Education, Heated Towel Racks, Information, Tech

Timers, controllers, and switches! Oh my!

Even though having warm and dry towels is great, one of the best features of our heated towel racks is the fact that they can help you conserve electricity!  By hanging up your damp towels to dry out on these towel warmers, you are drastically reducing the rate that mold and mildew can grow meaning you need less laundry cycles to keep them fresh — and since their energy consumption is equal to one or two lightbulbs, you end up saving energy in the long run!

But what if you want to save even more electricity and don’t want your heated towel rack running 24/7?  There are a few options that can help you control when it turns on, for how long, and how hot your unit gets:

Simple On/Off switch:

A simple Pilot-Light Switch with Indicator light

Just like most electrical appliances, our Heated Towel Racks can be wired to an on/off switch;  this is great for turning them off for long periods of time. Every heated towel rack, whether liquid-heated or cable-heated, does take time to reach peak temperature though meaning you might have to wait at least 15 minutes after turning it on for your towels to start getting warm. Because of this reason on/off switches are generally used in addition to timers or controllers that we will cover later in this post. Some units, like our Radiant collection, feature built-in switches directly on the unit.

Programmable Timer:

Plug-In Programmable TImer

Programmable timers can help people who are looking save energy by limiting the times their heated towel rack operates. This can be helpful if you find yourself using your towels the same time each day — many people set their units to turn on 30 or so minutes before they know they will be getting out of the shower, that way their towels are warm and ready without leaving the rack on all night. Any programmable timer that can be wired to a traditional circuit can be used in conjunction with our products, and we even offer plug-in timers for use with units from the Solo or Swivel Collections.

Digital Heat Controller:

9-Level Digital Heat Controller

Our larger cable-heated units (Sirio/Quadro/Antus/Vega collections) come included with a Digital Heat Controller (excluding S2121 and Q2016 models which come standard with an on/off switch). The Elory Collection does not include this digital heat controller as it has a built-in controller right in the unit. This controller let’s you set the level of heat that your model will put out: Due to the size and BTU’s (British thermal units) that some of these units generate we wanted to make sure that people can adjust the heat levels to suit their personal needs — lowering the heat levels during summer for example, or increasing them to dry thicker towels faster. Just like the other control accessories we offer, the digital heat controller can be wired with a switch and/or timer for more precise control.