The best household ventilation system is a constant operation fan powered balanced air-change system -- a central system that sucks stale air out an exhaust duct and blows an almost equal amount of fresh air into the house through an intake duct. These systems will usually require a heater o...
Stale, humid air must be exhausted from the house, both to allow for fresh air and to maintain a high neutral plane. For this reason we need a planned-hole-high-in-the-house, but the air going out must come into the house from somewhere. If you carefully seal all the leaks in the house to m...
Yes. If your house is well sealed the bathroom will create too much humidity, and an exhaust fan will get rid of the tremendous moisture produced by a shower quickly, before it spreads through the house. This excess load function of the exhaust fan will work even if the bathroom exhaust ducting...
Clothes dryers should vent outdoors.However, clothes dryers do make excellent humidifiers and if you really want a ton of water vapour in the laundry room you could very well vent yours indoors.Special lint traps and by-pass valves exist to aid you in venting a clothes dryer indoors in the win...
There is no simple answer to this one. Let's narrow the field and talk only about exhaust fans that do not use things like the air-to-air heat exchangers for heat recuperation.Government literature from the Prairie provinces do not recommend them if they must be installed in the attic (the st...
A balanced air-change system is a fan operated system that forces out stale air through exhaust ducts and forces in an equal amount of fresh air through controlled intake ducts. The difference between this and a central exhaust system is that the input air is under active control and balance...
Joan from Armstrong, BC is having trouble adjusting the ventilation system in her new home to keep condensation off the windows. She told us the kind of system she has and said that it was required by the building code. Actually no specific system is required by any of the building codes. ...
If it is a plastic flexible duct, it can be very difficult to clean precisely because it is so flexible. But all ducts can be cleaned with "duct brushes". These are round brushes similar to chimney sweep brushes but much softer, with either a string pull or a rod on the handle. If you can't fi...
Annia asked about getting rid of some mould in her basement bathroom. I have often discussed mould and mould clean-up and in every case I point out that you must have an exhaust fan in the bathroom. So today I thought I would talk about just how you get the exhaust fan duct through the base...
There are many things to consider when installing a bathroom fan, but when we went to install one in a viewer's home, we were stopped short when we discovered that the old one had no duct at all attached to it. It just shot right into the attic. You must get that hot moist air beyond the at...