Dyson Unveils New 'Wet and Dry' AirBlade Faucet | Hacker News Reader

Dyson Unveils New 'Wet and Dry' AirBlade Faucet

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80 pointseplanit110 comments

Except for one issue: it actually slows down the efficiency of the bathroom.

See, by splitting up washing and drying into two steps, you allow two people to be in the process of cleaning their hands at a time.

By bundling the two steps together, you reduce the amount of stuff in the bathroom, but you also reduce the efficiency of the bathroom.

This AirBlade Faucet is a great idea for low-usage bathrooms: less paper towels, less equipment to maintain, etc. For high-volume bathrooms, (airports, etc) this would actually be a step backwards to put these faucets in, if a goal of the bathroom is to be able to quickly serve a large group of people.

This also allows you to remove towels and several trash cans, and add additional stations.

That's only if you assume unlimited paper towel stations. In reality hand drying is the bottle neck. So if every sink has its own dedicated dryer it will speed things up.

"every sink has its own dedicated dryer"

Exactly. Sinks seem to always outnumber dryers by a wide margin.

But you wouldn't get a queue for paper towels. People would grab 2 or 3 towels and move aside.

Maybe but there's a bit of a shuffle getting around people who have grabbed towels. And there are always the people who stand by towels to dry because that's where the trash can is.

Actually, I guess separating the towel dispensers and trash cans in existing bathrooms would be a smart efficiency move since it would encourage people to grab a towel and keep moving.

Don't ignore the folks who actually don't want to airdry their hands.

I soap, wash, shake and wipe my hands in my pockets as I walk out the door if I'm in a hurry.

Not sure. Let's say a person spends 15 secs washing, and 15 secs drying. Combined it's still 30 secs. So if we have a long queue, does it really matter that two people are in the bathroom at any given time, or just one? The total processing time does not change.

Or am I missing something here?

I think your assumption of equal time for each task is incorrect. Either because people don't dry their hands, or it doesn't take as long as washing.

Because typical bathrooms have 4 times as many sinks as they have hand driers, and I still see sink lines more often than drier lines.

OK, but still that doesn't change the equation. 22 secs washing and 8 secs drying is still 30 secs in total, whether it's done separately or not. And as you mentioned, the number of sinks and the number of dryers are balanced, so they combined have a similar throughput. I think you see sink lines more often just for that reason, if the sink line can handle 10 persons per minute, and the supply is 20ppm you will have a queue. But once we throttle people at the sinks, the supply to the driers is 10ppm, thus no lines (assuming the driers line is 10ppm)....

Only because "air drying" is a more acceptable option than "not washing". So a combined station would only slow things down inasmuch as people no longer skip drying.

In general (at least in the US) drying takes far longer than washing. Because most people wash quickly/poorly whereas driers are on timers and most are horrible.

And when your hands are still wet even after negotiating the unresponsive sensor and waiting an entire drying duration, it's understandable that many people would just as soon skip it.

It actually does help, and the concept behind it is called pipelining [1].

Suppose there's a sink that washes and dries, and there are two people who want to use it. The second person will spend 30 seconds waiting, and 30 seconds washing/drying. So, 60 sec total.

If there's a sink and a separate dryer, the second person will spend 15 sec waiting, 15 sec washing, and 15 sec drying. So, 45 sec total. The second person gets a 15 seconds savings, because he can start washing as soon as the first person finishes washing, rather than having to "block" until the first person is done washing and drying.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline_(computing)#Concept_an...

But your pipeline stalls as you've people waiting to use the drier, those people block sinks, flow is reduced.

1 sink and 1 dryer: first person leaves after 30s, after 60s 3 people have been served.

2 sink and dryer combos: 2 people leaves after 30s, after 60s 4 people have been served.

I think the analog is that parallel processing is better than pipelining.

Have you done the math on this? I have a feeling you're relying on a gut instinct and didn't actually simulate it. From my simulation, this new gadget will simply shift lines from the paper towel dispenser/on the wall air dryer to the sink itself. It will not at all reduce the efficiency of the bathroom, infact it will increase it

I don't know about your simulation, but over here in the real world it doesn't work that way.

Many people don't dry their hands at all in a public bath room (that's what god invented jazz hands[1] for).

