Thursday, July 12, 2007

Forcing the LAZY to use bathroom fans


Hello from the injured HZG. Had a cortisone shot in the shoulder and the pain was great enough to shut me down for a while. It was enjoyable doing groundhog attic inspections (where you pop up your head). Seriously though - if I saw something, I had my lead techs with me to crawl. Hopefully back at it tomorrow.


Today's topic is the latest and greatest for lazy people. It's the motion detector bathroom fan. For indoor air quality, bathroom fans should be used for every bathing event, running from the time the water runs to 10-15 minutes after exiting the bathroom. In the HWAP programs, we would install fans on switches that you KNOW were never turned on. How do we know? The follow up post-installation reviews showed the majority of the time, the fans were not in action.


With this being said, we found a way for as little as $30 (up to $100 for electrical work) - a motion detector could be put in. This detector is set for 15 minutes connected to the fan, so that when someone is entering the room and leaving the room, the fan remains on for 15 minutes.


The only complaints we receive are from the people that are just using the bathroom to, well, go to the bathroom. Based on some of the bathrooms we've smelled lately, this isn't necessarily a bad idea...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

if only everyone could see and use just the education from using the fan in the bathroom even if there is a window.(i get that all the time) use the fan too vent the moisture or unpleasant oders out of the bathroom. same goes for the kitchen when cooking the amount of moisture that people cant see but is still there is amazing.

The House-Zen Guy said...

Sorry for the delay in responding.

The bathroom fan is THE most underutilized item that is under the complete control of the home owner.

This year, we have gone to the extreme of spending an extra $75 to install a humidistat on the fan, effectively taking the power away from the home owner. Unfortunately, we can only install these on grant money properties where the counties make the call - not the home owner. No complaints as of yet...