JP2007315656A - Clothes drying system and its operation control method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a clothes drying system using a bathroom heater and its operation control method, which evenly carry out drying without damaging fabric even when drying different types of clothes together. <P>SOLUTION: Bathroom type determination operation is started by having a user press a bathroom type determination operation SW of a controller 10 (step S101). After an operation start, temperature data of a temperature sensor 8 is acquired by the controller 10 every predetermined time (step S102). After passage of a certain time (e.g. 30 minutes), comparison between acquired temperature rise data and stored data of a determination table is carried out (step S103). For example, in Fig.2, when actual measurement data Br indicated by the middle broken line is acquired, B2 most approximate to the curve Br is determined as the bathroom type. By such steps, the bathroom type is determined (step S104), and subsequent clothes drying control is carried out on the assumption that bathroom internal temperature rise is of the B2 type. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a clothes drying system and an operation control method thereof, and more particularly, to a clothes drying system using a bathroom heater (dryer) installed in a bathroom and an operation control method thereof.

Conventionally, in clothes drying using a bathroom heater (dryer), the circulating hot water supplied from the heat source machine is guided to the heat exchanger inside the equipment, and the bathroom air is sucked and heated by the heat exchanger to obtain hot air. . Furthermore, the temperature in the bathroom is further increased by supplying warm air into the bathroom, or the clothes are dried by directly blowing warm air. In this case, the drying control is performed based on the humidity and temperature information of the bathroom air to be sucked in (for example, Patent Document 1).
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-170050

  However, the conventional drying control method using a bathroom dryer has a problem that uniform drying cannot be performed because the time required for drying varies depending on the position where clothes are dried in the bathroom and the type of clothes. Moreover, since different types of clothes are dried with the same control, there is a risk of damaging the fabric depending on the type of fiber. Furthermore, there are multiple standard bathroom types for unit baths, etc., but conventional bathroom dryers do not have a drying program corresponding to the bathroom size (type) and cannot control the drying time. There's a problem.

  The present invention is intended to solve such problems, and even when different types of clothes are dried together, the clothes drying system is uniform and does not damage the cloth, and its operation control method. Is to provide. In addition, the present invention provides a clothing drying system and an operation control method thereof that can inform a user of an estimated time required for drying completion corresponding to a bathroom type (area).

The gist of the present invention is as follows. That is,
The invention of claim 1 is a clothing drying system that uses a bathroom heater installed on a bathroom ceiling, etc., and for each zone of a plurality of zones partitioning the interior of the bathroom, the standard drying when the standard clothing is dried With respect to the time information table, one or a plurality of clothes to be dried to be brought into the bathroom, clothes information acquisition means for acquiring clothes information including ease of drying, and each drying object based on the standard drying time information and clothes information A means for calculating a predicted drying time when the clothes are dried in each zone; and a means for determining a desired combination based on the predicted drying time from the combination of the clothes to be dried and the drying zone. This is a clothing drying system.
According to the present invention, an efficient and user-desired clothing arrangement can be selected. For example, it is possible to arrange the position of the garment that is most difficult to dry in the zone that is most apt to dry, and it is also possible to arrange the clothes so that the drying time of each garment is average.
In the present invention, “clothing information” is information including an index of the ease of drying of clothing, and information on fiber type, fabric thickness, etc. is exemplified.
In addition, as “standard clothing”, clothing having standard drying conditions can be selected.

In the above, drying using the drying time information table for a plurality of standard type bathrooms, standard type means for determining which type the bathroom corresponds to, and the drying time information table for the corresponding standard type bathroom And a means for calculating the predicted time. (Claim 2)
In the above, the standard type bathroom determination means, when the bathroom heater is installed in each standard bathroom and operated under the standard conditions, the suction temperature temporal change information table, and the bathroom heater is installed in the target bathroom as a reference With the standard bathroom type having means for obtaining the time-dependent change data of the suction temperature when operated under the conditions and the suction temperature time-dependent change data approximating the suction temperature time-dependent change data of the bathroom, the bathroom type of the bathroom And determining means. (Claim 3)
In unit baths and the like, there are a plurality of types of bathroom types (areas), and the temperature distribution in the bathroom and the rate of temperature rise during the operation of the bathroom heater differ depending on the bathroom type. A table used for drying operation control suitable for a bathroom in which a bathroom heater is installed, by providing the drying time information table for a plurality of standard type bathrooms as in the present invention, and comparing with the time-lapse actual measurement data of the suction temperature. Can be identified.