By combining faucet and dryer you force these people into the same bottleneck as the hand-dryer users.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuPSIbABYVU

It's actually worse because you take what were 2 parallel operations (washing your hands and drying them) and make them two serial operations, not able to be run in parallel.

Yes, it does upset the balance slightly for people who want to wash their hands, but not dry them, and for people who want to dry their hands, but not get them wet.

Those are the only scenarios where your argument holds, however.

No, not at all.

Simply put, you are moving from 2 independent operations to 2 mutually exclusive operations – meaning that 1 sink (in the Dyson case) can only service 1 user at a time vs 1 sink+1 dryer/towel dispenser which can, at a minimum, service 2 users at once (there's actually a much bigger set of time/path calculations that could go in to this, but the simple case is enough to make it clear that your thinking is confused on this.)

> I don't know about your simulation, but over here in the real world it doesn't work that way.

Wow, great point. You're obviously unbiased! You don't even know the details of the simulation, but you're confident that you really know what's up based on your presence in "the real world".

> Many people don't dry their hands at all in a public bath room

Yes, but they still wash their hands. Many people don't dry their hands because they have to use the hot air blowers, which they know are ineffective. If they see an effective device, some members of that group will choose to use it instead of jazz handing. But even discounting those people, the wash + dry combination still works out better for most cases I can devise. The only universe I have come up with where wash and then dry else where is better than washing and drying at the same station is if there are an equal number of paper towel dispensers as there are to sinks, which has never happened in a bathroom where the number of sinks > 2, as far as I know.

> By combining faucet and dryer you force these people into the same bottleneck as the hand-dryer users.

I wasn't arguing for optimizing any one special interest groups time spent in the bathroom, I was optimizing for the total network throughput of the bathroom.

I call BS. It should only take 6-8 seconds for someone to grab 2 pieces of paper towel once they're at the dispenser. That means 2 towel dispensers should be a match for 5 sinks.

I was optimizing for the total network throughput of the bathroom.

But you didn't. You have serialized access to two resources that were previously independent.

Since a significant portion of users need only one of the two resources you have created a new point of contention. For access to the faucet not only do I have to wait for people washing their hands, now I also have to wait for people drying their hands.

Yes but one of the resources (the dryer) has increased significantly too. And since we are both using the word "significant" instead of any real numbers we can prove either point.

I chuckled because this same exchanged happened in my head when I read the article, my first thought was "Oh great, everyone stuck at the sink" followed by "Would they stay at the sink in practice?"

I've seen a couple of air-blade installations, and in those they have slowed things down because paper towel dispensers allow you to take a towel, step back, and dry your hands while another person gets a towel. Rolling towels (ones where the towel is on a continuous loop) have the same issue of one user at a time.

On the other hand ever every faucet was also a drying station you've basically upped the number of drying stations tremendously and that is a win for speed.

Side benefits of keeping water off the sink/floor are good.

I wonder if we'll ever see anyone taking this to the extreme of stalls with only water and air tools for washing up (Japanese style toilets for wiping, local air-taps for your hands).

An AirBlade bidet, ouch!

> I've seen a couple of air-blade installations, and in those they have slowed things down because paper towel dispensers allow you to take a towel, step back, and dry your hands while another person gets a towel.

I largely agree with your points, but I wanted to point out that most modern bathrooms(and certainly not bathrooms that may have this device deployed) don't have paper towel dispensers. So it isn't a question of paper towels vs this technology, but this technology vs the hot air fan, or the dyson air blade, or other similar non-dead-tree tech

> Side benefits of keeping water off the sink/floor are good.

What's keeping the air from blowing droplets of water from the sink to my shirt or face?

Well if you've used one of their airblade systems you can see that they have a 'down shoot' sort of effect. I've never seen an air-tap so I don't know if they achieve the same result but I suspect that the water uses the same path as the air, and so blowing toward the sink would make the most sense. In that case a poor basin design could get you into trouble with water bouncing back I suppose.

Japanese bathrooms still have toilet paper dispensers, because even those probing little robot arm squirters can only clean so much. The usual protocol is thus to wipe with paper before you enjoy squirty fun time.

Does it though? While I agree with your premise, what I often see are available sinks while everyone hangs out around the 1 or 2 dryers or towel dispensers and trash cans, waiting for their hands to dry.

