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Thread Number: 53981
Westinghouse fires? |
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| Post# 763110 6/11/2014 at 20:02 (3,596 days old) by classiccaprice (Hampton, Virginia) | ||
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?
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Post# 763111 , Reply# 1 6/11/2014 at 20:17 (3,596 days old) by turquoisedude  (.) |
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 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... 
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Post# 763131 , Reply# 2 6/11/2014 at 22:38 (3,596 days old) by whirlykenmore78 (Prior Lake MN (GMT-0500 CDT.)) |
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I would think | ||
| Post# 763161 , Reply# 3 6/12/2014 at 05:12 (3,596 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea)) | ||
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. | ||
| Post# 763271 , Reply# 5 6/12/2014 at 15:18 (3,595 days old) by twintubdexter (Palm Springs) | ||
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Post# 763394 , Reply# 6 6/13/2014 at 06:20 (3,595 days old) by lotsosudz (Sacramento, CA) |
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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 | ||
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Post# 763687 , Reply# 8 6/14/2014 at 20:12 (3,593 days old) by jetcone (Schenectady-Home of Calrods,Monitor Tops,Toroid Transformers) |
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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 ! | ||
| Post# 763693 , Reply# 9 6/14/2014 at 20:29 (3,593 days old) by classiccaprice (Hampton, Virginia) | ||
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Post# 763699 , Reply# 10 6/14/2014 at 20:53 (3,593 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD) |
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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. | ||
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Post# 763838 , Reply# 11 6/15/2014 at 17:48 (3,592 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md) |
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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. | ||
| Post# 763880 , Reply# 12 6/15/2014 at 21:15 (3,592 days old) by norgeway (mocksville n c ) | ||
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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. | ||
| Post# 763920 , Reply# 14 6/16/2014 at 04:05 (3,592 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea)) | ||
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| Post# 763928 , Reply# 15 6/16/2014 at 06:02 (3,592 days old) by washer111 () | ||
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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? | ||
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Post# 763929 , Reply# 16 6/16/2014 at 06:30 (3,592 days old) by paulg (My sweet home... Chicago) |
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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? | ||
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Post# 763931 , Reply# 17 6/16/2014 at 06:51 (3,592 days old) by jetcone (Schenectady-Home of Calrods,Monitor Tops,Toroid Transformers) |
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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.
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Post# 763949 , Reply# 18 6/16/2014 at 08:56 (3,592 days old) by paulg (My sweet home... Chicago) |
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I need to get your favorite relays | ||
| Post# 764140 , Reply# 19 6/17/2014 at 02:45 (3,591 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea)) | ||
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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.
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Post# 764161 , Reply# 20 6/17/2014 at 06:16 (3,591 days old) by jamiel (Detroit, Michigan and Palm Springs, CA) |
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| Post# 764312 , Reply# 22 6/18/2014 at 04:48 (3,590 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea)) | ||
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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. | ||
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Post# 764325 , Reply# 23 6/18/2014 at 06:24 (3,590 days old) by paulg (My sweet home... Chicago) |
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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! | ||
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Post# 764332 , Reply# 24 6/18/2014 at 07:45 (3,590 days old) by turquoisedude (.) |
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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!
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Post# 764341 , Reply# 25 6/18/2014 at 08:50 (3,590 days old) by paulg (My sweet home... Chicago) |
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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. | ||
| Post# 764357 , Reply# 27 6/18/2014 at 10:58 (3,589 days old) by twintubdexter (Palm Springs) | ||
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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.
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Post# 764391 , Reply# 28 6/18/2014 at 13:08 (3,589 days old) by paulg (My sweet home... Chicago) |
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I didn't know about the Hotpoints | ||
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Post# 764424 , Reply# 30 6/18/2014 at 16:24 (3,589 days old) by paulg (My sweet home... Chicago) |
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Only one dryer personally | ||
| Post# 764453 , Reply# 31 6/18/2014 at 17:47 (3,589 days old) by classiccaprice (Hampton, Virginia) | ||
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Post# 1116933 , Reply# 33 5/11/2021 at 03:18 (1,071 days old) by Adam-aussie-vac (Canberra ACT) |
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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 | ||
| Post# 1116948 , Reply# 34 5/11/2021 at 10:20 (1,071 days old) by vacerator (Macomb, Michigan) | ||
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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. | ||
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