One of my bathroom fans was dead and I was able to buy a replacement fan assembly for $15 at Lowes just last week.
I prefer loud to drown out the sound. Sometimes it gets a little noisey.
W_T_F is this doing in tools and garden anyway?
HA!
sound levels aside, 70CFM is low even for a small bathroom. it will take a good 30 minutes to get the stink or steam out.
does anyone know if this can be used in a shower stall? or just in the bathroom
I’ll second that. 50 CFM is good performance for a toilet room / half bath.
The calculation is width X Length X height X .13 = CFM
So my little pooper room off my master is roughly 6’ x 4’ x 10’ tall. That puts me at a needed CFM of 31.
This calculated CFM is supposed to move the air in the room 8 times per hour (7.5 minutes each cycle of air). This is rarely the case in the real world as a fan rated at XX CFM will rarely perform at that speed once installed with ducting and all the other variables are in place such as the flow of air into the room. My guess-o-meter tells me that the 50 CFM unit will move somewhere in the 30’s once installed with average ducting.
If your ducting is long, flex duct, or has bends in it your calculated CFM could easily double. But that is a whole other calculation.
I’m not an actual fart fan expert, I learned all this after having my builder install crappy fart fans in my bathroom (50 CFM units).
Careful on the installation everyone. If the dimensions are not exactly right, you are going to be doing some drywall repair. Also, make sure you have access from above. If this is for a first floor install, be prepared to have to cut a much larger hole and have to patch. Thirdly, if your home is by a builder like mine, the exhaust fan hose leading outside might be a different size than the discharge side of this unit. Then you have to jimmy rig a coupling with duct tape, or find the right duct coupling at your hardware store. So, just be prepared for the worst case scenario because it ain’t like changing a light fixture.
Upgraded my master bath fan with a low noise fan, but kept the original louder one in the guest bath. It masks the other unwanted noises produced in that bathroom near the living areas.
I like a loud fan… Drowns out noises from Bathroom I don’t want or need to hear.
Your typical landlord special Broan bath fan is 4 sones. “Ultra Silent” fans at Menards are 0.7 sones. I’d be more concerned about the availability of replacement motors when they die in 5 or 6 years.
You have to watch your sones, but you really have to keep an eye on your daughters.
My brothers were spending a week with us, and told us that they would replace or repair the noisy fan in our half bath. We told them “No, that alerts us that someone is in that bathroom, and we must use the other bathroom.”
I actually need a new bath fan, so this might work out!
Does anyone know if you can operate the light separate from the fan? Or does the light only come on when the fan is in use?
I don’t use the bathroom fan itself very often, but having an extra light in the bathroom would be very handy.
Another important (and missing) spec is the output exhaust pipe size. If your house is early 80’s (with the big bangs and feathered hair) you might need a 3" exhaust. I think the newer ones are 4". Not a huge deal until you are redoing a bunch of stuff (roof cap, vent pipe,…) instead popping a new vent in.
For what it’s worth, the ONE Hoover fan at the Orange home store has TWO rave reviews, but is a different model. However, in my quick skimming, I never saw any as low as 50 cfm, all were at least 70 cfm.
A 50-75 CFM fan is fine for a half-bath, you may want to look a little larger for a shower/tub.
The typical commercial design around my parts is 75 CFM per water closet, so for residential, a little less is fine. The main concerns are going to be external static pressure (duct run and louver type) and run time.
I replaced my builder’s grade 50CFM with a 110CFM from Panasonic, rated 1 sone or less I think. That thing is awesome, so quiet we can have a normal conversation in the bathroom when someone is in the shower and there’s no steam collected at all, mirrors don’t fog up. Definitely worth measuring your bathroom and finding the right amount of CFMs you need. And 2 sones isn’t that quiet so if you want a quiet one, make sure you get something with less than that. I needed quiet as I shower very early to go to work and the old fan could be heard outside the bathroom, in my bedroom. This one you can’t hear at all from there. From my research Panasonic fans are the best and now I know why.
Excellent information for someone thinking about doing this. The key point here is having access from above. If no over head access you should go in assuming this is a 5/5 drills job to ready yourself for some surprises. Especially if there is a difference in size from old to new.
Personally I would give this my rating of “3 trips”. As you should assume making three trips to The Home Cheapo for parts…etc.
ya think?
Code says you can put a fan in a shower stall as long as the fan circuit is protected by a GFCI. You’d have to find the documentation for this particular fan to be sure it is appropriate for damp locations. I’m not an electrician, but this is the info my guy gave me recently.
I just replaced the builder-grade fans in my bathroom with 0.4 sone Panasonics. You can’t even hear them run. Even the electrician thought he had screwed something up when he came back down and flipped the switch. Had to hold a piece of paper up to them to make sure they were running.
The other thing to look at is the motor. The Panasonics use a high-efficiency DC (?) motor that only draws about 5 watts. The fans we removed had AC capacitor-start motors that drew over 50 watts.