There are several different ways in which you can install an extractor fan into a bathroom
today I’m going to show you one method which is to install an inline fan you could also use
wall mounted and ceiling mounted I’m going to show you my method I’m going to show you a few
of the hurdles I need to jump through and a few ways of getting around them just a quick look
around the bathroom in just a second I just have to grab a camera and flip it over to show you
one of the methods that I just talked about would be to install a wall mounted fan now in this
bathroom the only place to possibly do it would be in this area here up by the window on the external
wall because that wall knees into a bedroom and there's no space above the window to do it and
I wouldn't recommend trying to do that because there's going to be a big lintel in the way most
probably also come to the bar into the shower area you can see it's all been boxed off of the pipe
work now what I’m going to do is put an inline fan in the ceiling uh I’m going to hide it in the
roof space and the vent will go somewhere above the shower over there namely because obviously
that's where the steam is produced and there's no point in putting over here because it's the other
side of the room and so the fan I’m going to be fitting today is this hundred mil in-line fan it's
a high flow unit I’m going to be hanging it from a joist simply because it helps reduce the amount of
vibrational noise being transferred through into the house itself there is no switch mode on this
it's a live neutral device so it will only come on and off when the light switch is turned on or an
inline switch has been put in place the reason being I’ve gone for this device is because the
client doesn't want an overrun facility because I don't want to drag it on for however long you
set the timer for and depending what unit is anywhere between 30 seconds and 30 minutes, so
the other tools and the other units I’m going to be installing with this include insulated ducting
which is this stuff here it's foil wraps it's got uh insulation inside there you go,
you can see it better now, it's going to help reduce any condensation coming back
down into the property and it will help you get a little bit warmer too
the duct is one of these now this is a great little device um it's got an adjustable face
on it so the user can adjust the amount of suction going through um it can also change
again the noise level going of the sucking noise being pulled through and it just gives the client
a little bit more versatility in how they want to use the device to suit their requirements
I’m going to be using one of these for my ducting shoot it's got a vent on the front
this is a silicon face on the front of it it comes with a backdraft shutter now these cost
a little bit more money than your usual ducting um with your outside vents the reason for using
this I will come apparent in a few seconds but they're great they're very useful very versatile
because you simply just push them through the hole and then pull them back to lock them into place
and then fix them at the rear one of the important things we will need to install with an extractor
fan is an isolator switch mostly because if it goes wrong in the future it makes a lot easier
to replace it I’ve got a double pole switch here normally I would use a triple pole but because
again it's going to overrun feature on built into the fan I’m going to use some 2 core
cable rather than 3 core now the reason I’m using that ducting which I’ll just show you
I will show you now so the reason for the ducting is because this is the outside passageway is
approximately about a meter wide as you can see it's incredibly narrow so getting ladders up
there would be incredibly steep especially when I’m aiming for the hole to come out somewhere
around this area that's the bathroom window there
it's not practical financially to hire scaffold because that would put the price up exponentially
which is why I intend on doing everything from the inside I’m going to require quite a
lot of tools to do this job which is insane for what is actually quite a very small simple job
I also need my access equipment I’ve got a set of rods there which will come apparent later on you
need your rubbish bag I’ve got my PPE with my dust mask goggles gloves etc I’ve got my cable I’ve got
my tool bag for my electrical equipment a dust sheet with sleeving just chucked on top of there,
my extraction device now the little thing on top of that actually sits sucks onto the
wall um around the core drill and pulls all the dust into the vacuum keeping out the atmosphere
and obviously I’ve got my drill my impact driver down there but more importantly there's the SDS
I’m going to take a couple of batteries up with me when I do it I find battery
a lot easier than electric because it's a lot lighter and it takes quite some time to core drill
anywhere up to around about an hour depending on the material that you're drilling through
and then of course that's the 117 mil core drill and the bars and the bits that go along with it
so now I’ve got the cover taken off of the light what I now do is I find the connectors
here and I look for the permanent knife and the switch live and the earth and what you do
