Dear All,
As part of a bathroom refurbishment, I want a decent ceiling extractor fan, extracting via a duct above the ceiling out to a vent in the soffit board. The bathroom is small, ~ 2m. x 2m.
I have heard that humidistat controlled fans are a good idea, and one model
- Envirovent Silent 100HT (~ £55) I've seen has reasonable reviews.
Has anyone got any advice/tips/comments?
Cheers,
Chris
I dislike the noise of fan over run in a bedroom.
Ask me in a couple of days, I just ordered the bits to add a fan to our shower room ;-)
Not tried that particular fan, but yes a humidistat is nice - better still if its a separate unit with a sensitivity control in a place where its easy to get to. I am going to try for a combination of humidistat control, combined with delayed start, occupancy and run on, all with manual override. Will have to see how that works.
I'd be interested to hear of the outcome. What make of fan are you installi ng?
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I'd be interested in knowing how you hook all those up & how they work out, as I'm interested in something similar (though probably simpler).
One of these
I was considering doing ducted, but don't think there is the space in the ceiling void to get it in. So decided to go for a quiet surface mount.
My fan has a humidistat and it's very weather-dependent. In cool, dry weather it's slow to come on; in the current warm(ish), damp weather it'll start just after I have a leak - or even go into the bathroom and wash my hands. Having the timer on a pull switch is best for a shower. Turn it on, shower, dry, go and get dressed etc. then turn it off and it runs for about 23 min. On the humidistat alone, the mist is cleared but any condensation isn't (this is a feeble 75m^3/hr with almost zero pressure capability job - a centrif. would be better, even at the same nominal rate).
After recommendation here, I bought one of these:
Admittedly not cheap, but I was amazed by how quiet it was, I had to feel the air to be sure it was running. You can't even hear it in the bathroom, certainly not elsewhere.
It is screwed to a board across a couple of joists, and there seems to be no discernable direct transmission. The mounting bracket includes some rubber isolation material.
The airflow is far better than the (failed) cheap one it replaced. It can push-fit into the pipework, and is readily removable for cleaning.
Chris
We have a humidistat, the Xpelair XRH, connected to an S&P fan in the loft. The XRH sensitivity does need adjusting sometimes, and for a while the thi ng stopped working at all - I think some debris got into the electro-mechan ical workings. When it is working properly and set correctly it comes on for a bit, switch es off, then comes on for a bit a few minutes later. It is therefore clearing the humid air, waiting for humidity to build up ag ain, etc. This does not take the approach of running enough air through to dry the room by air movement. If you want that a run-on timer would be bett er. If you do take that approach you will be losing a lot more heated air f rom the house than you need to. It the sensitivity is set a bit too high, it will come on when bathing the kids (the water is at 37C). And it damp outside and you open the window it might come on. If I had loads of time, I might build a system that checks t he incoming air is less humid that the air we are trying to clear, to stop potential continuous running. Simon.
Discussed this on here a couple of years ago.
Requirements were:
(1) Not linked to light - so could go for a quiet piss in the middle of the night.
(2) Adjustable over run timer (pull switch) for those moments when the air turns green.
(3) Humidistat.
Used one of the S&P ducted (similar to above), and two wall mounted Xpelair controls.
It is wired so that both the pull switch and the humidistat can turn it on, and both work the over-run timer. So humidity gets the run-on to be sure that it it clear (and smooth out off/on switching) and pull switch gets the run on for obvious reasons.
NO - just checked and it seems to be the other way round? Humidistat works the fan, and pull switch over-rides? See below.
The one thing not working right is the neons - the neon for the humidistat comes on but not the neon for the pull switch. This makes it hard/imposible to tell if the humidistat has kicked in or it is just the over-run timer.
Tuit of the round variety required.
You can get timer ones that have a delayed start - they will fire from the light switch but only if its been on for a preset time. So short visits don't trigger them.
Well the outcome was ok - mostly ;-)
The fan is very quiet (the air movement makes far more noise that the fan itself - you can't hear any motor noise or vibration.
Using this fan:
The fan has manual and timed trigger inputs. You can set it for delayed start (four choices), overrun (one of 4 user selected times durations), A refresh mode (where is it has not run in a number of hours it does a blast just to change the air)
I used this stat:
I wired it all up with the intention that the fan would run if the light had been on for 2 mins or more, and then overrun for 6 mins, for dealing with smells etc. It should also run on demand of the humidistat.
What I missed was the small print on the wiring diagram that suggested the light switch used to trigger the fan should be two pole. Now for a fan triggered just from the light switch, this probably would be unnecessary. However the hidden implication of it[1] dawned on me later when I realised that the humidistat not only runs the fan, but also turns on the bathroom light! ;-)
So I need to go back and add a relay to allow the switched live from the light to be decoupled from that of the humidistat.
[1] The manual trigger input is not isolated from the timed trigger input. Hence making the manual input live, also makes the timed trigger input live even if its not being drive that way externally.
When you say "going ducted", you mean the set-up where there's a vent in the ceiling & a duct from there to the fan itself? (I'm asking because that fan in the link will need a duct too....)
Yup basically - site the fan itself in a void somewhere, and the pipe up the inlet and outlet to wherever they need to go. Quite handy for showers as you can do things like an input grill with a built in lamp in it, and stick it right over the shower, without also needing a SELV low voltage fan.
The one I linked to above (and installed the other day), can only be ducted on the output side - the fan unit itself must be poking out of a wall or ceiling in the room in question.
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