Jet Towel
August 25th, 2008
One peeve I have is washroom hand driers. If the place you’re at doesn’t give you towels, the least they can do is give you a viable alternative, and most electric hot-air blowers don’t come close to doing it. You sit there for two minutes rubbing your hands, and the rubbing probably does more than the air jet. But there is one type I actually prefer over towels, and it’s this kind:
It’s the Mitsubishi Jet Towel. You dip your hands in and pull them up slowly as two blades of hot air on either side and gravity scrape the water from your hands. Works like a charm. Wish they were all like this.
I used one of these (or a similar model) at a pub recently in the UK and they are far, far superior to the usual crappy one. In the UK they’re the Dyson brand (like the bagless vacuum cleaner) and they dried my hands in seconds.
Stil…I prefer the towels over hand dryers…
I’ve read that Dyson’s notion of an air “blade” matches up with what others who’ve thought this through have said.
Basically, you can wind up saving significantly on energy (and hence money) by cranking the airspeed way up. Most electric blow driers for your hands use a heater, but you get more drying power for the same amount of energy if you get the air up to much higher velocity.
That way it knocks the moisture off of your hands rather than letting the dry, warm air evaporate it from your hands. In fact, you can supposedly use less energy in the long run.
I know that the principle is in effect when I blow dry Indiana the Wonder Dog. He’s a Golden retriever so there’s plenty to dry! You can’t use a regular, human hair dryer on a dog, because it gets too hot and they can’t dissipate the heat as well (panting instead of sweating). But at dog grooming joints, and the self-service dog grooming place that I use, they have very powerful dryers that really crank the air out of the hose- kind of like a powerful shop-vac, only using it as a blower on your dog.