Because fans are code doesn't mean they're always needed or even a good idea. My first house always had mold/mildew problems, even with a fan. The fan in our current master bathroom is in the throne room and is pitifully underpowered to clear any humidity in the rest of the bathroom. The room is large enough that humidity has never been a problem. The mirror doesn't even fog over.
That ignores the heat lost, as well.
if you have a separate toilet room you really should have two fans, or a remotely mounted fan motor with a grille in the throne room and another just outside the shower. Otherwise, as you say, it's pointless.
I personally am a big fan of hot showers - not sure of exact temp, but I can tell you with a water heater set to 120F that I can't get it hot enough to make me happy - so a bathroom without a fan WILL grow mildew/mold if I'm using it for any length of time.
Whoever recommended Panasonic and a timer, +1 on that. That's the exact setup I picked out for my last place. I can't imagine not having a timer for the fan, that way I can get all the humidity out while leaving for work as soon as I'm dressed.
nate
No need. Humidity isn't a problem.
You're not supposed to spend weeks in there. You'll turn into a mushroom. ;-)
I had to replace the fan[*] in the downstairs bath in my previous house. I replaced it with a Panasonic. It was noisier than what was there before. Dunno how well it worked because after my son left we rarely used that shower. [*] One of the "we're moving, gotta fix all the stuff that wasn't worth fixing before" things. The vent disintegrated and I couldn't get the hose reconnected without tearing out the fan (and it didn't want to leave peacefully). I ended up tearing more than one hole in the ceiling, but that's a separate issue... :-(
On 12/26/2010 3:06 PM Nate Nagel spake thus:
That was me.
By the way, don't bother going to Home Despot or some other big orange or other colored store, or even your local hardware store for that matter, for those timers. The only place locally (San Francisco Bay Area East Bay) I could find one was at my local Real Electrical Supply House. They're actually pretty cheap, and more reliable than some electronic piece of crap.
I think I found 'em at Lowe's. Despite all my bitching about stuff that I want that I can't get at the Big Boxen in this respect they are OK. I also notice that they started carrying the Pass and Seymour GFCI receps with LED night light about 6 mos. after I ordered one online. another Must Have for a civilized bathroom.
nate
My mother insisted on closing the bathroom door when no one was using the bathroom. That made it (closed door) useless as an "in use" signal.
[snip]
that's great Dave, yes fans are sometimes a good thing, and if your client needs one/ wants one, great.
My comment was about the code that requires a fan even when not needed.
Someone mentioned that the code does not REQUIRE a fan if there is a window, and that seems reasonable.
Mark
I learned the hard way not to do this.
In the winter, letting that much moisture out into my home enabled it to condense on all the windows. And that much moisture on all the windows led to mildew all over. Perhaps it's not as cold where you live. But in northern MA where I live, during the winter it's typical for the dew point to drop quite low at night.
A *little bit* of moisture in the winter is a good thing--I will take the towel I used to dry myself off with, and hang it up in my bedroom to let the moisture evaporate off the towel there. But not the kind of steam you get from a hot bath or hot shower.
-- Steven L.
I've been in a lot of homes, more than half maybe, where the bathroom door was shut. I think that's one of the things that would bring up my mother's repeated statement. Our bathroom doors were wide open when no one was using them.
As are mine, but I live alone. -- I've been meaning to get in the habit of unlocking the front door and taking the cordless phone when I go into the unfinished, permanent-floorless attic. One time I knocked over the ladder and had to jump down, which is harder than it sounds because the closet shelf is in the way so I have to move my body forward, but if I do that too much, because of the wall above the front of the closet, I will -- get this -- break my neck**. I didn't' break my neck, and I landed either on the ladder or between its parts, and didn't even break my ankle.
**Third time mentioning this this week.
What you did wrong was to run the vent pipe uninsulated through the cold attic. Normally the pipe is below the insulation. I'd re-route it as necessary so that it's on top of the existing insulation, then add more insulation on top. Or as suggested use an insulated vent pipe.
Thanks , that's what I was thinking as well but wanted second opinions from the knowlegable folks here..I'll tuck it between the 2 layers of insulation...The bathroom is quite small (8x8) and there was plenty of mold on the old sheetrock as well as on the floor along the exterior wall so a vent was necessary..Yes we opened the window in the warmer months and cracked the door in winter..SWMBO takes VERY hot and lenghthy showers..There is ALOT of steam....The soffit vent I got has a spring loaded cap that is pushed open when the fan is running.The fan unit has a damper as well so no cold draft at all even on very windy days..
thanks again
At least it's square. I think that's nice. Our first house was built in the 30's I think and the bathroom was as big as a bedroom. Bigger than two of my current bedrooms. One could play ping pong in the middle without bothering the people at the sink, the tub, or the toilet.
It had a real linoleum floor (not so-called vinyl linoleum), which had some strange black and grey shapes in it, with a light colored 1" border 8" from the edge of the room. In the center was a diamond (well, a square sitting on one corner) and inside the diamond was a pair of sea horses looking at each other. This was my bathroom from the day I was born, and I was probably at least 10 before I found out that there really are sea horses.
There was a triangular closet built in to a corner, floor to ceiling, and the bathtub "surround" was the same linoleum that covered the floor. There was a seam in the middle and somehow the plaster underneath was crumbling out of the bottom 2 or 3 inches at the seam, so my mother said we couldn't' take showers. Easy for her to say, since she didn't like showers anyhow. So until after we moved, when I was 11, I had never had a shower, which is probably why I don't much like them.
Best of all, in the hall, beside the bathroom, built into the wall, were 3 big drawers at the bottom and a cabinet with two doors and shelves above it. When we went to visit my grandmother for a week or two every summer, my mother pulled out the drawers and I would crawl in there and store our valuables. No thief in those days was smart enough to find them, although I don't know that there were any burglaries anyhow. By the time we moved when I was 10, I could barely get in and out through the opening for the drawer.
If you ever have a house like that, check behind the drawers. Who knows what someone put there and forgot.
So you're married to a steamy woman. You're making some of the guys here jealous.
Wow. Energy-saving gone wild. (Isn't that a video about New Orleans?)
David I found them (timers) at Ace Hardware.. ww
They should be jealous...LOL...
On 12/27/2010 4:38 PM WW spake thus:
Really? The wind-up mechanical ones? (I forget the manufacturer; not Intermatic?) If so, good news.
I used to live in an apartment with two switches in the bathroom. One controlled the light which had an exhaust fan. The other switch controlled a heater which had a fan to circulate the heat and keep the heater from overheating.
Every single time a guest used my bathroom, they turned on both the light and heater when they entered the room. When they left, they ALWAYS turned the light off but left the heat on. It NEVER failed.
I once got tired of having to run into the bathroom to turn off the heater. I used transparent tape to tape the switch in the "off" position. The first person who used the bathroom tore the tape off so that they could turn the heater on.
When they left the heat on, it was always on a day when the temperature was 80 degrees F or warmer.
After I moved into a house with the same switches, I replaced the heater switch with a timer so people could not leave the heat on for more than 60 minutes. (If I had found a 15 minute timer, I would have bought it instead.)
Ace hardware is imo better than HD or Lowes.
Neither of them had any square U-bolts. Ace had 15 sizes.
Neither of them had 10" Philips #1, but Ace had two models.
Neither of them had steel clad washing machine hoses in the length I wanted. They had them with a choice of 2 or 3 ends.
All things I needed, not just things I noticed that they had.
Although I doubt the small Ace store around here has all this, I go to the bigger store.
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