is you take a meter this is my cheap and cheerful one uh does the job for just testing electrical
stuff to make sure it's not live um but it's not the sort of thing I would actually use when
doing proper electrical testing all this does is just simply tell me that the circuit is dead
so you put one probe on the earth and you put the other on the knife and zero volts
and just to double check put it on the switch live as well
and again zero volts so now I’m ready to take the whole casing off um I can disconnect all
the cabling and we can go from there so as you can see there's the cabling for the
for the light it's not been done very well at all it's definitely been a diy job at some point
you can see up there they've literally just hammered out a hole there's no gland on there,
it's not even circular and there's some dodgy bits of tape wrapping around the cable so I’m
gonna sort that out for the bit um what will make my life easier is that I’m gonna do all the
connections up in the ceiling and then I’m just gonna drop the switch cable back down to the light
fitting um later on so having now just taken the light fitting off the ceiling you can see it's not
fantastic for starters there's a whopping great big hole that which they just knocked out and
they just bent the metal over um but to just top it all off it's not even bathroom rated so this
is going to go in the bin and I’m going to have to find another light to replace it with later on
one thing you must all be aware of is that when you disconnect the cabling from the light fixture
is that there'll be a switch cable and in this case it's this
lone black cable here there's dodge a bit of black tape but it's actually holding you just about to
see that little red tab on there which indicates that this is the switch cable do not lose this
because you do not want to get it mixed up later with the neutrals because you will just trip your
power and you'll be chasing yourself all over the place trying to find the fault but now I’ve
got the cabling out and the hole is accessible and I’ll take my rods and I just poke it up
through into the ceiling now the idea of doing this is that when I’m up in the loft space it
makes it a lot easier to find my starting point and where all the connections are going to be
it also means that when I get out there I can take a tape measure with me and I can measure the joist
spacings so I can get a much better clearer image of where I can drill the hole for putting the
extractor vent into the ceiling so that with every loft space you've got to be really careful about
where you track so I’ve seen so much insulation you can't see where the joists are but now I’ve
worked my way down a little bit I can release some of the insulation uh where it's all lumpy and uh
no there's no rod ah in fact what I have done is I just spotted it I’ve been completely the
wrong spot I know you can see it over there very clearly I can zoom my torch down onto it there
we go there's the rod sticking out the ceiling so it just goes to prove how useful they are because
without it I could have been digging around for ages trying to find the actual connection point
as you can see there's the cables and the rod poking up so uh and I can also see the direction
of the joist runners which is fantastic because I need to measure this distance
which means that when I put the vent in further along I’m not having to avoid any joists running
that way which means I can get a more central position above the shower which will be fair
it's getting really hot up here now so I’m going to crack on get this cabling all safe
and I’ll see you downstairs in a minute so now I’ve been up there and I’ve measured
the distance between the joists I know that I’ve got 44 centimetres between the edge of the joist
along there to the beginning of the next joist and I don't know if you can see the scale on here um
that puts its smack bang in it's actually a really good position so the best thing I can do now is to
uh measure from that edge of the wall up to the hole and then I can do a good reference point
to measure from over there to that kind of area there for where I’m going to drill the hole for
the fence so what I’ve done so I’ve marked the ceiling with a piece of tape for the camera so
you can see where I’m going to be drilling um it's bang centre between the glass and the wall
of the shower unit and it's directly above where the head is so hopefully that all the steam that's
produced that goes to waste would be instantly sucked straight out before filling the rest of
the bathroom up now what I’m going to use is 100mm core drill I forgot to mention this earlier when I
went through my tool list I also have what's called a DADE there's a rubber um silicone shield
this will collect all the rubbish and debris um to the point that I don't actually need a dust
shield I put one down anyway but my experience of using this is so good it will catch 99% of
all of all the rubbish if you don't know anything about them please search my channel for the video
because I have done a review on this I’ll also put a link up here somewhere anyway let's drill a hole
now I personally prefer to put these on a slow speed um because it does help limit the amount
of dust and also if the blade catches in the plasterboard, it's less likely to hurt your
and wrist we have one perfect 100mm hole