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Bathroom heating and ventilation systems can be cheap or expensive, easy to install or a logistic nightmare. Hopefully, the ones you’ve selected are relatively easy to install with basic tools—or you’ve decided to hire a pro to do the difficult work. Let’s consider the materials and tools you’ll need for installing or upgrading one or both of these systems. Then you can decide how much of it you want to tackle yourself. Bathroom exhaust fans are selected by their ability to move a specific number of cubic feet per minute (cfm) of air per hour. Ideally, the cfm for your bathroom should be eight times the cubic feet of air in the room. To make the math easy, a 10 ft. X 10 ft. bathroom with an 8 ft. high ceiling holds 800 cu. ft. of air. Move that air eight times and you have 6,400 cu. ft., the rating you would want for the exhaust fan in this bathroom. Another consideration when buying an exhaust fan is the noise. Some, especially older ones that have worn components, can be quite noisy. Fortunately, exhaust fans are also rated for noise level, in sones, from 1 to 4. The lower the sone number the quieter the unit. As comparison, a new refrigerator runs at about 1-2 sones in noise level. Additional things you need for installing a heating and/or ventilation system in a remodeled bathroom include electrical supplies and some structural supplies. Electrical supplies include wire nuts, duct tape (for the exhaust duct), and maybe some electrical tape. Structural supplies include drywall screws or nails, silicone caulk, and roofing cement. Of course, if you are extending or upgrading an existing forced-air system the materials you need include a new register and/or vent and some ducting. Heating ducts can be rigid aluminum rectangular tubes or flexible cylindrical tubes. The advantage to flex ducting is that it is easier for do-it-yourselfers to assemble and install.
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