We live in an old house.
Old houses are drafty.
Old houses are cold.
Old houses get damp.
Ive probably mentioned more than once that we have been doing a tremendous amount of work to tighten up this old place. Lots of caulking, insulation, etc have made some significant improvements. But we still have had a persistent problem with mildew and mold in the bath.
We do have an exterior vented bath fan. It never seemed to help much. I tried brushing out the the vent grill. I cleaned out and rerouted the hose in the attic to take up the slack. I adjusted the bathroom door to leave a bigger gap to let house air into the room. We run the fan for up to 45 minutes after showers!
But still we get mildew. All over the ceiling, and the shower curtain, on top of the cabinets. Its just nasty and the place never seems to dry.
I started to suspect that the issue was just the room being too cold. So I went up into the attic, pulled up the floor, tore out the crappy fiberglass insulation job I did 2 years ago , foamed up every crack and re insulated the ceiling with 8 inches of dense cellulose.
So now the bath IS a little warmer but still damp!!
Ive thought that maybe the fan was undersized... its a 90 cfm, but the room is only like 70 or 80 sq ft.
Then I got the idea to put in a fan timer so we could program it to run an hour. To do that I had to get into the wiring box inside the fan housing and run a separate line for the light and fan circuits.
And that was when I had an AHA moment - the blower unit was caked in dust! The fan squirrel cage was so packed it was probably only flowing about 20% of its rated capacity. I scraped and vacuumed it out, put it back in and viola! The bath dries completely in ~ 10 minutes now.
I need to remember to look for the simple answer and not always make everyhitng complicated....
Old houses are drafty.
Old houses are cold.
Old houses get damp.
Ive probably mentioned more than once that we have been doing a tremendous amount of work to tighten up this old place. Lots of caulking, insulation, etc have made some significant improvements. But we still have had a persistent problem with mildew and mold in the bath.
We do have an exterior vented bath fan. It never seemed to help much. I tried brushing out the the vent grill. I cleaned out and rerouted the hose in the attic to take up the slack. I adjusted the bathroom door to leave a bigger gap to let house air into the room. We run the fan for up to 45 minutes after showers!
But still we get mildew. All over the ceiling, and the shower curtain, on top of the cabinets. Its just nasty and the place never seems to dry.
I started to suspect that the issue was just the room being too cold. So I went up into the attic, pulled up the floor, tore out the crappy fiberglass insulation job I did 2 years ago , foamed up every crack and re insulated the ceiling with 8 inches of dense cellulose.
So now the bath IS a little warmer but still damp!!
Ive thought that maybe the fan was undersized... its a 90 cfm, but the room is only like 70 or 80 sq ft.
Then I got the idea to put in a fan timer so we could program it to run an hour. To do that I had to get into the wiring box inside the fan housing and run a separate line for the light and fan circuits.
And that was when I had an AHA moment - the blower unit was caked in dust! The fan squirrel cage was so packed it was probably only flowing about 20% of its rated capacity. I scraped and vacuumed it out, put it back in and viola! The bath dries completely in ~ 10 minutes now.
I need to remember to look for the simple answer and not always make everyhitng complicated....
