Shiny New Bathroom Fan, Dead Air: How I Missed the Easy Fix and Chased the Hard One

I am embarrassed to write this post. It has triggered a whole "How could you be so stupid!?" storm in my head. But... if someone else out there learns from this... then it's worth it. Right? Sigh.

The Problem

We have our two-bedroom basement suite listed on Airbnb. In the last year, ever since we got the suite entry door replaced, it has been a real struggle to keep the humidity below 50%. The original entry door was a bit gappy around the edges, so in the winter it was always cool in the entrance hall. The new entrance door is super snug so now there is virtually no air exchange with the outside world. Snug windows. Snug door. Not a good scenario.

We had some guests stay in October/November who sent the humidity through the roof. They had a lot of showers, they steamed a lot of rice. It was not a good scene with condensation dripping down all the windows. After they checked out, we had our contractor take a look at the place.

Possible Solutions

He suggested maybe getting a humidistat that would force the bathroom fan to come on when the humidity reached a certain level. Or maybe installing an air exchange vent in one of the exterior walls - basically a hole in the wall near the ceiling with a vent to the outside.

Tinkering with the Bathroom Fan

One of the first things I did was to take the cover off of the bathroom fan and check to see if the innards needed cleaning. I had noticed that the bathroom fan sounded really loud, way louder than I remember it being. When you have a dirty bathroom fan, it reduces the efficiency of the air flow. The suite's bathroom fan could barely hold a flimsy 2-ply piece of toilet paper against the grill! The inside of the bathroom is the hamster wheel variety - with a horizontal plastic hamster wheel thingie that spins around and extracts the air. It was... **cough**... quite dirty. I couldn't clean it very well standing on a ladder staring up into the housing so I watched some YouTube videos and figured out how to take the whole blower assembly out. Easy peasy.

Unplug the thing... undo the little screw that holds it in place (very important, otherwise you mutter and curse when nothing budges), then pop the little tabs and... it's out. After shaving a bit of excess drywall away from the opening. Yay!

I gave the hamster wheel a good clean. We had bought the house 10 years ago and... the suite bathroom was installed in 2007-2009 so... the bathroom fan is probably 15 years old. Maybe it was time to replace it? Nah, let's give this one a shot.

I had a peek down the exhaust tube with my smartphone camera and it looked fine. It's one of those flexible plastic tubes, and although it seemed a bit dusty, it wasn't blocked. At least not as far as I could see. I popped the blower assembly back into the housing, plugged it back in and... very little difference. Still noisy as all heck. Still anemic air flow. What the heck?

Maybe the whole thing did need replacing. Given it was in a basement ceiling with drywall all around it... I looked online for a replacement blower assembly that would fit in the same housing. Took a while, but I found a supplier and ordered it.

When the box arrived, I waited until we had a gap between guest bookings and then went downstairs, took out the old one and popped in the new one. Turned it on and... guess what...

Yeah... noisy as heck and weak air flow. Maybe this was just the state of exhaust fans nowadays? Maybe they were supposed to sound like that?

What Goes in Must Come Out

The only other thing I could think of, at this point, was to look at the other end of the exhaust tubing, where it exited the house through a flapper vent. I had noticed that when the bathroom fan was running, the louvers didn't move at all.

Not like the dryer vent which blows it's single flapper wide open. Nope... the louvers on the bathroom vent didn't move at all. Which made sense to me if the bathroom fan was so anemic. Or maybe there was something clogging the louvers?

Weeks went by... **cough**... while I thought to myself... "I have to get the big ladder from the shed and find some wooden blocks to level it (the ground is slopey below the vent) and get an old towel (so it won't scratch the stucco)"... 

Weeks I tell you. And then one day, I decided... screw it!!! Let's just do it!!

Yes, that does rhyme... Screw it. Just Do it... I have improved on Nike's slogan!

Anyhow... I got the ladder out from the shed, found some wooden blocks and an old towel and propped it up against the house. And tried to lift the louvers to look inside. They wouldn't budge. What the heck?

The Light Bulb Moment

They. Were. Painted. Shut.

Yes.

When we had the house painted, the painters decided to paint the vents and they painted the flapper slats.

O.M.G.

I went into the suite and turned on the bathroom fan and went back outside. Guess what the slats were doing? Blowing in the breeze from the bathroom fan. Oh, they needed some trimming of old paint and the top one didn't flap closed when the fan stopped, so it could let bugs in but... it worked.

Oh, and the bathroom fan is much quieter and it can definitely hold a kleenex to the grill, no problemo.

And then I had another thought... the kitchen exhaust fan above the stove vents to the outside. What about that one? That vent is under the deck, between the joists, completely invisible to anyone walking by. Yet, it too had been painted shut. **Face Palm**

No wonder there were humidity issues in the suite. No wonder the bathroom van sounded like a jet taking off. No wonder the smoke alarms kept going off with heavy cooking. Neither the bathroom fan, nor the kitchen van were actually exhausting anything to the outside.

S.H.I.T.

And when did the painters do this? When did they paint the exterior of the house and paint those louverd vents shut? Ready...??

2017.

Yep, seven years ago. Sigh.

The Hurdle - More Mental than Physical

In an ideal world, the bathroom flapper vent would have been easy to reach. Without a ladder. But because it wasn't... I focused on the inside... where I STILL needed a step ladder. But that was easier to get, and easier to set up than the big ladder in the shed. I had a blind spot for the outside end of the bathroom exhaust system. I focused on the actual source of the exhaust - the blower assembly. But... ignored the other side of the equation... that the air had to go somewhere. Being blind to that side of things, was huge.

In chemistry, there is a concept called activation energy. The chemical reaction won't take place without something, usually a catalyst, providing enough energy to get over that initial hump. Oftentimes, that extra push of energy comes from heat.

It's the same in life, a combination of inertia and a lack of activation energy. I had been picking away at the bathroom fan issue for months, trying to figure it out. But the thought of getting out the big ladder and setting... it was just too much. Needed too much oomph. Too much energy. 

Until I lit a fire under my own butt and said "Screw it!!! Just do it!!" This happens to me fairly regularly and what I inevitably find is: 

1. It didn't need as much energy as I imagined. In fact, I probably expended WAY more energy thinking about the thing and not going the thing... or avoiding the thing.
2. It didn't need as much time as I thought. Funny how that works

Both of those live in my head... thoughts that act as brakes, or increase the activation energy required. They turn a mole hill into a mountain. Yes, it does take a bit of energy to get the ladder out and set it up... but not as much as I "imagined" or "thought".

And my "screw it" thought was me turning up the heat and blowing past that hurdle and just moving. Going to the shed, getting the ladder, getting some blocks, setting it up. It took maybe 5 minutes.

One of these days, I will learn this lesson for good. I hope. It's all about small steps.