Bathroom Exhaust Open In Attic
Keep calm if that happens to you.
Bathroom exhaust open in attic. If you have access to the attic the fan can vent either through a gable wall or roof. Bathroom exhaust fans perform an important function by removing excess moisture from your home. Fabricate the duct run from rigid metal or pvc material. To be properly terminated bathroom fans should exit the home through stem vents that are specifically used for this purpose.
Bathroom vent exhausting into attic space. No you cannot vent your bathroom exhaust fan into the attic. These stem vents should be properly connected to the bathroom ducts to ensure that moisture is traveling to the exterior not the attic space. You should never do this.
The attic you see in the photo here is a different home but it does have one feature in common besides the spray foam. Mount the fan high on the wall to better capture warm moist air. Letting the fan exhaust into an open attic will cause moisture buildup on the underside of the roof. If you look closely you ll see two exhaust flues on the left side.
When venting a bathroom exhaust fan make sure to vent the air to the outside rather than into your attic where it can cause mold and mildew to form. You should never exhaust the bathroom fan directly into the attic. It may also violate a shingle warranty. Bathroom ventilation codes require a bathroom exhaust fan to vent to the exterior not the attic for health and structural reasons.
Your attic is not a temperature controlled environment is never the same temperature as your living space and generally closer to the temperature outside. The warm air will exhaust out the duct and enter back into the attic through the soffit vent or ridge vent. Avoid venting through a soffit vent or ridge vent. Dumping bathroom exhaust into an attic or under roof space invites costly mold contamination frost under the roof in freezing climates moisture damage to roof sheathing possibly even plywood delamination or rot roof failures and shorter roof shingle life.
It cannot move air to a crawlspace or attic. Not all building jurisdictions require bathrooms to have an exhaust fan if the bathroom has an openable window that has 1 5 square foot of open area when open. T he result of the insulation problem around a bathroom exhaust fan is either water stains or mold near the vent of your bathroom. Ask your hvac contractor about fabricating a duct run that extends from a fan mounted in a bathroom wall down through the floor and between floor joists out to an exterior wall.
While this may seem obvious homeowners may out of convenience direct the vent into either of these locations. This section notes that air exhausted from the bathroom must be sent outdoors not indoors to the same residence or indoors to any other dwelling unit. You ll also see another safety hazard and code violation.