I need to install new extractor fans in our bathroom and en-suite. I bought a Expelair humidity one for my last house but I was never happy it came on at the right time.
Loft access is easy, so considering a in-line pipe fan instead, to move the noisy bit into the loft out of the way.
Each room has a switch outside it, for them to be turned on manually - of course the kids always forget to either switch it on, or off.
Should I try and find a automatic humidity one, or use a temperature and humidity sensor in the bathroom to trigger a relay/socket to bring it on?
This does not have to be a HA solution, standalone with its own sensor is fine
I personally am using a separate Hygro- Thermometer to measure the humidity and the extractor fan purely switched by a relay. Even any manual switched go through the automation to turn the relay on.
This nicely allows for customised humidity sensing, also taking into account the humidity in the hallway and other rooms for the automation to turn off the fan at a sensible state, depending on the environmental humidity.
This is exactly what I did as well. I installed a Kaze SEPL2-EZ and a Z-Wave based on/off switch. Automation-wise, when the bathroom door is shut, the fan goes on automatically. When the door opens back up, it runs for however long the door was closed * 6 (closed for 1 minute, runs fan for 6 more minutes) but no more than 10 minutes. Based upon the size of the fan and the size of the room, 100% of the air can be moved out of the room in 10 minutes.
But It has nothing to do with drying the bathroom, first you need to evaporate the water on surfaces, then the water absorbed. It takes much longer than replacing the volume once…
Yeah you’re right. I guess for me we don’t have a lot of standing water. Mostly the fan is for odor and when the shower runs to pull out some of the humidity so the mirror and window isn’t fogged. For this and the size of the room, this works great. So well in fact I’ve never actually felt the need to install a device to monitor humidity in the room and get an exact measurement. The 10 minute max run time tends to do the trick.
Yep, I agree. Little bit experiments and you can find correct time even for drying. But the device doesn’t know if you were washing your teeth or showering water all over. Some humidity sensing is definitely saving energy.
