directly under the clothing which is not a great idea when you consider how troublesome WH thermostats were [ yes unfortunately WH made their own Thermostats ] and the other problem was the heater was just an inch above the floor under the dryer, it was very common to move these dryers and see the floor burned or otherwise discolored from this excessive heat. Today a product like this would be recalled in a NY minute, LOL.

 

[norgeway]

John is right..

The heater box was on the bottom...kind of to the right if I remember right, I know you could look down thru the window and see the glow of the elements thru the tube where the heat came into the drum.

 

[davetranter]

Heater box at the bottom

Similar to my English Electric IIRC. Sadly, I can't get anywhere near it to photograph it at the moment. I'll post pictures if this thread stays 'current'....

It came to me (30+ years ago) with a burnt-out timer switch. I fitted an industrial 16amp cam switch and it gave nother 20 years of duty before being relegated to 'spare' status. It needs new felts now, there were distinct 'metal on metal' sounds last time it ran.

All best

Dave T

 

[arbilab]

Those old Westy dryers were the only ones I know of that went blower -> heater -> drum -> lintscreen/exhaust. The price to pay was dramatic lint buildup between the rotating and stationary tub. Everybody else I knew of went heatbox -> drum -> lintscreen -> blower/exhaust.

 

[washer111]

I Wonder:

...As to how having the blower at the start of the run as opposed to the end of the run would actually effect the lint buildup - is there some key design difference I'm missing?

 

[paulg]

COMBO52 speaketh the truth

I have attended dryer-fire symposiums where the instructors (expert fire investigators) said essentially that older dryers have a greater risk of fire.
We were also reminded that thermostats do NOT last forever. After many cycles, dryer temperature thermostats, high-limit thermostats and the like MUST be replaced for the dryer to be safe. At some point the contacts fail, sometimes weld together and create a hazard. Oftentimes you need a microscope or x-ray to see the defects.
I did see a presentation regarding a 50's era dryer where all heat-box related thermostats had welded closed! The dryer did catch fire ultimately. Interestingly, the dryer had just been serviced by the local appliance dealer and these defects were missed.
So my question to the gang is this:
Are you in the practice of replacing all heat-related thermostats in a vintage dryer to ensure safety?
And a similar question:
If a vintage dryer has thermostats that are either NLA or weren't included in the original design - do you find reasonable substitutes or add extra thermostats to the dryer?
Why or why not?

 

[jetcone]

All electrical contacts

degrade over time in any switch controlled device. Its not limited to '50's dryers. Thats why I always get in and run emery paper over old contacts. With oxidation on the contacts resistance increases ,which increases heating for the same amount of power going thru the contacts. Also the build up of crud around the contacts can create a nice path to ground and arcs of electricity love to wild!

This becomes a spiral. If you get down to clean metal on the contacts you are adding life to them.  You can only do this a few times as each time you sand you increase the gap space so the arc has to jump farther, also not  a good thing.

But I still never operate a vintage dryer without being there for the complete cycle.

 

That being said in 30 years of doing this I've never seen one of my machines fail at the contact points. But I also take into account the power factor going through the switch.

The highest power factor I've ever seen a machine - washer or not is the Unimatic Frigidaire's. They go from wash to instantly turning a 12 gallon tub of water up to 1140 rpm.  This puts a huge strain on the switch contacts which are in the timer. I have measured this, up to 26 AMPS will flow through that switch at spin up for a period of almost 30 seconds. That's a whale of a lot of power for any contacts!

With these machines now that they are hitting 60 years I automatically build in a switched power relay to run the motor and get the power away from those contacts. Just because.

 

So next time you are out running around the Planet, take note of power requirements of different types of machinery out there , if you see something over 26 amps, pin it down here I'd be interested too see what it is.

 

 

 

 

[paulg]

I need to get your favorite relays

Someday I need to get the type numbers of your favorite relays. Lightening the load on the switch contacts using a relay makes complete sense. I never finished repairing my 1930's era Bendix washer for that reason (lack of suitable relay).

 

[arbilab]

for W111:

The discussion I recall (probably from here) was that with the blower at the head end the velocity is dropping from there onward, leaving lint to settle. In the Westinghouse, boy did it ever! Another concern is that with blower at the exhaust, the entire system operates below atmospheric pressure so lint is not encouraged to exit the drum at seals. Blower at head, entire system operates above atmosphere, lint will egress anywhere it can. And again, boy did it ever.

 

[jamiel]

There's a Betty Furness Westinghouse commercial on the superiority of their "direct airflow" design...that said, how does it differ from the Norge "flocking" design?

 

[norgeway]

Re Norge...

The Norge had a giant fan, about as big as the drum, it was back of the drum, the heater box was in back of it, the fan blew air thru the drum and out thru holes around the front edge, down thru a big screen that laid flat under the bottom, and on out a duct in the back, it was a wonderful idea, and really does dry well, but anywhere air can leak, it will and so will lint..especially around the front gasket.

 

[arbilab]

The fact that EVERY commercial dryer and EVERY surviving home dryer design uses negative drum pressure pretty much puts Betty Furness in her place when it comes to physics.

I'm telling you firsthand what a maintenance liability the Westinghouse design was. I'm almost positive that design was born from the use of a cheap off-shelf squirrelcage blower at the headend rather than a custom non-clogging design like you'd find in any dryer today.