That is, unless it's like another place I know of where there's a paper towel dispenser and trash slot between every sink, in which case this faucet wouldn't change anything - they'd just be using their sink instead of standing in front of it with a paper towel.

Essentially, combining washing and drying reduces pipelining. It doesn't change the time for any individual person, but it does reduce throughput.

Of course, most public restrooms have fewer drying stations than sinks, so this would probably be less of an issue.

>Except for one issue: it actually slows down the efficiency of the bathroom.

With one exception, every bathroom within my memory had the drier as a bottleneck, typically at a ratio of 3:1 or worse.

Having a drier per sink would actually improve the efficiency.

The one exception was a older building which had towel dispensers over each of 5 sinks. They eventually replaced them with a single dispenser on the wall at the end of the row. Problem was, towels would inevitably fall in the sink and cause a clog.

It says fourteen seconds. Washing your hands in the sink then walking over to the dryer/paper dispenser, pressing levers or waving your hands, easily takes 30s. Plus you'll never find a bathroom that has a dryer for each sink, so there are massive gains in parallelism :)

It increases the space for more sink/dryer combinations, however.

Side note: As a man, I think the last time I had to wait to dry my hands was half time at a sports stadium, and even then it was only a 20 second wait.

Forget about potential speed pitfalls, and consider the following: If your hands leave the sink dry, you no longer need a regularly cleaned tile room to keep things sanitary, because nobody will be dripping/flinging water everywhere. Where might you be able to put sinks now, or how might this change a washroom? That's what is really interesting to me right now.

Nothing grinds my gears more than Dyson products. Oh sure I'll spend £400 on an insanely complicated vacuum with hundreds of springs and hinges and clips that breaks 6 months later and does no better job than a simple, virtually indestructable Henry that cost just 1/4 the price.

Or £300 on a FAN.

And just what the FUCK is a digital motor? http://www.dyson.co.uk/vacuumcleaners/ddm.aspx

Over-priced, over-engineered, completely unnecessary rip-off bullshit.

>> digital motor

Just another way of saying brushless.

Not "just" a rip-off bullshit (aka marketing) way of saying brushless. No one pays 1x let alone 2x for something lacking brushes! But digital, big improvement over analog, 2x is a bargain!!!

Brushless motor, not brushless vacuum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor

As opposed to a brushed DC motor: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushed_DC_motor

"digital motor" = marketing name for a brushless motor. Very light, very high power, very expensive, very cool.

Think of something like a cross between the mechanics and wiring of a 3 phase motor and the operational action of the worlds fastest stepper motor, all scaled down to a tiny little thing.

Better called an electronic motor than a digital motor in that all you really need is a herd of opamps to synthesize the rather complicated driving waveforms, but most folks do that in a digital microcontroller now so thats where the marketing name comes from. Not a complete misnomer.

I guess you could say an old fashioned universal brush motor that you're probably familiar with is kind of like a single bit single speed simplification of a brushless motor.

While I woudn't say it with as much rigor as you would, I kind of agree. 1.4 kilowatt motor to dry hands seems kind of excessive.

EDIT: also, how do the fans even work?

My wife and I have 3 Dyson vacuums. We purchased one and then acquired a couple more over the years. Two are standard room/floor vacuums and another is more like a carpet/floor 'broom'.

They are expensive but all have worked flawlessly. One we've owned for more than 8 years and it's in perfect condition. No bag and it sucks up pet hair like you wouldn't believe. Better than any other vacuum I've ever owned.

As for the Henry vacuums, I'm not sure you'd get the same power for 1/4 the price. There appear to be some models that are that price differential but once you get up to the higher power models it's still cheaper but about 3/4 the price.

Dyson is a lot like Apple. They make dependable, designed products that simply work. You can get by with something else but it will most likely be inferior in form and function.

Dyson is a lot like Apple. ... people tend to have strong opinions about them even if they've never had much to do with them :)

another data point - we have a single dyson we bought over 7 years ago and it's still going strong. Thing's built like a tank and works better than any other vacuum I've ever used (not that many, to be honest)

Interesting rant, I don't disagree but I see the same forces at work in Dyson that I see in Apple in terms of functional design. And charging a premium for that.

Dyson's biggest contribution to the vacuum market was figuring out how to vacuum without a bag. That was a pretty big deal since vacuum bags were the 'ink cartridges' of the home appliance industry as far as I can tell.