In the above, the clothing information acquisition means includes an IC tag attached to the clothing and an IC reader / writer disposed in the vicinity of the bathroom entrance.
According to the present invention, it is possible to specify clothes to be dried without input by the user.
According to the invention of claim 5, in the garment drying system, after the operation is started, the operation is temporarily stopped after the time corresponding to the clothing of the predicted drying time, and the operation is resumed only when a re-operation instruction is received. It is the operation | movement control method of the clothing drying system characterized.
According to the present invention, the operation is temporarily stopped in the middle of the drying operation, the entire drying state can be checked, and further, the clothing arrangement can be changed, so that more efficient drying operation control can be performed.
The invention of claim 6 is provided with a suction temperature temporal change information table when operating under reference conditions for a plurality of standard type bathrooms, and acquires suction temperature temporal change data when operating under reference conditions in the target bathroom. And a means for determining a bathroom type of the target bathroom by using a standard bathroom type having suction temperature aging information approximate to the suction temperature aging data. It is a heater.
According to the bathroom heater of the present invention, efficient operation control suitable for the purpose can be performed not only for clothes drying but also for bathroom heating and other uses.

According to the present invention, it is possible to specify the position to dry for each piece of clothing, so that the drying conditions can be made uniform and the clothing can be dried without damaging the fabric.
Moreover, since it operates according to the optimal clothing drying program corresponding to the type (area) of a bathroom, there exists an effect that a user can be notified of the standard of drying time.

  Hereinafter, an embodiment of a clothes drying system according to the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to FIGS. In addition, in order to avoid duplication, in each figure, the same structure is shown using the same code | symbol. Needless to say, the scope of the present invention is described in the claims and is not limited to the following embodiments.

(First embodiment)
The present embodiment provides a measure of the clothes drying time of the bathroom with respect to specifying the bathroom type. FIG. 1 shows an overall configuration of a clothes drying system 1 according to the present embodiment. FIG. 2 is a conceptual diagram of a temperature change information table during standard operation of a bathroom heater in a standard bathroom type. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a control flow of the present embodiment.

  Referring to FIG. 1, a clothes drying system 1 includes a bathroom dryer 2 provided on a ceiling portion of a bathroom 3 and a controller 10 provided outside the bathroom 3 as main components. The bathroom 3 is provided with an entrance door 7, a bathtub 4 inside, and a clothes pole 5 for drying clothes 6 to be dried near the ceiling. The bathroom dryer 2 includes a suction fan 2e, a heat exchanger 2b, a blowout louver 2d, a suction louver 2c, and a controller 2f that exchanges signals with the controller 10 and controls a drying operation inside the housing 2a. In the vicinity of the suction louver 2c, a temperature sensor 8 and a humidity sensor 9 for measuring the temperature of the air in the bathroom and humidity are arranged, and the measurement result can be transmitted to the control unit 2f at any time. A hot water pipe (not shown) is connected to the heat exchanger 2b, and hot water supplied from a heat source machine (not shown) is configured to circulate inside the heat exchanger. With such a configuration, the bathroom dryer 2 can heat the bathroom air sucked from the suction louver 2c by the heat exchanger 2b into warm air, and supply it to the bathroom 3 through the blowout louver 2d.

  The controller 10 includes a CPU, a RAM, a ROM, a memory unit, and the like (not shown), and is based on a predetermined program stored in the ROM in response to a user request and / or a detection value of each sensor. It is comprised so that each below-mentioned control may be performed. In addition, in the memory section of the controller 10, the suction temperature change information when the bathroom dryer 2 is installed on the ceiling of three standard unit buses B1, B2, and B3 having different sizes and operated under the standard conditions. Has a table. The stored data is a value corresponding to the suction temperature change curve of FIG. Further, the front panel of the controller 10 is provided with a display unit (not shown), various operation control SWs, a clothing information input key described later, and the like.

  The clothes drying system 1 is configured as described above. Next, the bathroom type determination flow in this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. When the user presses the bathroom type determination operation SW (not shown) of the controller 10, the bathroom type determination operation is started (step S101). After the operation is started, the temperature data of the temperature sensor 8 is taken into the controller 10 every predetermined time (for example, 1 minute) (step S102). After a certain time (for example, 30 minutes), the captured temperature rise data is compared with the stored data in the determination table (step S103). For example, when actual measurement data Br indicated by a broken line in FIG. 2 is obtained, B2 closest to the curve Br is determined as the bathroom type. For the determination, for example, a least square method can be used. The bathroom type is determined by the above steps (step S104), and the subsequent clothing drying control can be performed on the premise of the B2 type bathroom temperature increase.

