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By David High, Schooldesigner Writer
If you spend much time talking to architects, you know how they can obsess over details. They can spend hours searching for the doorknob that feels just right when you open the door. They can pore over lighting catalogs, and then call the manufacturer because they still haven't found the perfect fixture. They will travel to quarries to personally select the marble for an important feature. This attention to detail is an essential part of the architect's job; they are hired to think about parts of a building that most people wouldn't consider.
But there are some parts of a building that even the architect might not really think about. After all, there are some parts of buildings that never change. Or are there? Bill Gagnon, of Excel Dryer Corporation, wants to challenge that assumption. Over the past decade, Excel has taken the ubiquitous hand dryer and scrutinized it from all angles. "People don't think past the restroom to the actual act of drying hands" says Gagnon. But Excel's researchers did, and it's time to dump that memory of that noisy white box in your old school bathroom.
For starters, Excel looked at the big picture. "We teamed up with a leading plumbing manufacturer to create straightforward specs for a LEED bathroom", Gagnon continued. "After all, everybody knows about low flow toilets. But it doesn't make sense to focus on plumbing while overlooking an inefficient dryer." Excel backs up their green credentials with some pretty convincing customers. The U.S. Green Building Council, who created the LEED rating system, uses XLERATOR dryers in their Platinum-rated headquarters.
The big picture also includes significant savings for the end user, as Excel studied the hidden costs beyond the act of drying hands. Not only do dryers save the cost of towels, they offer significant savings on maintenance. Have you ever considered how much work goes into supplying paper towels? Not only do towel dispensers require checking, they produce trash bags of full of bulky waste. The whole system requires monitoring and storage in stockrooms, bathrooms and maintenance rooms. In light of these considerations, it's no wonder schools are Excel's number one customer.
Gagnon stresses the importance of checking with architects and specification writers to make sure their specifications have been updated. "You can't cut and paste your old specifications" he says.
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