Whatever happened to All in One Washer/Dryers?

When I was growing up and going door to door in my neighborhood,I'd go to friend's and neighbor's homes to watch their washing machines.The ones the builder supplied were the laundromats from 1950-1957.Once the neighborhood was finished,I'd say about 60% of the neighbors had the Westinghouses.Those who chose to keep or but their own had either a top loader,wringer or the washer dryer combination.Whirlpool(Kenmore too),Bendix,Crosley,Norge,Speed Queen and Easy were th only brands I remember that gave you the optoion of getting them with 220 volt electric dryer heat or 110 volt gas drying heat.

We had 12 people in our home.My parents,my mother's parents,five cousins and my brother,my sister and myself.We originaly,as far back as i can remember,had a frog eye Kenmore gas dryer and a 1950? Easy Rivera 2 speed automatic washer.One day,my Dad had the Easy out on the front porch cussing like a sailor because that was the 4th time its pump had failed.Mom,returning home from work,told him the unit needed to be replaced and I was standing there hoping we were going to get the new FRIGIDAIRE 3 Ring Agitator washer.Since my grandfather worked in the Chevrolet plant,we'd get a 25% discount.The dealership we had to visit had a salesman my Dad said was too pushy. So,we wound up at Sears and,as we were riding down the escolator to the appliance department,I saw a neat front loader in turquoise sitting in the display area all lit up and running. as my family looked at the top loaders,I got the attention of Ira,a saleslady there. She greated me thinking I was lost. i told her we neaded a new washer but knew people who had the combo and that my parents were with my grandparents and dshowed who they were telling her my g'mom had the Sears chargeaplate and her sister had the Bendix Duomatic and loved it.She imediately went to my grandmother asking her how I knew what a combination washer was and was told I loved washers and my Aunt lou in New Jersey had the Bendix.None of my family knew that the combos were made and available in gas.We bought it and received a call from Ira to let us know the model we selected was replaced with a new 1963 model and we got the newer model.

We washed 4 lods a day,everyday.Sometimes,in the spring and summer,we'd set it for "wash only" and hang the clothes out.That combo was repaired twice in almost 25 years!!We'd go swimming at the pool and throw everything in setting it for "rinse and spin" and it would have all our beachwear done in about 35 minutes. My gym suit from school would get so clean that my classmates would pay me $2 to take theirs home and wash them.We used Dash most of the time but,if all was on sale,my Grandmother would buy it instead.

While surfing the net recently,I went to Wascomat to find their new washer dryer combinations made for commercial use.I don't know what they retail for but,they claim that the entire cycle takes around 75 minutes and they make them with gas drying option!!!They wash and dry 25 pounds of dry laundry.I wonder if they're making them for comercial use to try them out for domestic use???Let's hope.If they do make the domestic market,are priced resonably and have a nice design,I'd buy one hands down. I truly enjoyed the one I grew up with ( I also liked Aunt Lou's Bendix and the Norgeworld comercial units not far from our home)and even had Chuck,the serviceman who knew them inside out,connect the interior drum light while replacing the lint trap which my Mother accidently dropped and broke while cleaning it out one morning.That made the interior light come on with the door closed.Just like the panel light,the interior light came on as soon as you turned the timer dial to set the cycle and stayed lit throughout the entire program. My Dad had no clue, until one night when he was washing his Navy gear and saw it lit, that the interior light wire had been spliced.


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Post# 401994 12/26/2009 at 10:57 (5,235 days old) by danmantn (Tennessee)
Checkrate/Likes My knowledge is vintage washer/dryers is limited to the late 70s and later. Today's picture of the day for a Washer/Dryer all in one unit made me wonder several things. 1. Did these ever work correctly? 2. Why didn't the design work out? 3. Are these used successfully in other parts of the world today? A washer/dryer all-in-one unit SOUNDS like a great idea, but I can imagine the pitfalls...any thoughts/history?

Post# 402006 , Reply# 1 12/26/2009 at 12:25 (5,235 days old) by autowasherfreak ()
Checkrate/Likes I like having separate machines, because you can have another load washing while one is drying. But if you have a space issue the combo would be a good solution. LG and Haire are currently making combo units.

Post# 402013 , Reply# 2 12/26/2009 at 13:47 (5,235 days old) by aquacycle (West Yorkshire, UK)
Checkrate/Likes they're quite popular over here. Especially integrated ones.