In this embodiment, three types of standard bathrooms are used. However, the type of the standard bathroom is not limited to this, and more types can be used.
Moreover, although it was set as the form which performs bathroom type determination based on suction | inhalation temperature rise, it can also be set as the form determined using the humidity change table accompanying the clothing drying after washing in the standard type bathroom calculated | required beforehand.

(Second embodiment)
Next, another embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. This embodiment corresponds to clothing drying control after the bathroom type is determined in the above-described embodiment. Since the configuration of the present embodiment is the same as that of the clothing drying system 1 according to the first embodiment, redundant description is omitted.

  FIG. 4 is an A-A ′ arrow view in FIG. 1. In the figure, the bathroom 3 is divided into five drying zones Z1 to Z5 having the same width. Points P1 to P5 are the center of each drying zone and the point h below the pole 5, and are defined as representative points of humidity change that is a measure for drying clothes in each drying zone.

  FIG. 5 shows the humidity change during drying at the representative points P1 to P5. In the figure, the time required to reach the drying completion humidity Wf (for example, 20%) from the drying start humidity Wi (for example, 80%) at each representative point is indicated by τk (k = 1 to 5).

  FIG. 6 shows the type classification of clothing to be dried and the drying time coefficient of each type. The clothing type is classified as a combination of fiber type and fabric thickness, the fiber type is classified into three categories: wool, cotton, and synthetic fiber, and the fabric thickness is classified into three categories: thick, normal, and thin. A classification number Cij (i = 1-3, j = 1-3) is assigned to each classification (upper stage). Furthermore, the lower part of each column shows the drying time coefficient Dij for each clothing type. Each value is shown as a ratio when the drying time of standard clothing type D22 (here, cotton / ordinary combination) is 1.0.

  With the predicted drying time τk and the drying time coefficient Dij, it is possible to predict the drying time when the clothing to be dried is placed at any representative point. That is, the drying time T (Cij) when clothing of the clothing type Cij is arranged in the drying zone Zk is expressed by the following equation.

T (Cij) = τk × Dij (1)
Using the equation (1), the calculation when the clothing to be dried is placed in an arbitrary zone is performed for all combinations. A combination zone arrangement that minimizes the variance value of T (Cij) is set as a recommended zone arrangement.

Next, the clothes drying control flow of this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG. The user inputs the clothing ID and the clothing type according to the classification of FIG. 6 for a plurality of clothing to be dried with a corresponding key (not shown) of the controller 10 (step S201). As the clothing ID, a number assigned to a hanger or the like of each clothing is input. Based on the input information, the control unit performs the above calculation for each clothing ID (step S202). Furthermore, the recommended zone arrangement with the minimum dispersion value of T (Cij) and the predicted drying time are displayed (step S203).
FIG. 8 conceptually shows the contents displayed on the display unit (not shown) of the controller 10. The user hangs each garment at the designated position according to the display and starts the drying operation (step S204). After the start of operation, after the estimated time required for drying the clothes with the shortest drying time has elapsed (step S205), the operation is temporarily stopped (step S206). At this stage, the user can check the dry state, determine whether or not to restart the operation (step S207), and can change the hanging position as appropriate. For example, the clothing with the longest predicted drying time can be moved to the high temperature zone Z3. Thereafter, the operation is resumed (step S208), and after a predetermined time has elapsed (step S209), the operation is terminated (step S210).
In the present embodiment, one garment is arranged in one zone. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and a plurality of garments may be arranged in one zone.
Further, in this embodiment, the louver of the bathroom heater is fixed and the wind direction is constant, but not limited to this, the wind direction is variable, and the louver may be directed to a zone where clothes that take drying time are arranged. it can.

(Third embodiment)
Furthermore, another embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating a clothing drying system 30 according to the present embodiment. FIG. 10 is a diagram showing control blocks for the IC reader / writer 31 and the IC tag 32. The difference between the present embodiment and the second embodiment is that the user performs the determination of the clothing type. In the present embodiment, the IC tag and the IC reader attached to the clothing are used. This is done automatically based on the read data of the writer. Referring to FIG. 9, the configuration of the clothing drying system 30 according to the present embodiment is different from the above-described clothing drying system 1 in that an IC reader / writer 31 is provided on the upper portion of the entrance door 7 and is carried into the bathroom. The IC tag 32 is attached to the clothing.

