Exhaust Fans Keep Your Yuma Home’s Air Circulating

The ventilation provided by exhaust fans is important for maintaining good indoor air quality in your Southwest Arizona home. Here’s what you need to know about these devices.Exhaust Fans Keep Your Yuma Home's Air Circulating

What are exhaust fans?

They are mechanical ventilation devices installed in problematic areas of the home to remove polluted or damp air from those areas. Exhaust fans are most commonly installed in the kitchen, bathroom and laundry room where pollution generation is highest. Some homes also have mechanical exhaust systems installed in the garage to pull fumes and other harmful pollution generated there to the outside.

What purposes do exhaust fans serve?

The primary reason to run an exhaust fan is to remove moisture and pollutants from indoor air. For example, you should run the kitchen exhaust fan while cooking, the bathroom fan while showering, the laundry room fan while drying clothing, and the garage fan while the car’s engine cools after running errands. These activities produce moisture and pollution that you want to exhaust to the exterior whenever possible.

Best practices for installing and using exhaust fans

  • Make sure that every exhaust fan in your home vents to the exterior rather than the attic, garage or crawlspace. Exit points through either the ceiling or the wall are appropriate.
  • Avoid recirculating kitchen range fans, which simply pass the air through charcoal filters and exhaust it back into the room. This removes some odors, but most pollution is merely circulated back into the kitchen.
  • Check that the fan has a damper to prevent backdrafting, which is when air circulates back inside when the fan is off.
  • Invest in quiet exhaust fans so you can use them discreetly.
  • Control moisture and pollution at the source to ease the load on exhaust fans. For example, cover pots and pans when cooking on the stove, take shorter, less steamy showers, hang clothes to dry when possible, and don’t idle the car in the garage.

For more tips on using exhaust fans for optimal indoor air quality, or for more information on other home comfort topics, please contact Hansberger Refrigeration and Electric Company today. Our family-owned company has served Yuma area residents since 1952.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Yuma, Arizona about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).  For more information about exhaust fans and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock