Why do heated towel rails seem to be in every New Zealand home bathroom? Do they serve some purpose other than providing a hot towel to dry off with?
I had never seen one in the States. I never use mine. Why are they so ubiquitous here?
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Why do heated towel rails seem to be in every New Zealand home bathroom? Do they serve some purpose other than providing a hot towel to dry off with?
I had never seen one in the States. I never use mine. Why are they so ubiquitous here?
Because houses/bathrooms are sooo damp, that it is the only way to not get mouldy towels in case you use them more then once before putting in the washing machine.
Ditto to above. I really miss having one in current house.
Another Ditto
You got it all wrong..
http://tango.naurunappula.com/nn/0/304/297/o_442449.png
They are very common here as well and I remember seeing them in some countries in (good) hotels, too. My OH likes a little bit warm towels although we don't have those racks in our house.
The sales pitch for them is that the towels are nowadays so luxurious and thick that they take long time to dry. They are also sometimes installed also by the door so that you can dry your shoes or gloves during the winter -- the snow isn't wet outside but it will get wet when you come inside..
Houses in US/UK etc usually have some sort of central heating....so no need for a heated towel rail. In UK most people I know would dry their towels on or near the radiator, while here your towels would be smelling musty within 24 hours if you don't find a way of getting them dry.......I often hang ours out on the line now, rather than paying to heat the towel rail.
There's suprisingly small difference between a radiator and heated towel rail.. the old ones used to be connected to the central heating and had water running through them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Familyofmonkeys
I guess it's more about convenience. Here a lot of homes have in-floor heating in the bathroom even if rest of the house has radiators. And they still add heated towel rails to the bathrooms even if you have the latest and greatest house with in-floor heating, district AND geothermal heating, eco this and that. The towel will dry faster on the heated rail.
In the UK one can just drop the towels on the floor and the mat will soak all the water from them ;-)
:eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by petri
My OH was like that before he was house-trained :laugh
Houses is Scotland had/still have heated towel rails.
They were very common before widespread central heating and often were a heating option for the bathroom when central heating was installed. My friend in Skye still has them in her bathroom, as do the halls at Sabhal Mor Ostaig Gaelic College!
RJ, we do have them in the States, they are just uncommon. The 1st time I saw one was in a hotel in Big Bear. I think they're a luxury thing, like putting a towel in the dryer for after the shower.
As stated in the original posts, in NZ towel rails are not so much a luxury as a health item. Your towels will grow mildewy and grow all many of nasties before they will dry in many NZ bathrooms.
well there isn't a heated towel rail in this kiwi house and i wouldn't need one either, if only i had somewhere to hang my towels!
I personally consider them a luxury and have seen many houses without them.
I think they are quite expensive to run as well, I just leave my towels hanging out of a window
I am so glad to see this discussed.
I am familiar with towel warmers in most hotels in the US to make a nice hot towel to warm you after a shower.
But I have wondered about the use of them at home.
Am I supposed to keep it on all the time? That must get expensive.
Or just to heat up the towel before the shower? (it takes a really long time to warm up so this can't be right)
Now you tell me it is to dry the towel? so should I leave it on for hours after a shower?
Is it supposed to warm the bathroom at all? (they don't really)
I just hang our clean towels on ours--but never turn them on. Seems like a waste of electricity.
But the idea that they are to DRY THE TOWELS is new to me.:o
Anybody know if they use much electricity or not?
Around about 80 watts - 40cents a day if you leave them on for 24 hours. I have a timer on mine, so comes on an hour before I shower in the morning, and remains on for a couple of hours afterwards to dry out the towels.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrumpyGoat
Drying the towels outside does not seem to be very popular?:exit
ditto!!Quote:
Originally Posted by GrumpyGoat
It's popular with me!!:DQuote:
Originally Posted by newarrival
I've never seen them in Canada either though have heard of them used in luxurious hotels or mansions.
I also never understood the NZ aspect of being "energy-wise or green" with huge promotion for getting home owners to switch from incandescent light bulbs to CFL (compact fluorescent light bulbs). But electricity consumption for lighting in the average kiwi home is a whopping 5%.
I can't see how using such towel heaters as being green. Nor with underfloor heating systems. Though I have no complaints on the use of hot water solar systems. From what I recall, hot water heating for the average home is nearly 50% of total electricity consumption.
I was fooled. I bought power outlet timers from Bunnings thinking I could save power. What I discovered was these unit themselves chew through power alone that the savings by keeping say a laptop power adaptor plugged in was no different than having the timer itself plugged in.
