Introduction: Improved- Drying Rack

Google drive link for entire documentation: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sD6d2JH0gOHpGrmiBqGyipl9bJ3a7r56?usp=sharing

In humid cities like Kochi and Mumbai, in the monsoon, clothes do not dry because of the atmospheric humidity and saturation levels. This rain goes on for 6 months through the year with the problem persisting for long periods of time. This leads to people drying their clothes inside their houses – causing the development of a musty odour, moisture gathering inside the house and blocking up space in the house. So, we came up with the idea of making a clothes rack that dries clothes faster and can solve these problems.

Supplies

  • 1 inch diameter PVC pipes – 18 ft
  • 0.5 inch diameter PVC pipes – 16 ft
  • 1 inch diameter pipe joints – 8
  • 1 Exhaust fan 220 V 
  • 1 Plug 
  • 5 meter coiled wire
  • Plywood sheet 

Step 1: Problem Statement

This is a problem faced by us and our families in the monsoon season: our clothes do not dry due to the external humidity. We think it needs to be addressed because it causes an inconvenience where a room or a space is needed to be put aside for the drying of clothes and that space becomes humid, there is also an odour that develops because of the dampness of the clothes. This is a problem that occurs in coastal cities like Kochi and Mumbai whenever it rains.



Step 2: SDG in Focus

Good Health and Well Being - SDG 3

Industry innovation and Infrastructure - SDG 9



Step 3: Solution Brainstorming

  1. Using an air conditioner 
  2. Increase air circulation 
  3. Repurpose the hot air from the kitchen
  4. Use an exhaust fan
  5. Optimising cross-ventilation
  6. Using moisture absorbers
  7. Using chemicals to absorb moisture from clothes
  8. Dehumidifying the room
  9. Getting a dryer
  10. Exercise machine that also dries clothes
  11. Hanging the clothes over a flame
  12. Using an clothes iron
  13. Laying the clothes flat instead of hanging them
  14. Place the clothes in a way that they can dry faster
  15. Increasing the surface area of the exposed part of the wet clothes


Step 4: Final Solution

This device has a unique structure and exhaust fan that exhausts the humid air in the local surroundings of clothes on a drying rack. 


Using a laser cutter, we designed and cut joint boxes to hold the structure we had in mind. These boxes held the PVC pipes at around a sixty degree angle so that more clothes could be hung whilst eliminating the issue of clothes dripping water onto the clothes hung below.


Attachments

Step 5: Design Process

  • Ideating - We first decided that it would be easiest to work with PVC pipes for the frame of our clothes rack. We got the pipes for the skeleton to be 1 inch diameter and the rods that would hold the clothes to be of a half inch diameters. We also bought ninety degree joints for the top and bottom square frames of the rack. 
  • Drills - We drilled holes into our PVC pipes - with hole cutters - that were angled at sixty degrees so as to easily slot the half inch diameter rods into them.
  • CAD modelling - Then we designed boxes that we used as the joints for the bottom skeleton - where the frame made a 60 degree angle to the x-axis. 
  • Laser cutting - These boxes were laser cut from plywood and assembled by us. We also laser cut a board for the top of the rack to fit the exhaust fan so as to make the exhaust stable at the top. 
  • Electronics - We also connected the fan to an a.c. power supply and plugged it using a socket. 


  • https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11mGFbfsaR8hs2sfawtPkAScgHd9sQzzy?usp=sharing is the link with the rld box files that we used for laser cutting.

Step 6: Challenges Faced and Their Solutions

  1. One of the first challenges we faced was that the frame we had designed had the rods going upward at 60 degree angles. We could not get such joints for our pipes. Therefore, we had to laser cut boxes that had an ellipse at the top and could fit the pipes at 60 degree angles to the perpendicular plane. 
  2. Our original design had a provision for placing fans in the boxes for the joints. This posed another problem as we had to then design a way to channel the airflow from the fans into the connected pipes. We then decided to use a large blower and channel the air directly into one pipe that was linked to all the others instead of working with four individual fans. 
  3. We wanted to create a structure that had a local humidity that was less than that of the humidity of the room. We decided to do this by placing an exhaust fan at the top of our stand so that the moist air could be released and new, dry air could take its place inside the rack. We realized that the inside of the rack would need ventilation since it was closed from all sides so the exhaust fan would be an optimal solution.


Step 7: Testing and Efficiency

We then tested the drying rack for checking if it was more efficient that our usual drying rack, the given analysis is based on 4 trials that were taken at different times of the day, the average values are given below:

Jute: our dryer to normal rack is 1 hr 20 mins to 1 hour 56 mins

Cotton: 27 mins to 52 mins

Synthetic: 15 mins to 28 mins

Every effort was to taken to keep the test conditions the same as the same piece of cloth was tested for both, the external surroundings were kept constant.