Bathroom Extractor

Nearlyold

Need to fit an extractor in a small rectangular bathroom in a modernish terraced property, the bath is along the righthand wall, the basin is under the window in the only outside wall (opposite the entrance door) and the WC is just to the left of the basin. Can't fit a through the wall extractor fan to the left of the window because that's where the soil stack is and can't fit one to the right of the window because that's where the taps and shower head are fitted.

So planned to fit duct from the ceiling to an inline extractor with the duct exhaust air exiting out through a soffit vent. However on inspecting the roofline from the loft noticed that the outer wall is actually 1 brick higher than the inner wall  leaving as far as I can tell no gap to get any ducting  into the soffit.  

Am I right in thinking that a Roof Vent Tile is probably the solution?

tacpot12

A roof vent tile should be regarded as a last resort, as they need to be correctly installed if they are not to leak, and most aren't installed correctly unless a competent roofer is used to do the work. I expect you can remove a brick from the outer wall in order to get the vent out to the soffit.

I would also recommend fitting a seperate humidistat so that the fan can run whenever the humidistat senses that the bathroom is too humid. Don't use a timer or let an electrician tell you that it can't wired that way. Find a better electrician. 

Make sure you insulate the duct between the bathroom and the fan - you need to keep the water vapour suspended in the warm air for as long as possible - ideally until you can reach a peice of solid PVC duct fitted to the fan exhaust that is angled downwards so that the condensation (and there will be alot of this) runs out of the soffit.

ashe

tacpot12 said:

A roof vent tile should be regarded as a last resort, as they need to be correctly installed if they are not to leak, and most aren't installed correctly unless a competent roofer is used to do the work. I expect you can remove a brick from the outer wall in order to get the vent out to the soffit.

I would also recommend fitting a seperate humidistat so that the fan can run whenever the humidistat senses that the bathroom is too humid. Don't use a timer or let an electrician tell you that it can't wired that way. Find a better electrician. 

Make sure you insulate the duct between the bathroom and the fan - you need to keep the water vapour suspended in the warm air for as long as possible - ideally until you can reach a peice of solid PVC duct fitted to the fan exhaust that is angled downwards so that the condensation (and there will be alot of this) runs out of the soffit.

Pretty much every house in my area has roof vent tiles installed and not heard of any leaks being encountered en masse. 

Our roofing guy installed two roof tiles for us and charged us £20 for the sake of going up the ladder, and it wasn't a hard job to connect the ducting to that. No leaks 2 years later 

loads of YouTube guides showing how to do it. 

We wired ours into a smart switch and I use a £10 temperature / humidity sensor in the bathroom along with a motion sensor. Fan and lights come on automatically depending on the on the time, and turn off after a few minutes of no activity detected (it polls every ten seconds and times out after 5 minutes), unless humidity is still high - relative humidity that is, don't want it running constantly because it's 100% outside, causing internal humidity to spike. 

I also have a humidity sensor in the loft in case anything ever breaks and it starts pumping it through a split or the hose disconnects or some other calamity. 

stuart45

It's unusual to have the outer skin higher than the inner skin on a pitched roof, because the angle of the rafters means the outer skin should be lower than the plate. As she stated, tile vents shouldn't be a problem, apart from having to get up on the roof. The main issue with a soffit vent is if there's roof space vents in the soffit close by which will take moisture back into the loft.

Nearlyold

Yes I thought it a bit weird,  it's an early 80s build and although it's row of more or less identical terraced houses the roofline alters randomly with each house -  between fascia with soffit and no fascia no soffit with the rafter ends protruding through gaps in the top line of bricks.