Mitsubishi Jet Towel hand dryers are helping a progressive independent girls’ school maintain its commitment to bettering the environment wherever possible.
Queenswood School has occupied the same beautiful parkland site for almost 100 years, which it believes contributes to the positive energy of the school, the happiness and rounded development of its 400 girls.
Most of its buildings are fine examples of Arts & Craft architecture, and the estates department is undertaking a 15 year programme to refurbish and modernise them all. Where new build or extension of an existing building is required, they are at pains to achieve a seamless match of style, proportion and palette.
New for the 2011-12 academic year will be will be a refurbished second Lower School boarding house for 45, Year 7 and 8 (11-12 year old) students.
“At this age, the girls like to share bedrooms, so we have four, five and six bedded rooms and a couple of bathrooms on each floor so it’s never far to walk at night,” explains Janet Smiths one of Queenswood’s management team. “Later on, the sixth formers prefer en-suite single or twin rooms.”
When rebuilding the Middle School houses a few years ago a policy decision was taken to move away from conventional hand dryers towards a more modern solution. Estates Manager Ian Brownjohn explains:
“Originally we leased hand dryers, but we decided to move away from this to give us greater flexibility and took the opportunity to re-evaluate the apparently mundane task of hand drying.
There is a definite rush hour in the mornings and another at bedtime, which we thought we could eradicate with a high speed dryer.”
Ian enjoyed a partial success with hand dryers for the Middle School boarders, but thought he could do better the second time around.
“The units we originally chose were of rather brash appearance, which clashed with the rest of the ambience. Also they were noisy, particularly at night and we suspected that they would have the potential to upset the younger girls in the lower school.”
A review of the options left Ian in no doubt that Mitsubishi Jet Towels lived up to Queenswood standards in all way. Whisper quiet and understated in their elegance, they have a typical dryer time of 10 seconds per user. They also make an energy saving of about 70 percent over other dryers, another contribution to environmental excellence.
Jet Towels do not use a flood overheated air to evaporate moisture from hands. Instead cleverly designed and positioned nozzles create a thin plane of high speed air that blows the droplets off. A far lower volume of air is used, hence the energy savings.
“Significantly for a school, the air and water is all directed into a drain in the unit,” Ian observes. “This means bacteria are all captured and disposed of, rather than blown around the room in an incubating bubble of warm air. So if one girl has a sniffle or the start of a cold, it is far less likely to be spread to her friends.”
The contact areas of Jet Towel are made from antimicrobial material to further reduce the incidence of person to person transfer.
Janet again: “At Queenswood our attention to detail is legendary. If there is a better way to do anything that is the way we do it! Our overriding commitment is to help the girls develop their full potential and providing the right environment is a crucial element in the plan. “I think that with the Jet Towel we may have found the very best in hand dryers, ones that are worthy of a place at Queenswood.”
