Saturday, August 05, 2006

The silence of the fans

I'm not a morning person, and 10 minutes of loud roaring sounds from the bathroom fan while I shower doesn't help matters much.

Installation of a Panasonic WhisperCeiling Ventilation Fan (who thinks up these names?) has been on my list for a couple years now. Upgrading to a quieter version of a NuTone fan two years ago was a detour of sorts; we paid to have the "better" NuTone installed, and discovered it was just as loud and disturbing as the original one -- though it did a much better job of venting moisture from the bathroom.

Turns out the mistake had been trusting the electrician two years ago to pick out a "better" fan. It seems there is no such thing as a quiet NuTone. And he'd just switched fans within the NuTone housing that had been installed by the nincompoop who previously owned our house and liked to do his own remodeling work.

When the electrician installed the Panasonic Friday, he pointed out that the original NuTone housing hadn't even been attached to the ceiling beams. It was just sort of shoved in there and left dangling by wires -- and, of course, rattling like crazy.

There was a small explosion and sparks when the old NuTone came out, which astonished me and the electrician. "That shouldn't have happened," he said in that deadpan tone they teach in contractor school.

Turned out all the wiring in the bathroom had been done incorrectly. Now, at last, it's fixed. I got up at 7:30 this morning to rush downstairs and try out the new fan with a shower. It works! It's silent! I may become a morning person yet.

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