Post# 402101 , Reply# 3 12/26/2009 at 22:25 (5,234 days old) by tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)
Checkrate/Likes *Sad, painful story* Bendix unveiled the Duomatic in December, 1952. Inventing this machine gave them the right to patent everything about it and they did. When other corporations went to make their own combos, they were faced with terrible hurdles. The Duomatic was a great performer. Consumer Reports rated it highly as both a washer and as a dryer. Every manufacturer who made a combination washer-dryer had to pay the owner of the Bendix patents a royalty on each machine they made. The worst thing facing anyone who wanted to design a combination was that patents made the Bendix the only such machine that could suspend the mechanism inside the cabinet which was essential for allowing the cylinder to spin fast enough to fully extract water before drying the load. Without a suspension system to absorb and isolate the dynamic forces, the vibration, shaking and other movement during the spinning of a horizontal axis tub, other combos were limited to relatively slow spin speeds which left the load almost dripping at the end of the final spin (you could certainly wring water out of them by hand) before the dry portion of the cycle started. In the 1950s, when combos came on the market, the large part of a family's laundry was cottons which absorb a lot of water and dry slowly. Many of the electric models used no-vent condensing drying systems which were slower than vented dryers, required higher temperatures and lost efficiency in areas where summer water temperatures rose above 70 degrees. Few things are more intriguing than the idea of the washer dryer combination and, except for the Duomatic and to a lesser degree the redesigned 29" Whirlpool-Kenmore, few things are quite as disappointing. I, along with several other members of the club have used almost every major brand of combo sold in this country. They are interesting artifacts but not great performers.

Post# 402121 , Reply# 4 12/26/2009 at 23:37 (5,234 days old) by imperialmarkxii ()
Checkrate/Likes *Combo W/D. ...* My Aunt had one that came in the house they bought back in the early 60's. With two daughters, and a baby boy; I'm sure it was running most of the time. I don't remember much about it except that it was made by one of the stove manufactures, like O'Keefe & Merrit, or Gaffers & Sattler. What I DO remember is that it didn't spin, so the laundry would go into the dry cycle sopping wet. Also i remember her saying that if she had separate machines, one load could be drying, while the other washes. -Russell

Post# 402141 , Reply# 5 12/27/2009 at 06:42 (5,234 days old) by easyspindry (Winston-Salem, NC)
Checkrate/Likes *Duomatic is the way to go . . .* I have a 1959 Philo/Bendix Duomatic and it works great. The idea was to put laundry in and then go to work or go to bed, and the next time you went to the machine the clothes were washed and dried. Sounds ok in theory, but if it was laundry day and you had several loads to wash, it would take all day long to finish. Mine extracts water fairly well, but the dryer sure works better if I can run the clothes through an extractor before the dry cycle starts. Jerry Gay

Post# 402150 , Reply# 6 12/27/2009 at 08:28 (5,234 days old) by appnut (TX)
Checkrate/Likes Combos were not suitable for those who did wash once or twice a week. My next door neighbor, who had two LK combos, washed pretty much every day for a family of 4--whites, colors, or sheets, or something. The dryer exhaust faced my bedroom window and it was not uncommon at all to hear the machine run at night after the kids went to bed after baths.

Post# 402171 , Reply# 7 12/27/2009 at 10:42 (5,234 days old) by tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)
Checkrate/Likes Part of the public education about the way to use a combo was in the advertising slogan, "The machines that make laundry day disappear." Just as a clothes dryer eliminated the need to wait for "good drying weather" the combo eliminated the need for being there to transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer so the user could be away from the machine while the load washed and dried, making it more convenient to do laundry on more days of the week. Many years ago, I was contacted by the editor of a New England antiques journal about our collection. She was the wife of a Sears executive and had owned both designs of the Kenmore combinations. She made a point of telling me that she used them for laundry from the time her sons were infants through childhood. When I expressed surprise at that, she told me what she told her friends at the time, that it was easy to do one or two loads in the morning and one or two in the afternoon with naptime for the babies being a time to fold and put away. She shared her dismay that combos were no longer available when her second one had to be replaced and said that she did not like her separate units as much as she liked her combos. The only ad I saw that talked about doing multiple loads in one day was the Bendix Duomatic ad from about 1956. It was shot from inside a laundry room, past the Duomatic with the controls under the cover on the front, and through the partly open door out into the back yard with text that started something like, "While we enjoyed an afternoon picnic, my Bendix Duomatic washed and dried six loads of laundry." I don't imagine that the laundry room door was open the whole time; the noise of the high speed spin would be a distraction at a picnic, but the fast drying time of the Duomatic would have made that possible if she was able to start the next load as soon as the previous one finished. I guess we weren't supposed to wonder who was doing the folding. The big thing about laundry in the 50s was that Wash'n Wear was not yet Permanent Press, nor was the process or fabric blend as wide spread as by the mid 60s and a dryer was not needed to finish the laundering process and eliminate ironing. While having an automatic washer was important, a dryer for most families was not a necessity and many who had a dryer only used it during bad weather. Bendix invented the combo and poisoned the well for any that came after. You cannot imagine the amount of money lost by companies in tooling up to design and manufacture combos based on the acceptance of the Duomatic only to see sales fall steadily as the other brands came on the market. Other manufacturers, with the notable exception of Whirlpool because of the sales volume of Sears, had no money to invest in redesigning the machines and with the restrictions of the Bendix/AVCO patents what would be the use? Whirlpool came up with a way to balance the cylinder for spinning without using a suspension system and then tied that up with patents, but they made a very complex machine with, as John and his brothers figured, 1600 parts; as many as in a VW Beetle. I was told by a service tech from The Georgia Power Company that Westinghouse offered to give each of their service personnel a WH Wash 'n Dry Laundromat if they would just keep it serviced. They had no takers, which is a pretty sad commentary on the product.

