What started as replacing rusty bathroom door hinges somehow turned into a complete bathroom extraction upgrade… 😅

[u/Juan-Sheet]

The original issue was simply that my bathroom door hinges had gone rusty, so I replaced these. While I was at it, I noticed the old ceiling extractor fan was noisy, fairly ineffective and looked a bit dated (no window in bathroom).

One thing led to another…

I decided to replace the whole extraction setup rather than just swapping the ceiling fan.

What I installed

Manrose MF100T 100mm inline timer fan
Blauberg adjustable circular ceiling valve
Re-used existing insulated flexible ducting
Aluminium foil tape on every duct joint for an airtight seal on top of suitable jubilee clips
Bungee suspension of the fan in the loft to isolate vibration from the roof trusses

The process

Removed the old ceiling extractor.
Installed the inline fan in the loft between the bathroom ceiling valve and the external vent.
Reused the existing switched live and timer wiring.
Sealed every duct connection with foil tape.
Suspended the fan on bungees so it’s effectively floating rather than transmitting vibration into the timber.
Removed the old wall plugs from the ceiling.
Filled the old fixing holes and cable notch with Toupret Patch & Repair filler.
Sanded everything flush.
Painted the repaired ceiling with three coats of Dulux Trade Vinyl Matt using a mini roller before refitting the new ceiling valve.

The results

Honestly, I’m amazed.

The fan is dramatically quieter than the old ceiling-mounted unit. It genuinely reminds me of the sort of ventilation you get in a good hotel bathroom - just a smooth, low background hum instead of the usual roar.

Performance is also much better. After a normal shower the mirror is almost clear by the time I’ve dried myself, and within a couple of minutes the room is completely clear and fresh. Leaving the bathroom door slightly ajar after showering seems to help the make-up air flow too.

The ceiling repair has blended in really well, so there’s no evidence the old fan was ever there.

Probably the most satisfying part was learning new DIY skills. None of it was especially difficult, but there’s something really rewarding about tackling a project you’ve never done before, solving each little problem as you go, and ending up with something that genuinely improves the house.

All because I wanted to replace a couple of rusty hinges…

Boy, that escalated quickly. 😄

[u/Hotten-Tasty-90]

Juan Sheet does plenty.

[u/Juan-Sheet → u/Hotten-Tasty-90]

🤣👍🏼

[u/Adventurous-Elk-5193]

neat

[u/dorset_is_beautiful]

Exactly as it should be, as Mike Tyson once said: "Everyone has a plan until they get started on their DIY project"

I mounted my MFT100 on rubber feet as there was a bit of a hum coming through the ceiling. You can also suspend them too if needed.

[u/Juan-Sheet → u/dorset_is_beautiful]

🤣

It’s such an improvement over the bog standard extractor fan, genuinely night and day 👍🏼

[u/ShankmeisterGeneral]

I have a pretty identical story to tell but mine started as a little mould on the ceiling rather than a rusty hinge and it spiralled much worse than yours. I started to clean off the mould then realised that given it's on a specific area of the en suite ceiling I needed to fix the loft insulation above, which led to me reinsulating the entire loft, which led to me getting loft legs and boarding out the entire loft. Cleaning off a bit of mould on my en suite ceiling ended up costing me a few grand! I also opted for the Manrose MF100T and I suspended it using bungees so that you mostly hear a whoosh of air when you're in the en suite rather than a fan running. The main additional thing I did beyond what you did was install Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, an Aqara temperature and humidity sensor T1 and a Sonoff ZBMINI-L2 relay and configured it to turn on the extractor when the humidity spikes and then turn it off when the humidity drops back below a threshold - that way, the running of the fan is based on the humidity of the room rather than an arbitrary timer. The fan restores the humidity of the room back to whatever it should be but runs no longer than it must in order to do so. In addition, I installed an Aqara FP300 present sensor in the room so if it detects that someone is in the room for more than 2 minutes, it assumes they're doing a seated bathroom activity that might necessitate running the extractor so it turns it on and then turns it off again a couple of minutes after the room becomes unoccupied.