Powerful extractor fan.

[dawoodseed]

Hello,

We have never had an extractor fan in our bathroom before, with our old heating system the water never lasted long and cooled down very fast so the bathroom hardly steamed up. Now with our new system the bathroom steams up and we tend to enjoy showering much more than before, I can easily recommend the Vaillant ecoTEC+ 937 boiler to anyone who has no space for an unvented cylinder.

The bathroom steams up a lot and sometimes you get dizzy with all the steam!

I want to get a powerful centrifugal extractor fan which can clear the steam quickly.

It is a simple through the wall installation.

1.Are Vent-axia and Xpelair good brands? 2.Does it seem sensible to get a bigger extractor fan for reduced noise? 3.Do you have any reccomendations?

Thanks.

[Martin Pentreath]

Hi,

You don't need a centrifugal model if you're going straight out through the wall. Centrifugal fans are the ones housed in quite a chunky box. They develop more pressure, and they're used where air needs to be forced through ducts and round bends before it gets out. With your application you can use a much slimmer non-centrifugal model.

We've got a vent-axia 6" silhouette fan. Ventaxia are a reliable make. Ours works fine at clearing a big bathroom of steam. It's the humidistat version, although I've given up using the humidistat feature which never seemed to be set quite right and needed constant tinkering. It's just wired to run on its timer whenever the light in the shower cubicle is turned on, which seemsto work fine. I'd definitely not recommend a 4" model - a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Cheers!

Martin

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] laid this down on his screen :

Supposedly -two of the better known brands.

That probably doesn't make sense, unless you find larger, with lower speed.

Get one with a PIR combined with humidity sensor and time delay. That should make sure it runs when someone uses the bathroom and will continue to run until the humidity is reduced to normal levels.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Martin Pentreath formulated on Saturday :

[dawoodseed]

Xpelair good brands?

Yes that's what I meant.

I don't know about the PIR sensor but I think a humidistat will be good.

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] pretended :

Many are triggered on your turning the bathroom light on, the problem is you don't always need to turn the light on - but probably do need the fan to run if you are using the bathroom.

[meow2222]

yes

it does until you see the prices.

If you dont mind spending a couple of hundred on the fan, go for it. If not, forget it. Small fans are cheap but pretty useless.

The other point is that once you've gone for a 12" fan you can buy a dehumidifier for less, and that will dry a room out without chucking any heat outside.

Final point: automated controls never do what you want, I'd stick with manual. The only automation that's useful is a run-on timer, so that when you put the fan on it'll switch itself off 20 mins after you've left the room. The rest are nice ideas, but not really whats wanted.

And really finally... mount the thing on rubber bushes to cut the noise right down.

[dawoodseed]

down.http://www.wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Fan_noise_reduction>> NT

I like this fan:

don't know how many inches it is though.

[meow2222]

4", so very little performance. Would probably take half an hour plus to clear a steamy room.

I've toyed with the idea of using desktop boxfans with thermal shutter plus custom baffled enclosure and dropper. Fair bit of mucking about, but would save near =A3200 per fan and be nearly silent.

NT

[Andrew Gabriel]

The 100 = 100mm diameter outlet (to slot into 110mm soil pipe if necessary).

I've got the 150mm version in my garage, with solenoid operated shutter. (I'm not sure if they do solenoid operated shutters anymore - seem to have been replaced with thermal solenoids which are very slow to operate.) I've also got the 100mm vent-axia Silloette (low profile with backdraft shutter) with run-on timer in a bathroom. It works well, but isn't particularly quiet. I've got a new VA100LT on the shelf, in case one of my other 100mm ones dies. It was £5 in Cash-Converters, which given how much a new vent-axia costs, I couldn't pass over. The 150mm one also came from there. They are very expensive from regular sources. The silloette came from Screwfix when it was on a particularly good special offer.

[dawoodseed]

I think I'll just get what you've got. How long does it take to clear the Bathroom of steam?

Sorry if my post appears to be duplicated, my posts don't seem to be appearing.

[Martin Pentreath]

When it's running our bathroom barely steams up, bit of misting round the edge of the mirror which is gone within a few minutes of turning off the shower. But it's a big room (about 15' x 8') and I don't think our shower makes the amounts of steam you're describing!

[geoff]

In message , [e-mail] writes

'kin hell

don't you have a rule with inches and mm on it

or

enough brain cells to type

"100mm in inches"

into google - which would yield

"100 millimeters = 3.93700787 inches"

or any of the other obvious ways of doing a conversion

[robgraham]

Well just to put in my pennyworth having read through the thread so far.

You haven't given us the size of your bathroom so judging whether it is a 4" or 6" is a bit difficult - remember that the 6" will be larger on the wall and will cost more to install. The factor to consider is the cubic volume of your bathroom and the air throughput of the extractor. There is probably a recommended ideal rate, but I don't know it.

I've tried probably most of the combinations and recommend humidistat with a pull cord for a manual start. As a family we all got fed up with the light connected ones as inevitably there were occasions when you didn't want the light on - and then when bathing it would be on and drone away irritatingly.

I tried a humidistat one and then you couldn't switch it on to clear toilet air. I've never had any problems with humidistats and the addition of the pull cord seems to solve all out requirements.

And just to add one more thing - I just buy them off Ebay; they work perfectly with a long life and none of this fancy name overload on the price.

Rob

[Andrew Gabriel]

To clear steam -- around a minute. To demist the mirrors too -- under 5 minutes.

Unless you like standing shivering when you just stepped out of the shower, you don't want a howling gale blowing through the room.

[chris French]

I used a 4 inch fan with a ceiling duct out through the roof in my old bathroom refit (ok a pretty small bathroom). It worked fine.

Expect in a toilet say with no window, where you always turn on the light I dislike overun timers. They come on when you don't want them too, and don't when you do (unless you remember to turn the light on in the day time).

I used a cheap humidistat. It wasn't perfect, but was about 90% so. It took a little tweaking to get it just right, but after that, it only occasionally used to come on when not needed. Usually at night, when it was very rainy. but there are more expensive stats that are supposed to take account of the affect of the temp drop.

I wired this also with a manual pull switch so that on occasion when we wanted it on when it hadn't come on (when the shower or bath hadn't be used) we could do so

[Harry Bloomfield]

chris French formulated on Sunday :

A built in PIR gets around that.

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] expressed precisely :

We have a combined bath + shower and a toilet, with a 4" PIR + humidity

• timer + wax operated iris. When running it is barely audible. For the above room, about 7' x 8' with a large corner missing, I would call it just adequate.

We used to get mould on the bathroom exterior walls, but all that stopped when central heating was added, followed by DG, cavity wall insulation and the new fan above. I have not seen that bathroom suffer clouds of steam in the air since the heating system was put in. The wax operated iris opens in around 30 seconds from cold, just a tiny heater in a cylinder and as the wax heater up it expands to push a plunger to open the unit up. I would suggest better than the solenoid operated louvres - silent and the iris seals completely from drafts.

[<me9]

It will eventually dry out. It will chuck out some heat into the room. It

*will* cost much more to run.

[Harry Bloomfield]

You can however balance the cost of running the dehumidifier against the cost of the heat you would otherwise be venting outside.