At home, clothes are preferably hung out to dry in the open air or in premises which are in any case well-ventilated so as to favour a rapid release of the moisture from the hanging laundry. It is not always possible, however, to hang out washing in this manner; often the weather conditions, together with the lack of available space, oblige one to hang out the laundry inside one's home. Clearly, this type of solution will result in a considerable increase in the drying time of the laundry, resulting in obvious drawbacks. In many cases, drying apparatus have been adopted where a laundry load corresponding approximately to that which can be washed in a washing machine, i. e. between 3 and 5 kg, may be treated with hot air inside a rotating drum; this type of treatment, however, subjects the garments to an action which does not leave them in a particularly suitable condition for subsequent ironing, since the garments are c, very creased. Generally these apparatus, in addition cto being somewhat expensive, use a large quantity of electric power which cannot be justified by the limited reduction in the time required.

The device according to the present invention therefore aims to overcome the abovementioned drawbacks by providing the possibility of increasing the speed of drying of the hung laundry in a manner which is simple and substantially low-cost in terms of power consumption.

The device according to the present invention therefore relates to a laundry drier device comprising a hood made of impermeable, flexible and light material formed so that it may be arranged over a commonly used clothes-horse, an upper wall and a continuous side wall ; said upper wall comprising at least one header duct connected to a source for generating a flow of hot air, to which duct a plurality of supply ducts are in turn connected, said ducts emitting, via a plurality of openings,

the flow of air onto the clothes-horse.

Preferably, the side wall and the upper wall of the hood are made of flexible plastic material. The upper wall is formed by two diametrically opposite headers, one of which is connected to means for generating the hot air, and by a plurality of supply ducts which are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the said headers.

Further advantages and characteristic features of the device according to the present invention will emerge from the following description of some embodiments thereof provided, by way of a non-limiting example, with reference to the accompanying plates of drawings in which: Figure 1 is a perspective view of an embodiment of the device according to the present invention; Figure 2 is an enlarged, longitudinal, cross-sectioned detail of the device according to Figure 1; Figure 3 is an enlarged cross-sectioned detail of the device according to Figure 1; and Figure 4 is a view similar to that of Figure 1 showing an alternative embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 1 shows the device according'to the invention: a hood 1 which comprises an upper wall 101 and a continuous side wall 201, both made of flexible plastic material, is positioned on a clothes-horse 10 of the conventional folding type, shown in broken lines in the figure. The upper wall 101 which has a substantially rectangular shape has on its two shorter sides two tubular ducts 111 and 121 which act as headers for a plurality of tubular ducts 131 connected at their respective ends to the said headers 111,121. The header 111 is in turn connected at one end to the delivery pipe 21 of a hot-air generator 20 of the known type and not further described here.

As can be seen from Figure 2, the header 111 has a plurality of radial holes 141 which are formed opposite each of the ducts 131. These ducts in turn have a plurality of radial holes 151 for supplying the hot air, which are directed towards the clothes-horse 10. The ducts 131 are connected together by means of the portions

161 (see Figure 3) which may be continuous over the whole length of the said ducts 131 or discontinuous.

Figure 4 shows an alternative preferred embodiment of the present invention; identical parts are indicated by the same numbers. The hot-air generator 30 is provided, in addition to a delivery pipe 31 which is entirely similar to the pipe 21 described above, with an intake mouth 32 connected to the intake pipe 33 which communicates, at the opposite end, with the opening 211 formed in the side wall 201.

A pipe 34, shown in dot-dash lines in the figure, communicating directly with the exterior, may be connected to this opening.

The operating principle of the device according to the present invention will become obvious from the description below. The laundry items are normally hung on the clothes-horse 10, following which the hood 1 is positioned on the clothes-horse and the hot-air generator 20 then operated. The hot air, via the pipe 21, is distributed inside the header 111 and from here is distributed to the ducts 131 through which it is supplied, via the holes 151, onto the hung laundry. The continuous flow of hot air ensures that the moisture is rapidly removed from the hung garments; the moisture, as a result of the flexibility of the side wall 201 which in fact does not prevent the lateral dispersion of the air flow, may easily escape from the hood 1. ItíiJmay moreover be advantageously envisaged that the portions 161 which join together the supply ducts 131 are discontinuous so that the water vapour which forms as a result of the action of the hot-air flow on the moisture of the hung laundry is able to escape from the hood via said discontinuous zones.

The header 111 communicating with the delivery pipe may be positioned both at the ends of the upper wall 101 and at the centre thereof; similarly, the upper wall may comprise a single supply pipe in place of the plurality of supply pipes described above.

According to the variant shown in Figure 4, the moisture-charged air present underneath the hood 1 may be removed via an opening 211 communicating with a pipe; this pipe may communicate with the intake mouth of the said hot-air generator and likewise the air may be discharged into the environment. It is understood that in this second case the pipe may advantageously be connected to the external environment, that is emerge outside the compartment inside which the clothes-horse with the device according to the present invention is arranged.