Making Hand Dryers Quieter in Use

All hand dryers produce some noise, and in some buildings, less environmentally friendly options such as paper towels may be used instead, but modern designs can help to reduce the amount of disturbance they cause.

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What can you do to make hand dryers quieter?

In modern buildings, bathrooms are positioned where they are needed, and this means that noise from hand dryers can leak out into the surrounding area which can disturb people nearby.  Thankfully, modern hand dryer design reduces these problems in a number of ways.

Reducing Air Turbulence

Hand dryers make noise in multiple ways, but the blast of turbulent air from the nozzle is the loudest and most distracting for people nearby.

Conventional hand dryer models feature a wide nozzle and blow air from an exposed fan over a heating element.  Warm air from the nozzle flows unevenly over the user’s hands causing water to evaporate. In this type of airflow, air moves at different speeds depending on where it passed over the fan, and this, coupled with the large diameter of the nozzle means that there is excessive turbulence in the airflow.

In a turbulent flow of air, multiple soundwaves are created and bounce across each other to create a wide spectrum of noises that can penetrate through walls and into surrounding areas.

In modern jet hand dryers such as the Mitsubishi Electric Wave i01, airflow is directed through a narrow slot nozzle.  This creates a more even laminar flow of air with little turbulence.  As a result, the multiple overlapping frequencies are not present, and the sound is naturally lower.

Internal Soundproofing

Sounds from motors fans can be a big component of the noise from traditional hand dryers.  This can be reduced in multiple ways.

Internal soundproofing around the motor and fan assembly prevent vibrations from being transmitted to the outer walls of the appliance and prevents surfaces from resonating and contributing to noise levels.  The use of sound deadening material in the air filters also prevents egress of noise from the ventilation of the hand dryer and better contains high frequency sounds that can be particularly annoying in the nearby area.

Quicker Drying Times

Old fashioned evaporative hand dryers that rely on warm air to remove water from the user’s hands can take more than 30 seconds to fully dry.  This means that the loud noises that they generate have more time to penetrate surrounding areas and can be annoying.

The use of fast moving jets of air to blow water off the surface of the skin means that users do not need to wait as long for their hands to dry.  In fact, the Mitsubishi Electric Wave i01, a modern hands in electric hand dryer works in as little as 9 seconds, which means that the period of noise is much shorter and less distracting in neighbouring rooms.

Find Out More

As a result of their designs, the Mitsubishi Electric Wave u02 and i01 models create much less noise than conventional models – they are whisper quiet at around 57dB compared to the 85dB of a traditional warm air design. Find out more about the Mitsubishi Electric Wave range of low noise hand dryers and discover how they can help to make your bathrooms quieter, please contact us today to arrange a demo.

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