Today we're looking at bathroom extractor fans
and we're looking at the Envirovent silent dual 100 Gordon now i like a product where the
key through success is in the name and the silent bit this product is a whisper quiet it's actually
on now as we're shooting the video the second bit is the dual and that's it's two modes of
operation using either a humidity sensor or a PIR that we're going to look at a little bit further
okay and there's two ways in which to set it up which way we're going to set it up first so just
let's have a look at the intermittent mode first so that's normally when there's nobody in the
bathroom and no humidity detected the fan is off okay so you're saying when something's introduced
maybe humidity or somebody moving in the fan will change its status yeah well let's introduce some
humidity with the efixx apprentice hub mug some nice steaming hot water there you'll see that
the fans immediately detected that and switched on now if a lot of humidity is detected it goes
to a hundred percent straight away if only a small amount of humidity is detected it gradually ramps
up to a hundred percent depending on the humidity level and we blanked out the PIR there so that was
actually working with nobody in the room maybe nobody even in the building that it detected
humidity and actually the fan turned itself on and started to clear that humidity yeah so obviously
the main reason for an extractor fan is to clear steam humidity and avoid mold so that is a really
useful function that it's not relying on you know at the moment most people it's tied to the light
switch with that run on timer well that run on timer makes no account of actually real humidity
levels okay and the second part of the feature which would blanked out in the first part of the
video means that we now introduced the pir element so all of a sudden now we've walked into the area
what's happened to the extractor fan now gordon okay so the extract the fan under these
circumstances immediately comes on at 75 percent of full output now obviously the reason for the
pir is you might want to remove some air in the bathroom that's a little bit stale for some other
reasons and obviously when a person's in the room is that's the chance when you need to do that
so i've walked into the bathroom i've used the bathroom but maybe not used a shower or bath to
create humidity the extractor fans come on when i'm in the area will it stay on for an actual
amount of time yeah so then there is a run-on timer that people are probably used to with lots
of existing extractor fans and you can set that to either two or 15 minutes with one of the dip
switches that we'll look at a little bit further however let's say i've gone into the bathroom
i've actually had a bath or shower created some humidity okay and i've obviously left the area and
say i've set it to two minutes will the extractor fan turn itself off when i'm no longer in the area
for two minutes yeah so it's it's um the humidity sensor always takes priority so regardless of
a time setting if there's humidity it will still continue to run and operate until that's cleared
so i've come out the bathroom it's really steamy in there that two minutes is overridden by the
fact it needs to clear the humidity yeah that's the first mode in which you can set using those
two dip switches and we're left with those dip switches in the later in the presentation but
let's say we've changed them to the next setting what's the next mode okay so let's repeat the
operation with the continuous mode so that's where the fan runs at 43 the full output for all
of the time okay sort of trickle ventilation mode and again if humidity is detected it goes up to
either immediately to 100 or gradually increases the full output depending on the humidity level
so let's just recap that so it's running all the time all the time yeah okay but once it creates
some humidity in the area it can ramp up maybe to 100 in order to clear it and i leave the area and
again it's going to continue to run at 43 yeah it's 43 so before we go any further people are
going to say to yourselves that's using power can you describe the power level okay so this this
this particular version the 100 version for for a hundred millimeter pipe um it goes between
four and eight watts depending on that mode of operation so that's not a huge amount of power i
think the benefit of not having a damp bathroom compared to maybe using four watts of energy i
imagine we don't want to have it on and extracting away so they're the two modes so let's have a look
from the installer's point of view how we got to how do we fix it how do we connect the cables
and importantly how do we change those dip switches so let's look at the next one
so in this we can see we're fixing all four corners which is obviously what we expect we've
got a pir and we've got the humidity detector as well built within the actual unit itself
so when we go to connect the cable gordon okay so it's just two two cores to connect it's a double
insulated fan so again you've got to leave the earth well away from the uh from the terminal so
yeah most people as you've done there just double it back and leave it over sleeved uh but within
the enclosure but let's think that's only two connections so there's no secondary permanent live
or switch live to think about it just needs that permanent live connection so the sensors are
always ready to operate and we just see now we've put the grommet back as well so we've connected
it up not the three chord maybe that we used to just two cores we've folded the cpc out of the way
and obviously we're now ready to energize it but we talked about those dip switches should
we have a look at that next gordon yeah so the dip switches there's only two of them so a lot
of these fans you'll see there's there's mass as a dip switch as this one comes with a little uh
little t stirrer there that you use to access the dip switches which you flip back this little
uh cover nice thing electronics are under this sort of again secondary sealed unit so you don't
get moisture into the electrical electronics and you just flip the dip switch to the required
setting so there's just a couple of selected modes one will be between two and 15 minutes and one's
between intermittent and what you call the other continuous continuous motor that's nice and simple
it's fully in the instructions explaining that as well as the ip rating of the actual enclosure
what is it gordon yeah so this is an ip45 fan so what does that mean in terms of zones
okay so we can wall mount it or seal and mount it so okay and it can go inside a zone one i suppose
if you're going on to the ceiling the likelihood is you'll be outside of zone one but it can be
installed in zone one if you have to also comes with a warranty gordon yeah so it's a five-year
warranty uh so that's yeah so again quality build five-year warranty back to it that's yeah that's
a great option and just to remind everybody it's been running the whole time the video's
on and we're not shouting over the top of it oh we've just stopped the pir just kick it off again
there we go so back again so some of the other features again mentioned the electronic sealed
in there which makes it a very neat neat unit again a lot of problems with extractor fans caused
by moisture getting trapped in and affecting the electronics that do the timer functions
the other thing i like is the fan cover itself it's it's a kind of hybrid between the uh
um a fully uh open front or these um fully flat front it's got sort of you can have some direct
uh direct input to it and some uh intake from the side as well so that's uh so once those screws are
in and down they're simply covered by putting the front plate on why is that such a bonus to have
that easily removed gordon yeah well that's very easy to clean it's just yeah that just
it just literally lifts off the front and then you can wipe it over and pop it back on yeah
that's great it's fantastic so we've seen some really key features there okay for the
electrician you said it can run all the time and i know it's got a little plastic flap at the back
um so yeah if it's running in a continuous mode of operation you can remove the backdraft shutters
there so just game just there just simply uh just yeah detach from the back but i say that's only
and if it's a continuous mode operation okay so our feelings on this fan then so gordon so
run through the things you really like uh so i love the fact it's very easy to install so the
electricians will love it and it offers basically peace of mind for the customer that it's always
going to operate in the right mode of operation whisper quiet but you know we'll extract when
it needs to and just sit there waiting to extract when it doesn't need to and from my point of view
i've got a family with two children in that don't tend to pull the other pull cord that actually
puts my extractor fan on my bathroom has no window in it and obviously got a ton of problems there
with obviously the build of humidity in that area whereas this one takes it away from me i
could just install one of these and it's going to automatically come on and clear that as always at
efix we're interested in the type of extractor fan you're fitting are you fitting environments
any of their range what's your feeling on them we'd love to have your comments below so please
make sure you leave them below and us an enviro event will tend to get back to as many as we can
you