Westinghouse was like a religion in my house. Dad worked there and everything we owned was W'house unless the builder put Hotpoint or Frigidaire in. Which they did. Which is part of why W'house appliance division was one of the first to fail, they didn't market well.

All that withstanding, the positive-pressure dryer was a mistake. An embarrassing one in hindsight for a company that prided itself on engineering. I strongly suspect that W'house didn't hire a lot of fluid physicists back in the day. It would only have taken one to know that dryer design was wrong.

 

[paulg]

Failure characterisics by design

During my training, the instructor made a point of discussing various dryer designs of the past and their failure characteristics.
One design discussed was the "circular pan of heating coil" type dryer element that was attached to the rear of the drum on a very popular brand. I think this design was most popular in the 1960s. ( ? ) It was alleged that the structure of the rear drum tended to capture lint which stuck to the heating element's pan and never released. Lint fires would occur as the element would sometimes be found to be packed with lint.

On that same design, cases of heating-element droop would occur causing a short within the heating element.
I saw a picture of this "heating-element droop" . I'll describe as best I can.
Imagine a circular spiral of coil-type heating element on a circular metal frame. Again, it is attached vertically to the rear of the dryer drum. The heating element expands and contracts during its heating cycle but due to aging it fails to retain its original shape and starts to droop downward. Eventually one small segment of the heating element touches the round of heating element below it (or the chassis pan) and creates a hotter element.

And lastly, some comment was made about halo-of-heat dryers. I don't remember what though.

I was left with the notion that although design did seem to make some dryers less-reliable than others, I was surprised by the incidence of fires caused by customer's neglect of maintenance, faulty service as well as accident (drying of materials prone to ignition).

Personally I think that the worst dryer designs would probably be relatively fire-safe if maintained properly. Certainly by the experts here.
QUESTION: Do you know of a dryer design that you positively wouldn't use in your home even if maintained properly?
(A similar example would be the Servel Gas refrigerator. I'm sorry... I wouldn't have one in my house at any cost, even if maintained to perfection).
Comments welcome!

 

[turquoisedude]

Circular pan of heating coil

That sure sounds like a GE to me...  Acutally the design seems to have stayed in use for a long time.   I repaired a friend's 1980-something Kelvinator (WCI) dryer back in the early 90s where the element had drooped and shorted and likewise, more recently with a friend's 2003 Frigi-Lux dryer.   It may be grossly oversimplified, but wouldn't these units be less prone to 'element droop' if enough spacers/insulators were used to support the element?

 

I was totally paranoid about having a dryer with visible heating element at the top of the drum (the 58 Hotpoint and the 56 GE Washer-Dryer combo) - I was scared to death of the heating element touching clothes and igniting them!  

So far, thank goodness, this has not been the case!

 

 

 

[paulg]

I agree with the spacers

I totally agree that more spacers would certainly help prevent droop malfunctions. I only have my mind's image of that design for right now... but if there were more spacers, element droop would appear to have to be so extreme that the element would probably become electrically open instead.
.. but that is just my opinion, not fact.

 

[norgeway]

All in All....

I will keep my 73 Lady Kenmore...Its easy to service, performs well, and , when I take it apart once every year or two, their is almost no lint to speak of...still though, our old Westinghouse worked well....if you want to talk about a dryer that was dangerous...1950s Hotpoints!!They had a trap door in the drum to clean out lint, One of our neighbors had one, she didnt get the door shut all the way, and the next load she dryed became an inferno!..luckily it was in the basement on a cement floor, vented thru a cinderblock wall...she said she was outside and noticed fire coming out the vent...at the top of the drum were red hot calrod units!!

 

[twintubdexter]

Not really a clothes "dryer"...

...but more like a clothes "broiler." My mom's old Apex gas dryer had the burner located in the upper left corner. With it's glass window I would sit on the laundry room floor and watch the flames dancing around through the perforated drum. There was a viewing window in the front so you could make sure the burner lit properly. The sequence was set timer, turn gas knob to on (started gas to pilot,) turn and hold ignition knob which caused buzzing automotive spark plug to light pilot, after 30 seconds release knob and hope pilot had heated thermocouple, push start button and look through viewing window to make sure burner was on...if not, go back and start over. As I recall, this dryer had no lint filter. My mom was a clothesline person and used the dryer sparingly. We had no fires.

 

[paulg]

I didn't know about the Hotpoints

And that is odd as my father worked for Hotpoint from 1948 to about 1985... and in the home-laundry dept!
The APEX dryer arrangement is scarrrrryyyy.
It is amazing that us baby-boomers survived such scary appliances, toys, cars-without-seatbelts and the like.

 

[circlew]

Only know two people personally who had dryers catch fire. One was a mid 50's Frigidaire, and it was in the basement, so only damage was to the dryer and its contents, with enough smoke upstairs that they had to was some of the walls and ceilings. This occurred sometime in the 70's.

The second was a new early 2000's Amana, located on the second floor. Don't know what malfunctioned, but they had folded towels, etc. sitting on the top, which burned and set the wood cabinets above on fire. The house was extensively damaged, with the entire second floor, and part of the first, having to be renovated.