After washing my hands in a public restroom at the mall yesterday, I dried them using the wall-mounted blower-type hand dryer. While doing this, I noticed that the water from my hands got all over my shoes, and created a large puddle on the floor. Actually, it added to an existing puddle from the last patrons who used it. Tried turning the nozzle up... and got a facefull of water droplets.
This is not a good system. It wastes a lot of water, and it's very dangerous to have standing water puddled on a hard tile floor. And it's completely fixable. All that's needed is a simple basin mounted beneath the blower, to catch all the water that gets blown off people's hands and feed it back into the plumbing system through a drain pipe. I Googled a variety of search phrases and didn't find anything like this... if anyone does, i apologize in advance for prior art.-- 21 Quest, Aug 06 2009 Air Blade http://www.dysonairblade.com/homepage.asp [Don Quixote, Aug 06 2009] Better image of the Air Blade http://www.dysonair...logy/howitworks.aspWhere does the water go? [21 Quest, Aug 06 2009] Maverik's solution https://www.google....mgrc=zgtBQx8P0wlCTM [21 Quest, Apr 27 2022] to save space you could have the blower mounted on the edge of the washbasin.-- FlyingToaster, Aug 06 2009 I thought of that, but it's unlikely to be accepted in public restrooms because it would backup the line at the sinks.-- 21 Quest, Aug 06 2009 What about a 'captured' vortex? Have both a 'blow' nozzle and a 'suck' nozzle next to it, to generate a revolving airflow. Have a dehumidifier or something in the suck department to remove/recycle moisture. (Don't the driers normally have "Shake off excess water" as their first instruction...?)-- neutrinos_shadow, Aug 06 2009 Baked, sort of. [link]-- Don Quixote, Aug 06 2009 That link's pretty neat, but it doesn't say where the water goes. The diagram shows the water dripping into the bottom of it... but there's no concavity or drain that I can see that would prevent the water from running out the sides and spilling to the floor.
//The two sheets of air literally scrape water from hands.//
Nowhere does it say where that water goes, and the 3D diagram doesn't show any place for it to drain into. It seems to be implied that the water is expected to simply evaporate. In a busy public restroom, however, there are frequently times when so many people use the dryers in a given period, that doesn't happen fast enough to prevent puddles from forming. Given that the linked product is intended to remove water, and mine is intended to give it somewhere to go, it's not Baked at all. Not even "sort of", Don.-- 21 Quest, Aug 06 2009 solution to what is barely a "problem" is total overkill.. ie perfectly Halfbaked [+]-- xenzag, Aug 06 2009 Heh... all these years later, and it turns out [FlyingToaster] called it right. Maverik gas stations have done exactly what he suggested in their restrooms (link)-- 21 Quest, Apr 27 2022 I've almost never used a blower that actually got my hands dry. And I bet paper towels sequester enough carbon to offset their manufacture.-- Voice, Apr 27 2022 random, halfbakery