  Next, referring to FIG. 10A, the control block of the IC reader / writer 31 includes a control unit (CPU) 31a that controls the entire operation, a memory unit 31c that stores a control program, etc., and a controller of the bathroom dryer 2. 10 includes a transmission / reception unit 31b that performs communication with the IC 10, a communication unit 31d that receives data from the IC tag 32, and an antenna 32e that performs wireless transmission and reception with the IC tag 32. Also, referring to FIG. 2B, the control block of the IC tag 32 generates power by a control unit (CPU) 32a, a memory unit 32c for storing clothing information and a control program, etc., and a non-contact induced current method. A power generation unit 31d that supplies power to each unit and an antenna 32e that performs wireless transmission and reception with the IC reader / writer 31 are provided as main components. The memory unit 32c stores the clothing ID and clothing type (fiber type and fabric thickness information) as clothing information. Since the other structure is the same as the clothing drying system 1, description is abbreviate | omitted.

  Next, the clothes drying control flow of this embodiment will be described. The clothes drying control flow is basically the same as the control flow (FIG. 8) of the second embodiment. The difference is that the IC reader / writer 31 reads the clothing information attached to the IC tag 32 at the time of carry-in and transmits it to the controller 10 instead of the user inputting the drying type in step S101. is there. The subsequent flow is the same as in FIG. In this way, the drying control is performed as in the second embodiment.

  In this embodiment, the IC reader / writer 31 provided on the upper portion of the entrance door 7 reads the clothing information. However, a plurality of IC reader / writers may be provided in different locations and collated with each other. . As a result, more accurate clothing information can be acquired.

  The present invention can be widely used in a system using a bathroom heater installed in a bathroom regardless of a heat source.

It is a figure showing clothing drying system 1 concerning a first embodiment. It is a conceptual diagram of the temperature change information table at the time of the standard driving | operation of the bathroom heater in a standard bathroom type. It is a figure which shows the control flow of 1st embodiment. FIG. 2 is an A-A ′ arrow view in FIG. 1. It is a figure which shows the humidity change at the time of representative point P1 thru | or P5. It is a figure which shows the classification according to clothing type, and a drying time coefficient. It is a figure which shows the control flow of 2nd embodiment. It is the figure which showed notionally the content displayed on the controller 10 display part. It is a figure which shows the clothing drying system 30 which concerns on 3rd embodiment. 3 is a diagram showing control blocks for an IC reader / writer 31 and an IC tag 32. FIG.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1,30 Clothes drying system 2 Bathroom dryer 3 Bathroom 5 Clothes pole 7 Entrance door 8 Temperature sensor 9 Humidity sensor 31 IC reader / writer 32 IC tag T Drying time Wf Drying completion humidity Wi Drying start humidity Z1 to Z5 Drying zone Cij clothing type Dij drying time factor

Claims (6)

A clothes drying system using a bathroom heater installed on a bathroom ceiling, etc.
For each zone of the multiple zones that divide the bathroom, a standard drying time information table when standard clothes are dried,
Clothing information acquisition means for acquiring clothing information including easiness of drying with respect to one or more clothes to be dried to be carried into the bathroom;
Based on the standard drying time information and the clothing information, for each drying target clothing, means for calculating the predicted drying time when drying in each zone,
Means for determining a desired combination based on an estimated drying time from combinations of clothes to be dried and a drying zone;
A clothing drying system comprising: The drying time information table for a plurality of standard type bathrooms;
Standard type determination means for determining which type the bathroom corresponds to;
Means for calculating the predicted drying time using the drying time information table of the corresponding standard type bathroom;
The garment drying system according to claim 1, further comprising: The standard type determination means is
Suction temperature change information table when the bathroom heater is installed in each standard type bathroom and operated under standard conditions, and
Means for acquiring time-dependent change data of the suction temperature when the bathroom heater is installed in the target bathroom and operated under the standard condition;
Means for determining the bathroom type of the bathroom with a standard bathroom type having suction temperature aging information that approximates the suction temperature aging data of the bathroom;
The clothes drying system according to claim 1, wherein the clothes drying system is included. 4. The clothing drying apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the clothing information acquisition means includes an IC tag attached to the clothing and an IC reader / writer disposed in the vicinity of the bathroom entrance. The clothes drying system according to claims 1 to 4,
After the start of operation, after the time corresponding to the clothing of the predicted drying time has elapsed,
An operation control method for a clothing drying system, wherein operation is resumed only when a re-operation instruction is received. A suction temperature aging information table when operating under standard conditions is provided for a plurality of standard type bathrooms, and
Means for acquiring suction temperature aging data when operating under the standard conditions in the target bathroom;
Means for determining the bathroom type of the target bathroom with a standard bathroom type having suction temperature aging information that approximates the suction temperature aging data;
A bathroom heater characterized by comprising:

Images