During a show intermission in the fine arts center at a historical, 650-student college preparatory academy, the head of the school watched as students and parents waited in line in a restroom to use, slow hand dryers. Frustrated by the long wait times, several of the patrons left the restrooms with dripping hands.

The Academy decided it was time to upgrade its restroom hand dryers in three of its five facilities on campus.

One of the challenges in upgrading the hand dryers in the fine arts center was to balance the need for faster, more powerful hand dryers with the necessity to keep noise to a minimum so as not to disturb the center’s events in the nearby auditorium. Another challenge the Academy faced was the hand dryers in the field house had to be ADA compliant.

The Academy's maintenance department began to research the different hand dryer manufacturers, even visiting different public locations in the community to test different models. Eventually, the school settled on World Dryer. The Academy at that time had hand dryers from various manufacturers, including several 30-year-old World Dryer workhorses.

For the fine arts center, the Academy selected World Dryer’s SMARTdri Plus because it is an energy efficient and hygienic high-speed hand dryer. SMARTdri Plus’ intelligent and flexible controls allow customizing of high-speed air flow, sound quality and heating options. Maintenance could adjust the fast, powerful hand dryers with sound at a minimum level so as not to disturb performances.

In the field house, ADA concerns led to the selection of the rapid-dry SLIMdri hand dryers, which are 40 percent faster and 70 percent more energy efficient than other surface-mounted ADA hand dryers. For the third facility, the academic building, the Academy installed World Dryer’s AirMax hand dryers that feature high-speed dry times of under 15 seconds and use only 50 percent of the energy traditional hand dryers require.

The school ordered all the dryers to be automatic, hands-free and stainless steel for better sanitary conditions. The maintenance director said the energy efficiency of the dryers — SMARTdri Plus hand dryers use only 12 percent of the energy of traditional dryers — was also important as it helped reduce the electrical load on the Academy’s branch circuit.

“World Dryer understood that we had different needs for hand drying in each of our buildings, such as speed, sound and being ADA compliant,” the Academy said. “All the hand dryers are high quality and have their purpose. They took the time to understand our concerns and offer us the right solutions. World Dryer offers extra services that other companies don’t. We couldn’t be happier.”