We moved in with the in laws last year (both have alzheimers, different stages, it’s crazy and surreal and always interesting).
We decided to take advantage of the black friday sales and buy a new dryer. Great sale, saved $150, and said new dryer is being delivered in one week.
The back story is that mother in law doesn’t use the dryer. She hangs her clothes on the line, outside in good weather, in the basement in bad weather. That’s OK but I prefer to use a dryer.
They’ve got a perfectly good Westinghouse dryer in the basement right next to the washer. Both items are circa 1960s. The washing machine works just fine. The dryer doesn’t turn itself off. The timer is shot so if you put clothes in you have to set a timer or your clothes will continue to tumble for all eternity. It also gets very, very hot and we were concerned for safety/fire reasons.
Except today we went down there and were poking around and discovered that apparently the electricity is wired directly into the back of the dryer. No plug. Just a huge conduit running down the wall into the back of the dryer :eek:
I guess we’ll call the electrician on Monday but we’re both trying to figure out why you’d wire a dryer directly to the current without a plug. Is that just the way they did it back in the 1960s?
Of course neither of the parents can remember so we’re left guessing. Any dopers care to hazard a guess?
sounds like someone’s DIY hack job. both houses I’ve lived in growing up (built in the '40s and '50s respectively) have had the usual 10-50 240VAC receptacle in the utility room.
I could see direct wiring the thing similarly to, say, industrial equipment (e.g. to a local disconnect panel) but not just poking wires out of conduit right to the dryer. I don’t know if a local disconnect would still be to code, but it would in theory be a lot safer.
I’ve heard of some people wiring larger 220V appliances like dryers with hard conduit like this on the grounds that it’s proof again rats chewing on the wires. That might have been their concern but more likely I think that jz78817 has it right.
Yes, that was the way it was done ca. 1950s. We had a new electric stove installed about 1952, and it was wired by a professional electrician (a friend of the family, so I don’t think he was cutting corners) directly into the fusebox a floor below. We discovered that when we tried to remove the stove in 1976.
Not so sure about dryers, but hard-wiring is still a supported option for electric ranges. I just bought a new range, and the installation directions have a whole page on how to configure the wiring terminals and strain relief pieces for a standard pigtail plug or hard-wiring with flexible conduit.
Thanks so much for your responses. I’m sure it’s one of those and since we won’t ever get an actual answer out of them I guess at this point all we can so is surmise.
We ordered a dryer and cord to go with it so I suppose we’ll have to get an electrician out to actually install an outlet.
There are so many weird things like that in this old house that the longer we live here the more strange stuff we discover.