That said, the fake geek speak marketing also rubs me the wrong way.

Just a quick correction, I've definitely had bagless vacuums long before the Dyson company was around.

I'm fine with Dysons as vacuums, they look interesting and do good work. I think you're spot on with the Apple comparison though since Dyson products seem to generate a similar amount of smug.

[Updated below]

Just a quick correction, I've definitely had bagless vacuums long before the Dyson company was around.

pretty sure you're mistaken. From memory Dyson was unable to get the money together to manufacture vacuums under his own brand, and Hoover et al didn't want him around at all (vacuum cleaner bags are like razor blades), but he was able to licence his design to a Japanese company and also an American one.

There's quite a bit on the internet about the Japanese licenced Dyson - the G-Force - but I can't find anything yet on the American one. It was, I think, sold initially as a carpet shampoo machine, came with a powder you sprinkled on, and then as an industrial upright. I think these were sold in the US for many years before the Dyson brand made it there due to some sort of legal problem

I'll update if I can find the info I'm looking for

[edit: the keyword Google needed was Amway. Read this http://www.amquix.info/amway_dyson.html

In short, Amway entered into negotiations to licence Dyson's design in '84, withdrew after some time then launched their own copy. Lawyers got rich all the way to 1990 when things were resolved and Amway agreed to pay royalties to Dyson. Not mentioned in this article, but I think part of the agreement was Dyson say out of the market for a certain time]

There have ben vacuums that filter with water (such as the Rexair/Rainbow) since at least the 1930s.

While most of those quite heavy duty and powerful, they almost all suffered from indoor air quality issues, although I believe the newer ones do feature HEPA filters.

So a bit of looking into it and it looks like we may both be onto something.

According to the internet the Dyson company was founded in 1993 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_(company)

but he came up with the idea in the early 80s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson

More importantly, it turns out I was definitely thinking of cleaners that don't use a disposable bag, and weren't a Dyson cyclone design...but it turns out that they just use a permanent filter that simply replaces the bag in the design. Those are what I remember growing up with since my mother hated having to spend all that money on bags. Are they pre-dyson "bagless"? I don't know, I think that's how they were marketed but I honestly can't remember.

I'll be the first to agree Dyson is somewhat overpriced but I don't think their products warrant this level of animosity. Those vacuums may be expensive, but they work very well. I've not encountered this "Henry" unit but I've used Miele and Nilfisk and now just use a Dyson. If it breaks in 6 months get a warranty replacement.

And I agree $400 for a fan is ridiculous but what is the alternative? I admit I've got a couple of those fans and I would have liked not to pay that much but it was that or a $15 chinese piece of junk, or a gigantic industrial looking chrome thing.

Show me a company making well designed, innovative high tech domestic electrical equipment and selling them at reasonable prices and I'm sold. Until then, we have Dyson.

The airblade hand driers are the only hand driers I've used that thoroughly dry your hands in a reasonable time frame. Even high air flow traditional driers don't come close to airblade driers.

They do depend on blowing from both sides of your hand at once though. This seems like it will double the drying time.

Excel's Xlerator does better job. And there is no walls to touch (accidentally) while drying your hands. And no moldy water pool at the bottom.

I find that the Xlerator takes far longer than old fashioned paper towels or the Airblade. It's also painfully loud.

It may be far better than the awful standard hand dryers, but it's not perfect.

True on the walls and the water pool. Not true on the drying faster. The sheet of air is much more efficient than the xlcerator.

I've had to do 2 or 3 passes with AirBlades to get my hands dry. I've never had that happen with an xcelerator. In my recollection, the xcelerators are faster and more pleasant to use.

Agreed. They sound (and feel) like a leaf blower, though.

Excel Xlerator, that's the one i was thinking of with my meek "high airflow traditional driers".

As other posters have mentioned, one big drawback of the Dyson Airblade (stand alone unit) is that it's loud. 90 dBA loud [1]. I've never seen more than two Airblades in one restroom, with this combo unit, there could be double that number. That could lead to an unpleasant environment for guests of the establishment and potential OSHA violations for employees.

From using it, it appears to me that most of the noise is caused by the turbulence of the high-speed airflow interacting with hands and the enclosure (Fullerton's paper comes to the same conclusion). In that case, all you can really do to reduce the noise is reduce the flow speed, which reduces the effectiveness of the dyer action.

