bathroom exhaust fan
hello, I am in a 5 unit coop brownstone on the garden level. my bathroom has a vent in the ceiling, but no fan. i know some units in the building have fans that can be turned on or off from within each apartments bathroom. does anyone know what type (if any) of fan can…
hello,
I am in a 5 unit coop brownstone on the garden level. my bathroom has a vent in the ceiling, but no fan. i know some units in the building have fans that can be turned on or off from within each apartments bathroom. does anyone know what type (if any) of fan can be installed within the existing vent? i am assuming the vent is connected to all the other bathrooms in the building through the same duct, and allows steam to escape through an opening on the roof, but am not sure. thanks in advance for any help
RC, if you need this handled, I could get it handled for you denton at speakeasy dot net
RC, are you kidding? Depending on the size, the fans (see the link I posted above) are available $300-$500. If you check the fan nameplate, and get the same fan by the same mfgr, it’s a drop-in installation. All you need to do is hook up the wiring (which is most likely 110v). Even if you get a handyman to install, you’re looking at $1000 total. That’s $200 an apt. Boy, any coop who wanted want to spend that to improve their apts is a coop I wouldn’t want to live in.
Anyway have you traced the electric and checked the breaker to the fan? Also, there’s a small chance it is belt driven and the belt is broken.
yeah, your s*&^ don’t smell…right…
Thanks for all the answers. It does appear that there is a non working “mushroom fan” on the roof. Now comes the hard part… not simply replacing the fan, but convincing the rest of the Coop (especially the units who have their own individual fans) that it should be replaced. I’ll try the whole “if i have my own fan on, and you don’t, your bathroom will smell like mine” argument. not that my bathroom smells bad or anything…
What you have is a passive fan, as opposed to an active fan that has a motor and forces air directly from your bathroom outside. Almost any multitenant situation requires these both in bathrooms and in kitchens.
As Denton suggests, the vent stacks for the building would be linked together and then the roof fan would pull air from all the units at once.
Why this setup is required for multitenant dwellings makes a lot of sense if you consider what would happen if an individual unit had a forced fan and the others weren’t on. A cook on floor one is making smoked kimchi burrito surprise and gets an urgent call, leaving the dish to burn. If floor one had the fan on and two through five had them off, the burnt smoked kimchi burrito surprise would be fumigating all the other apartments’ kitchens before it made it to the roof.
I’ve seen toilet exhaust fans on timers – you set the timer (10 min, 15) when you go in, so it works for awhile after you leave – you don’t have to go back to turn it off, saves electricy. Think I’ve seen it for that reason, not to save heat – though maybe that was a reason, too.
5:25, I’ve never seen a toilet exhaust fan on a timer… people use the bathroom at all kinds of strange hours.
If you building is very old, and the bathrooms are in the original spot for them, chances are you have a large airshaft (not just a vent) that the fans vent into. That’s the way brownstones and other like buildings were generally build. Then you can vent into it too.
But do look at the roof to see if the shaft still vents up there (sometimes with a high-hat with louvered openings) and hasn’t been closed off.
denton,
if you have a roof exhaust fan, it probably won’t be on all the time. It is probably on a timer or all the heat/ac would be pulled out of the building.