Effective bathroom and kitchen extractor fans?

tallac

I need extractor fans for bathroom as well as the kitchen so thought I'd mention them both in the same thread.

With regards to bathroom, are there any stand out good quality and effective bathroom extractor fans that are great value for money? Looking for the type of product that will just do it's job reliably and never have to think about them. I did some google searching and icon 30 extractor fan (the ones with iris style vent covers that open when in use) are good? Thoughts?

With regards to kitchen extractor fan. Our house loves to eat very aromatic food which is lovely to eat but we don't want the smell to get trapped in the house. We have an open plan kitchen which doesn't have many normal window openings, there will be a large bi-fold or sliding doors at the back plus 2 small opening skylights but that is it. I'm looking at cooker extractor fan hoods and it's hard to tell what is going to give very good extractor fan performance. They seem to be rated in number of cubic metres of air per hour extracted, is it a case of higher is better or are other things coming into play? What is a good stand out extractor fan that is good value for money?

tacpot12

Cubic meters of air per hour extracted should be a good measure of a fan's performance, but you are right that other factors come into play. Longer ducts will require a more powerful fan (check the wattage of the fan). How accessible the filter is for cleaning, and how expensive replacement filters are will also have a big impact - if the filters are expensive or difficult to replace, you will naturally try to stretch the intervals between changes, and performance will be reduced while the filter needs replacing - chose a cooker hood where you are confident you can keep the filter in tip-top condition to maximise the performance.

With bathroom fans, you want them to be quiet, and you want them to be operated by a humidistat and wired so that they come on when the bathroom light is on OR when the humidity is higher than 70% RH or thereabouts. Wired this way, even a small extractor fan will always shift the damp air out of the bathroom before it causes too many problems. 

tetrarch

tacpot12 said:

Cubic meters of air per hour extracted should be a good measure of a fan's performance, but you are right that other factors come into play. Longer ducts will require a more powerful fan (check the wattage of the fan). How accessible the filter is for cleaning, and how expensive replacement filters are will also have a big impact - if the filters are expensive or difficult to replace, you will naturally try to stretch the intervals between changes, and performance will be reduced while the filter needs replacing - chose a cooker hood where you are confident you can keep the filter in tip-top condition to maximise the performance.

With bathroom fans, you want them to be quiet, and you want them to be operated by a humidistat and wired so that they come on when the bathroom light is on OR when the humidity is higher than 70% RH or thereabouts. Wired this way, even a small extractor fan will always shift the damp air out of the bathroom before it causes too many problems. 

I am a big fan of the Icon fans. I have the 30 in my Bathroom and the smaller one in my downstars cloakroom. Aesthetically they are excellent, really neat and stop backdraughts very effectively.

As to efficiency, there is some residual blackening of my bathroom ceiling despite ducting the Icon to the outside, but this is after 15 years of daily use, so I am not desperately upset.

If yoou had asked me about kitchen extractor fans six months ago, I would have recommended Elica as they are efficient and very stylish. However, mine has now died, despite only being four years old, so no help there.... 

Regards

Tet