[1] http://www.acoustics.org/press/159th/fullerton.htm

They have one of these (non-combo) Dyson airblades in a breastfeeding area in a mall I live near.

It's horrendous - my wife couldn't feed whenever anyone used the blade. So now whenever we go, we put a "do not use - baby is feeding" note on the hand-dryer.

It's not a drop-in replacement for towels or normal air-dryers by any means.

Not to mention the number of three year olds that refuse to enter a room with a jet engine affixed to the walls.

Maybe there's a market there? Just as The Wiggles showed that there is money in adapting adult music for kids, maybe there is money to be made by taking children into account in the design of public facilities? Venues that are frequented by families (shopping centres, child care centres, schools, ...) might be prepared to pay for a line of appliances that don't make life unpleasant for their customers?

Dyson was asked once if he'd attempted to design a quieter vacuum. He replied they had, but there was a strong perception amongst the public that noise equals power, and therefore a quiet vacuum wasn't sucking very much. Wonder if he's carried the same sentiment over to other products

Completely unrelated Dyson trivia - Dyson manufactured a washing machine for a short while; the white and purple CR01

It looks like the air blowing in the sink like that could cause germs to fly all over the place.

The HEPA filter would prevent germs from being sucked in and blown onto your hands. I guess there might be issues with germs in the sink becoming aerosolized, but if the sink basin was designed properly it could become a sort of funnel so that the "dirty" air could be sucked away, separated from waste water and maybe filtered before being released back into the bathroom.

I agree. I would imagine that in with many basin designs the filtered air would hit the basin, collect bacteria and deflect towards your face.

I remember reading somewhere (can't remember the actual article) about how many doctors will not use air dryers in public bathrooms. Ever since then I have always dried my hands on the inside of my shirt when disposable paper towels aren't available.

It might be slightly preferable to the existing problem with the AirBlade where the bottom portion traps water and becomes a germ pool party.

You're worried about the germs? I'm worried if there is water in the sink and the fan kicks in at 400mph, what happens to that displaced water?

The AirBlade when it's not properly calibrated makes a big enough mess as it is...

Collateral splashage seems like it will be an issue. The Today Show segment with Dyson demoing it actually shows water flying towards the camera. Matt Lauer even leapt out of the way when the blower came on.

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50703424

The old AirBlade had some huge design flaws. I've been in busy restrooms with AirBlade dryers which were wet and gross. Not pigsty level, but that's not really what you'd want to be touching after you've just washed your hands. Well, a problem with AirBlades is that it's very easy to accidentally touch the dryer cavity when you're plunging your hands in and drawing them out. Sometimes the strong blast of air even encourages this to happen. I have encountered more conventional air dryers which have touch less activation, and hyper fast airflow that are just about as quick as the Dyson, and which give better results, because you can rub your hands beneath the blower and adjust which parts get the most airflow according to dampness. AirBlades allow nothing of the sort. I think the design is gimmicky and is more about differentiating Dyson's product than real utility. Unfortunately, other hand dryer companies don't have Dyson's marketing budget.

Rubbing your hands together has actually been linked to increasing bacteria counts[1].

I personally quite like the Dyson driers and the new tap seems interesting.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7991492/Rubb...

That one study was paid for by Dyson. Also, the result only really supports airblades being better in medical and food preparation contexts. In the context of most public restrooms, transferring commensal bacteria doesn't seem that big a deal. As stated in the article, we all have them and can never get rid of them with ordinary hand washing. I think it suffices in that context for one to wash and dry hands quickly and comfortably. If someone found an epidemiological difference between hand dryer types, I'd pay attention. Otherwise, going by bacteria counts, one should rather lick a toilet seat than eat a tortilla chip with salsa.

This model doesn't allow you to control the temperature of the faucet which might be important in a home setting. It seems like a great idea for public restrooms however.

Here is a video of James Dyson describing the faucet: http://youtu.be/3y4-fnTXzio

Interesting comment from YouTube.

dysonteam 5 hours ago Hi there, it's Jack at Dyson. In total, our engineers created over 3300 prototypes of the new Dyson Airblade hand dryers, and every component was subjected to hundreds of tests. Our unforgiving test team was tasked with finding fault and weakness and paying attention to detail – they simulated hand washing 213 million times. They even doused the machines in chemical mixes and tipped beer over the Airblade hand dryer range to make sure they are not damaged by harmful substances.

