Your Bathroom is an Important Place for Ventilation
The daily use of your bathrooms adds a considerable amount of moisture to your home’s indoor air. If you don’t have sufficient ventilation to remove that excess humidity, mold and mildew can flourish and degrade your indoor air quality, and your HVAC system has to work harder to maintain a comfortable temperature. Following these bathroom ventilation best practices can help you prevent these problems.
Have Ample Fan Capacity
To effectively remove moisture-laden air from an average size bathroom, you need to have one cubic feet per minute (CFM) of fan capacity per square foot of space. For larger bathrooms over 100 square feet, add an extra 50 CFM for each shower, bathtub or toilet, and 100 CFM extra for a jetted tub. You can have a single powerful fan or multiple smaller fans, as long as you have sufficient total airflow capacity.
Vent Fans Correctly
Make sure that your bathroom fans are ducted outdoors rather than between the ceiling joists or up into the attic. Warm, humidity-laden air that’s not sent directly outdoors can lead to mold growth and moisture damage in unfinished areas.
Locate Fans Properly
For proper bathroom ventilation, a fan needs to be installed near the shower enclosure or bathtub. Separate toilet areas need their own dedicated fan. Be sure to place each fan as far as possible from the HVAC supply register and undercut the bathroom door so ample replacement air gets drawn in from outside the room.
Choose Beneficial Features
To remove humidity effectively after each bathroom use, the fan needs to run for 15 – 20 minutes. You can make ventilating effortless by choosing a unit with a motion sensor that starts the fan when someone enters the room, a humidity sensor that activates the fan when excess moisture is present or a built-in timer that shuts it off automatically.
At Sobieski Services, Inc., our goal is to help our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey learn more about energy and home comfort issues — especially HVAC and plumbing issues — so that they can save money and live in healthier, more comfortable homes.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
