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I have been asked to look into getting some sort of drying cabinet for the office so that people can hang up/dry their sweaty or otherwise wet cycling gear. At the moment this is pretty much just me :P
A few hundred quid was mentioned. I had a quick look and found this http://www.pekodryingcabinets.co.uk/products/peko-ets-1500-drying-cabinet/ but it's about £500 and needs venting to outside, which I'm pretty sure will be shot down as OTT.
Any ideas or pointers?
If I said cardboard box and hairdryer would that be helpful?
We're looking to improve our facilities at work too - and somewhere to dry towels and kit is fairly high up my wish list. So, I'd be interested in examples too.
Clothes pulley in the computer room? (If you have such a thing)
I asked my wife what people did at her work and she said "the cyclists at work are disgusting and I bet you are too"
How much space do you have?
In a similar discussion on another forum a dehumidifier as well as a source of heat was mentioned...
We have lab and office space. The cupboards and computer room are off the lab space so are not an option due to risk of contamination. In the office space the drying items will need to be out of sight. It might be possible to add extra hooks by the showers/toilets (communal space shared by different companies) but I'm pretty sure this would quickly become unpopular. Maybe not, and perhaps that's the simplest solution. I guess moist cycling clothes are unlikely to be targeted by thieves :P
Would the items dry normally if simply hung up in the office space? If yes, then you probably just want a cupboard with lots of vents to allow air to move through.
Most office air-con spends its time cooling the place down, and removing moisture from the air. I'd forget about a heat source and think about how and where the air-con makes the air flow.
Big cheap flatpack cupboard/wardrobe (off Freecycle or from Bright Green Initiative or whatever) with a cheap dehumidifier (British Heart Foundation maybe?) inside might work.
Somebody will need to empty the dehumidifier bucket though.
Office ac will deal with the humidity so some heat and air flow is all that's really needed.
As note above it's not just heating that's required, it's ventilation. Our office drying room is useless when the heating's on but the extractors are off, far too humid.
I take it you have no access to a plant room?
One of our offices has a changing room which tops out at about 29° and near-saturation, with a "drying room" next to it which was only slightly cooler due to the absence of warm people most of the time. Never tried to dry anything in there but I wouldn't fancy its chances. My own office only has changing-room hookbenches, so is useless after a rainy commute - I usually take my stuff upstairs and stick it on the radiators behind some cupboards, where no-one has yet complained about it.
We have something similar to the Peko cabinet (it may even be a Peko unit...) in the offices I work in. One building has four of these, two with 'racks' (good for draping clothes, tops, shorts etc) and two with a gazillion 'hooks' inside (perfect for towels etc). This serves the various cyclists, runners and other sporting types as well as regular folks on wet days. In winter it's a challenge to make space for yet more sopping clothing. Some folks in my office do leave things on radiators, but the efficacy of our heating is questionable.
These do seem to have some sort of venting. In our Glasgow office, the dryer lives in the basement so it seems to pump out moisture/warmth into the otherwise airy carparking area.
These dryers work very well and within a few hours damp kit is suitably warm and dry.
The stuff people leave behind/abandon in the dryers is a source of some wonderment to regular habitues of the cycling locker room. There's various swim costumes, socks, cycling kit, suits and trousers. You'd think you'd notice if you walked into a business meeting with shirt, tie and suit jacket but no trousers...
We have a very good Miele dryer in the shower room. The disabled toilet was converted to two smaller shower cubicles when we expanded as the new space has a disabled toilet too. The 'porch' outside the two new showers has room for lockers and the dryer. Its very efficient and pumps out only dry air. Its A rated.
One place I worked had an industrial tumble drier. That got soaking kit dry in about an hour. Could you not get a condensing tumble dryer?
Asked about this in my workplace some years ago when they were still keen on encouraging cycling. As Nellie will confirm, it's a BIG place - but I was told there was no space anywhere in the building to install any kind of drying facility.
We have the Peko drying cabinets too, a combination of the older ETS-650 and the current ETS-1900TR models. They're brilliant on wet days but they do need to be vented to the outside or an otherwise well ventilated area. At my work we converted some old toilets to changing rooms and were able to run the cabinet hoses to atmosphere.
Peko says:
"Is the cabinet available with condenser / heat pump technology drying?
Yes. The Podab TS 63 VP is an energy efficient cabinet using heat pump technology. Other models are currently undergoing field trials. It is hoped that these will be available in the UK sometime during 2014. Existing cabinets can be operated in conjunction with a separate condenser box to prevent the build up moisture in the room. The condenser box is available from independent suppliers."
It's worth noting that if you have a condenser, either you need to plumb it into a drain or have someone contracted or volunteering to empty it periodically.
I wouldn't get too hung up on sub-1 hour drying times, as most people seem to allow themselves at least half a day.
On the back of what Snowy suggested, you might alternatively look at wire mesh lockers with integral solid dividers:
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/wire-mesh-lockers
and these will let stuff air-dry by itself.
Arellcat to the rescue as always. Those wire lockers are exactly what I recalled someone in here describing.
Our tiny, cold, wet showers are right next to two large toilet blocks. Am hoping we can convert them too. May not happen, but there is some chance.
The driers look neat too. I'd not known there was an option like that.
"I was told there was no space anywhere in the building to install any kind of drying facility"
@tfl, indeed - as our recent experience re additional space for bike racks tells, car travel is everything and common sense in short supply.
I hang mine on coat racks next to drinks/coffee machines in an alcove along from desk. They give out so much heat that it acts like a mini drying room.
@nelly Mine hang on hangers at the end of my row of desks. This corner of the floor is always much hotter than the rest of the area so things tend to dry by hometime.
Luckily, despite doing it for almost 10 years now, no-one has ever complained despite the occasional whiff some of my tops give off when wet/sweaty)
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