I have one in my current house. Having at one point developed surface
mold/mildew in my last bathroom, I'm being careful to try to remember to
use the fan. Questions - how long should it run? Like, is turning it off
when I leave the BR sufficient, or should it run longer? Do any come
with timers?
I'm thinking about eventually replacing it with a model with a heater in
it. (I remember having an old apartment that had an overhead infrared(?)
heater that felt good in the winter). SO my other question is wouldn't
the fan just suck the warm air out? And actually, does it also exhaust
the warm air in the house when the heat is on? (I'm not particularly
concerned about that, more curious. Although it did make me wonder if
the hot air from an overhead fan/heater combo had any chance of actually
warming the room up).
I'd run it until the moisture clears, which will be sometime after you
exit the little room, so a timer would be a nice thing.
Rather than adding a timer to the fan itself, you can install a small
timer in place of the fan switch. Cheap and easy solution.
--
I am a Canadian who was born and raised in The Netherlands. I live on
Planet Earth on a spot of land called Canada. We have noisy neighbours.
We installed a timer switch for our master bath fan, mainly because we
both shower there and don't want the whole master suite getting mildewy
(this is Florida, where mildew eats shoes :o) I set the timer for about
30 min after shower....no mildew. The timer was difficult to find at
local stores, but finally found one at Lowe's; only one-hour was
available locally. I believe there are digital timers, too, but ours
has dial. Our fan is a noisy old clunker, prob. original to the 35 y/o
condo.
All fans will pump out heated air in the winter or cooled air in the
summer. No getting around that. If you get an IR type heater lamp
that heat will be more effective and result in less wasted heat
because it's radiated instead of just heating the air around the
fan.
How long the fan needs to run depends on what was going on in the
bathroom. If you washed your hands, it doesn't need to run at
all. If you took a long hot shower, it probably needs to run for 10
or 15 mins after you leave.
>Although it did make me wonder if
On Nov 21, 3:30�pm, snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net wrote:
having a good air INLET to the bath is critical, otherwise the fan
just pulls a vacuumn on the room.
My family in phoenix ..... ALL the baths have no air inlet, Fans slow
down and dont move air and moisture:(
And most likely an open space below it.... probably even big enough for
a little fan air return.
Unless there is some shag carpet from the 70's under it. Wow, shag
carpet! That's one thing I don't miss! I just thought of how it got
it's name. The British "shag me" and carpet thick enough to keep from
getting carpet burns on your knees! Hu? Think so?
I think you have that reversed- 'shaggy' long predates the British slang
for doing the nasty. I'd speculate the term came along after shag carpet
came out. If it didn't perhaps it came from what doing the nasty does to
the oh-so-perfect hairdos that were required in the mid-60s amongst the
mod set.
One of you language geeks out there care to jump in?
--
aem sends...
I recommend that you check when you buy a timer. I prefer the old fashioned
wind up ones. I got a Hunter timer from whichever store it is that sells
Hunter fans. I found out it was a bad deal. It has a battery in it that
needs to be replaced when it runs down. Replacing the battery involves
removing the cover plate and snapping the guts out of the timer body.
It isn't a really big job, but it isn't something that a lot of people
would care to undertake. It definitely isn't like replacing the battery
in your camera. By the way it isn't an AA or AAA battery, it is some kind
of 12V battery.
Also I found out that I couldn't just start the timer and walk away.
That causes the battery to run down rather quickly. To conserve the
battery you need to wait till the timer turns off, then go back and
turn off the main on/off switch. Not a very good way to run something
in my opinion.
I took that timer out and put in one of the rotary switches.
Bill
It is as big around as a AA but just about 2/3 the length? I have some
remote controls that use those.
That timer sounds like it's not very useful.
"rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-DING!"
One problem with some digital timers is extra features you don't need
and complicated, non-intuitive controls. You have to find the
instructions, a piece of what looks like slick institutional toilet
paper, with Chinese instructions badly translated into something
almost but not quite English.
Yep, true that.
Last on I had experience with was a wall box-mounted digital timer to
run a client's basement ventilation fan. Pretty simple application: only
needed to turn the fan on and off twice a day to move air, exact times
not even critical.
Installing it was easy, and the instruction, contrary to what you said,
were actually written by a native English speaker, on decent paper, with
lots of illustrations and fairly clear.
Except for one thing: they described programming "events", and said you
could have up to (forget the exact number, maybe 12) separate events. I
assumed an "event" meant turning the device on and off at set times;
sounds reasonable, right?
Well, I couldn't get the damned thing to work. Programmed it 4-5 times,
tested it at the programmed time: nothing.
It finally dawned on me that an "event" was the smallest programmable
unit, which was either turning the thing on or off. So what I thought of
as one operation actually required two "events", one to turn on, the
other to turn off. Using that, I got it to work properly.
Poor documentation design, I'd say (from experience as a manual writer),
plus it makes for a very dubious marketing claim ("program up to 12
events"). One normally assumes an event means turning something on *and*
off.
And don't get me started on the programming complexity of these devices,
with their teeny-tiny LCD displays that can only be read by a
10-year-old or an adult with a strong magnifier, requiring umpteen
keystrokes to program a simple time sequence (with a jillion options I
don't need like automatic seasonal adjustment, daylight savings mode,
etc.). Too much stuff crammed in there for any kind of reasonable user
interface.
One counterexample I can give is this timer from Intermatic I installed
recently:
http://www.intermatic.com/products/timers/consumer%20indoor%20timers/digital%20timers/tb121c.aspx
Very simple and easy to program. I used it in a client's house to
control two sets of outdoor lights, by wiring it directly into a
junction box. The programming sequence is actually intuitive.
--
I am a Canadian who was born and raised in The Netherlands. I live on
Planet Earth on a spot of land called Canada. We have noisy neighbours.
On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:50:02 -0800, David Nebenzahl
[snip]
I have 2 timers here. One is the same model you described. It's as
easy to use as you say. I use it to control my holiday lights.
The other is a Westek TE05W, with extraneous features. I may never use
it again even if I do find that toilet paper.
BTW, I don't put those lights out until "Black Friday", but last
year's pictures are online at http://notstupid.us/winter.html . They
are all controlled through that one timer, using solid state relays
(on 4 AC circuits).
HomeOwnersHub.com is a website for homeowners and building and maintenance pros. It is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.