Bath Fans
Do you think home cooling fans are for your living room only? Think again, you might need one in your bath room. Actually, it is not new to put bath fans in your bath room. What is new is that modern fans work well than what you have in your home. Try to give it a second look. Well, it looks good on that ceiling. But do you hear any sound? If you do, then you might need a replacement for that matter.
Bath fans are as important as your other home air cooling appliances. Bath fans though are not meant to cool although new models have integrated cooling systems. Mainly, they are made to clean the air inside your bath room. Imagine all that humid and moisture circulating in the air in your bath room. They can get accumulated and form dews that may become good breeding place for mold, fungi and certain bacteria. Now you want only the cleanest and the finest for your bath room.
If humidity level in your bath place seems to be intolerable you will know it. Take a look at the walls. Cracks, paint peelings, mold spots, dew spots and stains are cautionary symptoms that your existing bathroom fan exhausts poorly and is no longer of great use. If iron fixtures and decors corrode and the ceiling board starts to bend, you need to do something. You have two options though, replace or repair.
Again, the primary function of bath fans is to absorb all that moisture in the air after a shower. Along with decrease in humidity, unpleasant odor is also eradicated. So if you think your will need replacement here are some good notes.
The thing to consider when installing a bath fans is if you have a window or not in the bathroom. This is because bath windows adequately provide exhaustion of humid air in the bath room thus getting a bath fan is redundancy and will only result higher energy bills. If you should decide getting a fan is better then you might have someone seal the window air tight. The Federal Uniform Building Code also requires a fan to have an exhaustion of power enough to generate five air changes per hour.
The Home Ventilating Institute or HVI however requires a more powerful eight air changes per hour for your fan. Either way, experts say a determining the power of a bath fan depends on the bath room size. The bigger the bath place the better fan you will need. A good way to measure the strength of the fan is by using the unit called CFM or cubic feet per minute strength. This method is easy and very self explanatory. For every 1 square foot of the bath room, it needs 1 CFM power for your fan. A 50 square foot bath room will mean a use of a 50 CFM fan. It makes sense.
However a number of home owners have found all those requirement too costly. They have found a practical way however to deal with cheap bath fans that are sometimes very noisy. They know windows are a no-no for bath fans, but sensibly, windows help bring in fresh air especially in the morning. So they will just turn the fan off.
Well that is good idea until you know that humidity level does not significantly decrease even if you open the window the whole day. Water evaporates horizontally and only less of them are carried out by the window. All the rest of the water vapor gets trapped in the ceiling and on the walls attracting dust leaving small spots of dirt. What is worst is that the window does not provide sustainable air exchange. You might really get some fresh air outside but the bathroom odor stays.
So it is really good to stick with the rules. If you should insist on repairing old noisy bath exhaust fans, get some upgrade kits that are available commercially. Get some extra help from pros who are certified to do the job. To lessen the noise of your bath fan, replace the exhaust duct with a wider diameter duct. 6 inches for the diameter will do the trick. And finally always clean your bath room. Bath fans can only do so much.