Two slightly on/off-topic rants about public washrooms:

First, the one thing I don't like with the normal AirBlade is the tendency for the water to drip off your hands, onto it, and then to pool below it on the floor. Not much water, mind you, but enough to make both the floor and the plastic onto which the water first drips a bit nasty (in some places). This might just be a cleaning issue in said places, though.

Second, the one mistake I hate seeing washrooms make is to have a tiny faucet where, in order to get your hands properly wet, your hands are almost forced to run into / touch the back of the sink.

Interesting timing on Dyson's announcement this week - yesterday NPR ran the first of a 2-part piece on the Excel Dryer Co [1], a US-based Dyson rival.

Though it's not mentioned in the transcript, late in the nine-minute piece, the Excel VP takes the reporter into Excel's R&D where he's shown one of their latest inventions, a faucet that dispenses soap, water, and then drying air...

[1] http://www.npr.org/2013/02/04/171090394/how-one-company-rein...

Am I the only one who hates the AirBlade dryers because they splash me in the face (presumably partially with the water that's been pooling in crevice along the bottom if it's being heavily used)?

How is that even possible? Are you putting your head through the loop?

But what are we gonna use then to open the germy bathroom doors, for the 95-ish% of us who use the paper towel we dry out hands with to also open the door and then drop in a bin next to it?

I will stick with separate sinks combined with automatic paper towel dispensers. Why? Its more hygienic. After my work converted what did we notice?

Two trashcans, one by each door of the bathroom and now people dry their hands and grab handles with the paper towel ditching it in the can at the end.

With all the concern over the flu and other contagious diseases, let alone witnessing some of my coworkers habits, I am all for a simple solution.

Besides paper towels always work.

Are you assuming that paper towels are more hygienic, or are you aware of studies? Personally, I doubt that the door handle out of the bathroom is any dirtier than other doorhandles in the building.

I always assume the interior door handle of the bathroom is the cleanest one in the building. Many people touch it after washing their hands.

The pessimist in me says, many people also touch it without washing their hands.

Paper towels are more hygenic as it turns out that friction after you wash your hands is essential for removing some dirt & germs. The environmental impact of paper towels is minimally worse than air dryers.

http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2012/12/paper-towel...

Also have you ever tried to dry your face with an air dryer? Awkward is not nearly a strong enough term to describe it, let alone if there is someone watching you.

Just heard a report on the radio about these kinds of dryers. Excel Dryer, Inc. in Massachusetts was actually the first to sell a high-speed dryer like this (the Xlerator). The Dyson AirBlade came later. Interesting stuff:

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/04/171090394/how-one-company-rein...

The Xlerator works far better than the Dyson, too, it just doesn't look as strange and doesn't seem to have attracted as much press attention.

Every time I've attempted to use a Dyson dryer, it's turned off as I've been drying my fingers, leaving them still wet. It seems like it'd be trivial to put a few seconds worth of delay into the automatic cutoff (or position the sensor higher), but no, they all seem to be configured this way. I've watched probably dozens of people run into the same problem while using them, so I don't think it's just me.

Hopefully the Excel dryers will remain after the Dyson dryers get pulled out; I can't imagine they'll age gracefully or attractively with the water dripping down into/onto them, in low-maintenance situations.

Isn't the Xlerator just a more powerful (and louder) blower? The Dyson is a different concept, uses way less energy and dries much more efficiently than standard driers, sometimes in one 5-second pass (I haven't seen an xlerator).

Xlerator can get my hands dry in an acceptably short time. One pass with an AirBlade leaves me with damp hands more often than not. By the time I have my hands feeling comparably dry with an AirBlade, there's often no time savings left at all. (There is, but only over the low-velocity blowers, which I think are generally horrible.)

The Xlerator works far better than the Dyson, too, it just doesn't look as strange and doesn't seem to have attracted as much press attention.

Yeah, the Xlerator may not get a lot of press, but it is the device that I see in every restaurant, bar, and airport bathroom. I have never seen a Dyson dryer.

This is one of those practical inventions that I could see being in everyone's home (and bathroom) in twenty years, with future generations asking: "Did people really use unhygienic towels to dry their hands after washing, grandpa?"

