gordon – flash drying towel warmer (baby) white
What’s the purpose of a towel warmer? Clues in the name probably, but that’s not the whole story. Unless you’re one of a dying breed who only ever use a towel once and then wash it immediately (costly both for you and the environment) then you need your towel warmer to be a towel dryer/warmer. Wet towels hanging about the bathroom (or worse still thrown over anything that provides a drying surface) are unpleasant and smelly. You want a towel dryer/warmer that can dry all of your towels in a flash, using as little energy as possible, in a pleasing aesthetic package. That’s the job description.
Gordon was born of a realisation that the standard towel warmer with horizontal bars didn’t work as designed. This was backed up by an extensive Eskimo test series which discovered that, despite the high energy consumption, the standard ladder towel warmer didn’t even effectively dry and warm towels overnight. This was our absolute lowest benchmark measure of acceptable product performance.
After more market research we then embarked on a second test series where we started hanging the towels vertically over the ends of the ladder towel rail to emulate how people use them. Whilst this only utilised a small part of the ladder rail, thus wasting the majority of its energy used, it did then become more effective at drying a couple of towels. People intuitively worked round the deficiencies of the design and turned into something that was more effective by using it in a different way than intended.
Next there’s the physics. Using only natural convection the speed with which a towel will dry is a function of temperature, airflow and humidity.
Temperature The maximum operating temperature has a limit imposed by what is safe and comfortable in a room where the user tends to be wearing little or nothing. The British and European Standards weren’t much use here as they allow a maximum surface temperature of 95ºC – genuinely dangerous in our opinion and worth noting that many products on the market operate towards this limit. In order to keep things safe we adopted the Low Surface Temperature standard used in public buildings such as hospitals of max 43ºC for an electric towel warmer without a towel on. Once you cover it with a towel this can be allowed to rise a bit because it’s much safer for the user in this state. We set ourselves a limit here of 56ºC – still much lower than most radiator temperatures of c.60-80ºC.
