Westinghouse fires?

[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.

 

[paulg]

Only one dryer personally

My friend Jim's dryer caught fire. It was a center-dial Maytag, but I don't recall much else. This happened somewhere in the 1980's.
The family knew something was going wrong when the vent outside started blowing black smoke.
Fortunately, the damage was only to the dryer itself. Cause, unknown.

 

[classiccaprice]

The fellow clarified today. He was referring to the washer.

 

[bendixmark]

Slantfront Fires

I have seen at least two westinhouse slantfronts over the years at the Winchester town dump that had fires because something had hooked onto that chickenwire screen over the heater duct inside the drum and caught fire.I have seen numerous GE dryers that caught fire because something got caught in the holes on the rear of the drum.

 

[adam-aussie-vac]

reply 22

here in Australia most if not all modern dryers made by the Simpson electrolux company ( once was EMAIL), have a positive drum pressure and they have stuck with that design for the last 10 years

 

[vacerator]

Adam Aussie-vac; and slant front dryer fires

You have or had the Westingouse brand ther. What manufacturer made them?
The slant front's are old. If any of the wiring is old and brittle, it can short out, spark, ignite lint, insulation, or dust.

 

[adam-aussie-vac]

The Westinghouse dryer I own was manufactured by email

They made the Australian variant of the Westinghouse laundromat and clothes dryers, for the moment none of the wiring in my Westinghouse appears brittle for the time being