What I really want is something like that for the shower. No more getting out wet when it's cold.

Agreed. Would be really useful in the gym too.

Use one of the Dyson dryers first. Your hands get cold - they use hot air, but evaporation makes it feel pretty cold until they're actually dry.

Skin temp drops to dew point and not a degree lower. Wind speed can mess with total heat energy flux thru a surface via windchill, but thats more a long term / higher delta t effect. Hence the Floridians who are looking confused at your claim and the Arizonians who shiver along with you.

There's also some evidence that air drying is better for your skin than using a towel. From what I've heard, if you're wealthy you can already get a system that pumps hot, dry air into your shower from all sides and dries you off. It may not have the skin-rippling magic of the AirBlade, but it gets the job done.

A DIY version of this concept is on my list of "projects I lack the expertise to do safely or effectively, but I'll be damned if that stops me from wasting hours on ill-conceived diagrams and hundreds of dollars on parts".

They have to make it quieter first. There is no way i could use anything so loud with roommates sleeping in the next room.

I think towel is still better for home usage as it wipes any remaining soap/stain off your skin in hard to reach places, and after a while you can always wash it in a washing machine.

Other than via Dyson's "most hygenic" marketing claim, where do you get the idea towels are unhygenic?

The evidence seems mixed or against air dryers, at least when compared to paper-towels, properly implemented. See for example:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732470510457815...

http://blog.kamens.us/2010/10/26/dyson-airblade-not-the-fast... (including the University study linked within)

I'm not a fan of the Dyson jet dryers. I can feel the mist of blown water, suggesting that it's getting my 'bathroom sink rinse' more places, rather than leaving it all in the bathroom. The power of the jets sometimes causes my hands to touch the sides of the device, which results in one more bathroom-surface-touch than I'd prefer on my way out. And unless I run my hands through 2-3 times, waiting for the unit's (motor cool-down?) pause each time, my hands still feel slightly damp compared to a thorough paper-towel-drying.

How does the faucet know when you're done washing and want to start drying?

Separate sensors for faucet, left dryer and right dryer would be my guess.

This kind of thing has been around for ages in Japan http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalleboo/4611597467/lightbox/

A 1400W fan? Maybe it was the Dyson AirBlades that caused the power to go out at the Super Bowl! A typical box fan (dorm room style) is 100W and puts out 2,000 cubic feet per minute, whereas the airblade puts out 56 cfm @ 14x the power draw.

That is a lot of power, and it's interesting to see from the article "the $40-$43 per year cost of a regular Dyson AirBlade dryer." Although I'm sure their salesmen always compare it to the labor & materials cost of refilling paper towel dispensers.

But in this case it's not really the CFM that matters, it's also the static pressure. Especially since they're trying to make a nice sheet flow at good speed.

The description makes it seem prone to blow whatever remnants of water out of the wash bowl and onto your shirt/pants. Here's to hoping they figured that part out!

Seems like the bowl design would be critical in this. Did Dyson design a complimentary sink to go with the faucet?

Someone on Youtube asked that, here was the reply:

Hi there, it’s Jack at Dyson. The Dyson Airblade Tap hand dryer is designed for commercial environments – these commercial washrooms do not have plugs due to health and safety issues, and the risks related to flooding. So we wouldn't expect this to be an issue.

But when will they release a Dyson wet/dry Bidet?

I think the Japanese toilet seat makers like ToTo have a huge head start in that area.

Kind of like when Mitsubishi first came out with the jet towel years ahead of Dyson's "airblade"?

I'm not sure I want that much air pressure on my naughty bits. A well placed blast of air can hurt my hands...

How about a "vibro-massage" option for both the air and water streams?

Seems like a great idea, until you put one in a high traffic area. Pretty much doubles the time each person spends at the sink.

I finally ran across one of their (or is it someone else's) high speed hand dryers. It was about as miserable an experience as I'd expected. Also, I felt that I should be wearing hearing projection -- LOUD!

At a glance, I expect people to end up wearing at least a few drops of waste water.

I think the whole idea of having air blasting into a sink is asking for sanitation problems. Sinks are very dirty and if you are blasting air into them it would then create aerosols of the grime and spit in the sinks!

Hopefully this device operates at under 100 decibels.

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