Post# 402185 , Reply# 8 12/27/2009 at 12:27 (5,234 days old) by laundromat (Hilo, Hawaii)
Checkrate/Likes *1963 Lady Kenmore gas washer/dryer combination* When I was growing up and going door to door in my neighborhood,I'd go to friend's and neighbor's homes to watch their washing machines.The ones the builder supplied were the laundromats from 1950-1957.Once the neighborhood was finished,I'd say about 60% of the neighbors had the Westinghouses.Those who chose to keep or but their own had either a top loader,wringer or the washer dryer combination.Whirlpool(Kenmore too),Bendix,Crosley,Norge,Speed Queen and Easy were th only brands I remember that gave you the optoion of getting them with 220 volt electric dryer heat or 110 volt gas drying heat. We had 12 people in our home.My parents,my mother's parents,five cousins and my brother,my sister and myself.We originaly,as far back as i can remember,had a frog eye Kenmore gas dryer and a 1950? Easy Rivera 2 speed automatic washer.One day,my Dad had the Easy out on the front porch cussing like a sailor because that was the 4th time its pump had failed.Mom,returning home from work,told him the unit needed to be replaced and I was standing there hoping we were going to get the new FRIGIDAIRE 3 Ring Agitator washer.Since my grandfather worked in the Chevrolet plant,we'd get a 25% discount.The dealership we had to visit had a salesman my Dad said was too pushy. So,we wound up at Sears and,as we were riding down the escolator to the appliance department,I saw a neat front loader in turquoise sitting in the display area all lit up and running. as my family looked at the top loaders,I got the attention of Ira,a saleslady there. She greated me thinking I was lost. i told her we neaded a new washer but knew people who had the combo and that my parents were with my grandparents and dshowed who they were telling her my g'mom had the Sears chargeaplate and her sister had the Bendix Duomatic and loved it.She imediately went to my grandmother asking her how I knew what a combination washer was and was told I loved washers and my Aunt lou in New Jersey had the Bendix.None of my family knew that the combos were made and available in gas.We bought it and received a call from Ira to let us know the model we selected was replaced with a new 1963 model and we got the newer model. We washed 4 lods a day,everyday.Sometimes,in the spring and summer,we'd set it for "wash only" and hang the clothes out.That combo was repaired twice in almost 25 years!!We'd go swimming at the pool and throw everything in setting it for "rinse and spin" and it would have all our beachwear done in about 35 minutes. My gym suit from school would get so clean that my classmates would pay me $2 to take theirs home and wash them.We used Dash most of the time but,if all was on sale,my Grandmother would buy it instead. While surfing the net recently,I went to Wascomat to find their new washer dryer combinations made for commercial use.I don't know what they retail for but,they claim that the entire cycle takes around 75 minutes and they make them with gas drying option!!!They wash and dry 25 pounds of dry laundry.I wonder if they're making them for comercial use to try them out for domestic use???Let's hope.If they do make the domestic market,are priced resonably and have a nice design,I'd buy one hands down. I truly enjoyed the one I grew up with ( I also liked Aunt Lou's Bendix and the Norgeworld comercial units not far from our home)and even had Chuck,the serviceman who knew them inside out,connect the interior drum light while replacing the lint trap which my Mother accidently dropped and broke while cleaning it out one morning.That made the interior light come on with the door closed.Just like the panel light,the interior light came on as soon as you turned the timer dial to set the cycle and stayed lit throughout the entire program. My Dad had no clue, until one night when he was washing his Navy gear and saw it lit, that the interior light wire had been spliced.