Quote:
Originally Posted by starflyte1
(Post 1862248)
Has anyone replaced the exhaust fan/light in their bathroom and knows if the duct is 4 or 6 inches?? I am looking at a new fan light heater but the duct size is 6”.
How hard is it to change the duct size?
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Just last week I replaced both of my 3.5 sone NuTone/Broan bathroom exhaust fans (the ones that came with the house) with 0.3 sone Panasonic ultra quiet fans. These exhaust 110 cubic feet per minute, and that is plenty. They are very quiet. I put one on a timer at the wall plate, and that is working well. In the guest bath I installed one that turns on automatically when someone enters the room and has a timer built in and also a humidity control. But so far it hasn’t turned off by itself yet, even when I set the humidity level to 80%. Both of these use 4” ducts, and that is what my house has. I assume that yours does, too. 4” aluminum flexible ducts. Panasonic also makes a slightly more powerful fan, 130 cfm, that has a 6” outlet, though you can attach a step down ring for a 4” ring. That’s more than you need.
Here’s the thing about the duct size. These Panasonic ultra quiet fans, when unattached, make almost no noise at all. When attached to a duct, they make less noise than a NuTune, but you can hear them. What you hear, though, is the noise of the air being forced through the duct. (Similarly, with some table fans, the motors are nearly silent, but the air being moved by the fan blades makes noise.) If you were just blowing air into the attic without a duct (which is not allowed), it would be much quieter. A 6” duct with a fan made for a 6” duct will be quieter than with a 4” duct because the air flow is not as fast. But both will be quieter than a noisy fan. Similarly, an exhaust fan with a light in the middle that sucks through vents along the edges will make more noise than the same vent fan without a light because the larger and more direct grill lets air suck through more easily. I put in exhaust fans without lights, though my original fans had light and dedicated circuits for those lights. (I used those wires to add another light elsewhere in the bathroom.)
As for replacing the 4” vent pipe with a 6” pipe, I wouldn’t bother, though the vent pipe is only 3-5’ long and pretty easy to replace. I definitely think replacing an exhaust fan with the quietest one possible is a good move. The Panasonic fans cost more, but I consider it money well spent. They are excellent. Get the 110 cfm fan and save yourself $50. It really is plenty.
As for doing it yourself, it can be done from below instead of from the attic, but even so, you need to stand on a ladder for a couple hours, have the right tools, cut drywall right over your head, use an electric screwdriver by feel, wire the circuits correctly, tape the vent to the fan body with the right kind of tape while working mostly blind. I did it, but it was hard work. If you haven’t done similar work before, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve installed a half dozen over the years.
By the way, I’ve just used a decibel meter on my iPad to see how much noise these things make. In my bathrooms, the base reading was 35 decibels, just from environmental noise like air conditioning running in the neighborhood. When I turned on the exhaust fans, that went up to 45 decibels. That may sound loud to you, but with the fans off, the quietest whisper I could make was 55 decibels. So when Panasonic calls these “whisper quiet,” they aren’t joking.
I’ve just reread your question and saw that you are looking for a fan-light-HEATER combination. I don’t think the Panasonic ultra quiet fans with high output are available with a heater built in. You could certainly have a heat lamp installed elsewhere in the ceiling where the powerful fan wouldn’t be exhausting so much of the heat. That would be more effective. I’d recommend having an electrician wire it to a new switch
