Independence Homestead

New Bathroom Fan

When we moved into our homestead we found many of the appliances and household utilities to be in need of repair and/or replacement. The fans in our three bathrooms were all original, noisy, and did not seem to move much air. We decided last summer while we were re-painting all the rooms to replace the fans. Neither Martha or I had ever replaced a bathroom fan before but it seemed easy enough. But of course as with all household projects there are always unforeseen problems and challenges. I’m writing this post to share some of the experiences and nuances of replacing bathroom fans so that if you take on the task you might be better prepared, although I’m sure there will always be more challenges, unique to every situation.

The first thing you need to do is shut off power to the fan. Don’t just turn the switch controlling the fan off, go to the breaker box and kill power to the fan completely. Once power is off you can being to remove the old fan. Hopefully you have an attic above your fan that allows you to work from above. Working from above provides a much better vantage for prying the nails out of the beam on which the fan is mounted. I used a little mini-crowbar, making sure to lift up the fan enclosure above the drywall for hte ceiling. However, if you have to work from below, as we did with our first floor bathroom, I’d recommend getting a hack-saw blade. Use the blade to go up along the side of the fan that is mounted to the beam and cut the nails. Once the nails are cut (usually just two) it should slide right out.

But wait! Before sliding the old fan out you’ll need to unhook the electrical wires that power it. If you have access to the top of the fan, you should be able to pull the wires out of the housing and unscrew the wire caps. From below, you’ll have to pop out the actual fan from the enclosure to gain access to the wires. This can be done by pressing the sides of the enclosure so that the fan will pop out and slide down.  You may need to unscrew a couple screws that keep the fan attached to the electrical housing box.

Detached Exhaust Port

We decided to replace our bedroom bathroom fan prior to our impending bathroom remodel because it has been performing so poorly. I had access to the attic above and when I first inspected the fan from above I was shocked to find that the vent pipe to the fan was not even connected. The exhaust port from the fan was full of insulation too. No wonder the fan was not performing well! I used the mini-crowbar to pry out the nails and free the fan enclosure from the beam. Luckily the electrical wires were easy to unhook and the old fan came out easily.

New Fan Exhaust On Opposite Side

The next set of challenges became apparent when I went to position the new fan over the opening in the ceiling. For one, the opening was smaller than the new fan (you’d think there would be some sort of standard in bathroom fans). The next issue was the exhaust vent of the new fan was facing the opposite direction as the old fan and the vent pipe going out was fixed so it could not be positioned around to match the new exhaust vent. I used a knife to cut away the drywall to match the opening to the new fan enclosure. I’d recommend using a razor blade, I used a little pocket knife and it did not cut through smoothly and caused tearing as seen in the picture below. This can be fixed with some spackle and paint, which we will do when we do the full bathroom remodel in a couple months.

Ceiling Drywall Damage

At this point I took a quick break to head to the hardware store and pick up some ventilation tubing. I was hoping they would have some sort of adapter because the solid ventilation pipe was much smaller than the exhaust vent on the new fan. Unfortunately they had no adapter so I settled for a flexible 5ft dryer vent pipe. It came with clamps that worked fine on the new fan housing but were too large to work with the fixed exhaust pipe. Duct tape to the rescue! I was able to secure the flexible dryer vent pipe to the fixed vent pipe with several pieces of duct tape. With the vents attached and electrical connected it was time to put the cover back on the new fan.

Read back later to see how we go about the bathroom remodel project!