air dryer power

[mindstalk]

At the place I'm staying now, there's a hair dryer prominently labeled as 1875 Watts. That's... a lot. A 5000 BTU/hour window air conditioner is 1465 Watts. Small and effective [1] space heaters are often 1000 or 1500 Watts. No wonder hair dryers can trip breakers.

[1] Unless trying to heat a cavernous and leaky basement on low power.

Comments

[mtbc]

Well, space heaters take a while to be effective: one wants hot air from the dryer immediately. In my childhood bedroom in the winter when there would be ice on the inside of the window I would stand right in front of what I think was a 3kW blowing-hot-air heater to get dressed.

[mindstalk]

Space heaters generate heat pretty quickly; what takes a while is heating a whole room.

[mtbc]

It takes a good amount of energy to evaporate water: somebody wanting to dry a mass of wet hair who wants to be heading out to work in a few minutes' time is not going to want to hang around. Similarly, I'd have my 3kW heater on only for a few minutes in total: the point was it could blast me with some real warmth in a near-freezing room for that brief time in between getting out of bed and being dressed. I grant I could have warmed some pizza slices atop a space heater in that same time but, for hair dryers, rapidly drying wet stuff is a taller order. I guess that's also why tumble driers need the 220V outlet.