BQ
I should have said "in California they're luxury items" as even the colder areas here don't have near the humidity of NZ houses:nice1.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nathan
When we first toured NZ, we were SO impressed by the heated towel racks in all the hotels (which were only 3-star). "Wow," we thought, "isn't it lovely that they're so into this little LUXURY in New Zealand?"
We very quickly realised that they are not a luxury here: they are an absolute necessity. Unless you wash your towels every 2 days, if you don't hang them on a warmer, they will still be damp and clammy the next time you need to use them – and as others have said, you'll soon find that you're culturing your very own little colony of mildew.
We don't wash our towels every 2 days, neither do we turn on the heated towel rail - and we have yet to see mouldy towels covered in mildew. I use them to hang clean towels on when I can be bothered, mostly my towels are folded in the cupboard or hanging over the bedposts for use the next morning!
During the winter I change my towels about every 3 days because they start smelling of mildew. My OH wouldn't notice, but I HATE that smell.
I suppose it really depends where in NZ you are.
In Auckland we used to tumble dry all of our towels in the morning for 20 minutes....it was the only way we could keep them from smelling musty, and even in the summer we needed to hand them on the line for a couple of hours each morning. Funny thing is, here in Canterbury the temperature when we get up in the morning is lower than the temperatures we left behind in Auckland.....but it feels soooo much warmer due to the lower humidity and there is no condensation on the windows at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanium
If you're somewhere that has the non-drying towels problem (experienced by us visiting Auckland in winter), you're quite likely to be using a dehumidifier in the house, and hanging the towels near that helps a lot. I also had two sets of towels in use, one ready in the bathroom and one hanging up drying.
We've got a heated towel rail but we don't need to use it to dry the towels, as they generally dry out pretty quickly anyway (well, mine do. My husband's don't as he tends to leave them in a heap on the floor....). But I do use it to warm up my clothes in the winter so I have toasty warm clothes to put on after my shower.... mmmm, lovely.
The problem being we don't have a tumble dryer (nor a place to put one) and the house is very much not airtight so running a dehumidifier is like throwing money out the window.
But it's the best we can afford. :) I'm not complaining, I have plenty of towels for this reason and it's only a problem during the wettest part of the winter.
Is central air to far advance for NZ? That would eliminate the need for towel racks. It would also solve other issues. However when I have Tiptop ice cream I forget about damp towels:)
Way too advanced!!! We have a heated light bulb in our bathroom, as do many other places we have seen, this combined with a heated towel rail is about as good as it gets.Quote:
Originally Posted by donkeykong
Some newer places have underfloor heating in bathrooms, but again people complain that they simply can't justify the expense of actually switching it on.
I hardly ever switch the towel rail on, sometime I put it on when I have a bath, in the vain hope that it will warm the bathroom up on particularly chilly nights.
In the UK now it's quite the thing to have a heated towel rail plumbed in to the central heating, in place of a standard radiator.
What's that? I thought all (most?) light bulbs get hot after they've been on for a while ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ngeru
We have heat lamps in the bathroom (and a heated rail which I don't use very often), they also incorporate an extractor fan. I remember one of the housebuilder's posted a picture of the one they had installed. I see them in lots of homes.Quote:
Originally Posted by petri
Edited to add: http://www.enz.org/forum/showthread....ve%27s&page=25 It was Caroline and Dave's photographs which included the heat/light/extractor pictures :nice1
Our first NZ rental had one (as has every other rental- but we were green at the time) and I didn't realise the previous tenants had replaced the heater bulbs with standard bulbs ... one exploded all over me. It was difficult to get the glass fragments out of my hair but I was always very grateful it was me and not the kids or my partner who had very short hair at the time.
Ah, ok! I've seen them somewhere on our trips, perhaps in NZ. OH wants all the heat she can find and I remember her saying that those things didn't work ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by YouMeAndThree
I've seen plenty that do work very well....toasty bathroom :)Quote:
Originally Posted by petri
Probably worth looking on-line at the different types available and reading reviews if you are considering purchsing any.
the inlaws have one and it works very very well, infact so well that i don't bother turning it on, cos it just gets too hot in there!
We have 3 - one in each bathroom.
Personally, I think they are like living in 70's Britain. That said, my boarding school was built in the early 1900's and that had full central heating!
We run 4 heat pumps in the winter, so things dry reasonably well. We also use a dehumidifier a lot - and run the heat pumps as a/c in the summer often as it gets pretty warm here in Martinborough.
Our first 2 winters we sat and shivered around oil heaters and then decided that there was no way we'd have lived like that in the UK and we could see no reason why we should do so here - so we never have again!
We also put new draught seals on all the windows to stop the curtains moving in the wind....!