Bathroom exhaust fan replacement, ducted outside where it should be

In a Far North Queensland wet season, a bathroom without a working exhaust fan can have mould on the ceiling before the season is out. Most of the fans we replace have not died outright. They are clogged with dust, the motor has gone noisy, or they were never ducted anywhere and have been blowing wet air into the roof space for years. More than 400 of our jobs since February 2020 have been exhaust fans, in houses, units, holiday lets and resort rooms.

Where does the air actually go?

Check this first. Plenty of fans up here vent straight into the ceiling space, which just moves the problem from the bathroom ceiling to the roof timbers and the insulation. A fan should be ducted outside, through the eave, a wall or the roof, finishing at a grille or cowl that keeps the rain and the wildlife out. When we replace a fan we check the duct, and if it has perished, been squashed or was never connected, we fix that while we are up there. On a renovation we put the fan and the duct in while the ceiling is open, which is the cheapest it will ever be. See renovation wiring.

Noisy, slow or dead: repair or replacement?

• Noisy: worn bearings, or a fan rattling in a cut-out that is too big for it. Usually a replacement rather than a repair.
• Slow to clear the steam: a clogged grille, a duct that is too long or crushed, or a fan too small for the room.
• Dead: a failed motor, or a fault on the circuit. We test the circuit before we blame the fan.
• Hanging out of the ceiling: it happens. Rusted fixings and a ceiling that has been damp for years let go eventually.

Run on timers and separate switching

A fan that stops the moment the light goes off leaves the steam behind. We can fit fans with a built in run on timer, or switch the fan separately from the light, so it keeps going after you leave the room. In a holiday let, where guests switch things on and off at random, a run on timer is the difference between a dry ceiling and a mould clean before the next booking.

Laundries, toilets and kitchens

A laundry with a dryer and no fan is one of the worst rooms for mould we see. A toilet wants a fan on the light switch. In the kitchen the rangehood is the exhaust fan, and it needs ducting outside just as much: see ovens, cooktops and rangehoods. On bigger commercial buildings the extraction is designed by a mechanical services contractor; our part is the power, the isolation and the electrical connection, and finding the fault when a fan stops.

Holiday lets, body corporates and resorts

Exhaust fans are one of the most common items on a property manager's maintenance list, because a fan that has quietly stopped shows up later as a mould complaint or a bad review. We replace fans unit by unit, including fans the client supplies, and on body corporate sites we check the roof mounted fans that serve several bathrooms at once, where one failed fan or a missing weather cover leaves a whole stack of rooms without extraction. See property managers and body corporates.

Replacing or adding an exhaust fan is licensed electrical work. It is a book it in job rather than an emergency: request a call back and we will find a time. If something has gone bang and the power is off, that is different. Day or night, we pick up the phone.