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| | Next DIY Project: Fart Fans
The next home improvement project is kind of on hold…Â We were going to start it a few weekends ago, but ran into some problems.
The exhaust fans in both bathrooms (aka “fart fans”) suck really bad — they’re original to the house: 1976. The front/guest one works ok, but it’s not very strong, and we get lots of cold air in the winter, hot air in the summer in there. The one in the master bath - well, sometimes it sounds like you should be taking cover when you turn it on.
Here’s what they look like right now:
So we priced new fans, and the ones we like (decent quality) are gonna set us back around $200 (for 2). But while we were there I realized we should probably check to see how they’re actually vented through the attic before buying any.
We came back home and I did some Googling, and learned that it’s pretty important the fans are correctly vented outside - whether through the roof, through a side wall, or through a soffit vent. So I trekked up into the attic (I just love being up high where one wrong step and you can come crashing through the ceiling, and where you can’t help but get itchy with all the insulation) and discovered why we’re getting all the cold/hot air in the bathrooms:
See, this is bad - very bad. The exhaust fans aren’t there just to whisk away the farts, they’re also supposed to get rid of all that humidity when you take a hot shower. Unfortunately it seems all that moist air has been spit out in our attic for the last 32 years. That’s not good!!
As I mentioned, crawling around in the attic is not one of my favorite activities… And neither one of us are comfortable cutting a hole in the roof to vent the things. We might be able to somehow rig it up to a soffit vent, but we wanted somebody with half a clue to look at it before we did anything… (the guest bath is on the side of the house, so with the slant of the roof you have to crawl on your belly to get over there anyway - NOT something I want to be doing!!!)
A friend of ours does some construction/house flipping, and was supposed to come take a look at it for us…Â But that was 2 weeks ago and we haven’t seen or heard from him.
By chance do any of my blog readers have a suggestion on this? :) We’re having house guests after Christmas, and I’d really like to get them working before then…..
Oh yeah, I should mention that I took apart the one in the guest bath (and am not sure where the parts have landed to put it back together again), so this is what that one looks like:
