Rattling extractor fan exhaust driving me nuts!

gundo

When I had the bathroom redone I had an extractor fan fitted. On the outside it has a cover with two hinged horizontal vanes. When the fan is on the pressure of the flow of air coming out of the fan pushes them up and allows the air out. When the fan is off the vanes under their own weight close the vent off. However whenever there is a slight breath of wind these vanes rattle loudly. It's keeping me awake at night!

Any ideas for stopping this? The noise is the vanes closing and banging as they do so. I'm tempted to get a long ladder and attach some foam strips to the edges of the vanes to give them a "softer" and thus quieter closing but I have also purchased a different outer exhaust which has one large vane and a cowl.

Anyone else had this problem? Blooming cheapskate plumbers that fitted the bathroom out used the cheapest stuff they could find. The extract fan doesn't have any internal vanes which would stop backflow/drafts when it's switched off. I noticed most of the ones in my nearest Homebase all have them.

Nobleck

Outside is what is called a gravity grill, there isn't much you can do to stop the noise, one thing that may work is to use a sticky back rubber pad on the grill (very small pad,like in kitchen cupboards),this will stop the rattling.Apart from that change the outside grill to another type(look in screw fix for some variants).Good Luck

ozskin

question did you specify the fan and kit or leave it to them? if its the latter then you have got what you paid for. try an icon fan and a flygrill screen externally

gundo

ozskin wrote:

question did you specify the fan and kit or leave it to them? if its the latter then you have got what you paid for. try an icon fan and a flygrill screen externally

I tend to agree with you except that the job wasn't cheap. I left it to them as the company is one that I've had professional dealings with for quite a few years and I know the proprietor very well. Sadly it seems that friendship is one thing and business is another.

ozskin

unfortunately these are a standard way of doing extractors, though we dont use them. if you can an alternative is an inline damper and flygille on outside. unfortunately the devil is in the detail