please empty your brain below
Better you turn off your fan than my landlord who is nine months overdue in arranging another gas safety check.
Bathroom fans are there to remove condensation, and if you don't have a problem then that should be OK. Some people have flats that are so cold and covered with condensation that black mould grows. That really is hard to get rid of...
By the way, all new kitchens and bathrooms need to have extractor fans - it isn't just windowless ones. And if you boiler takes and discharges air from the outside, as I believe all modern ones do, there really shouldn't be a significant risk of danger. The regulations are concerned with air-flow to extract damp air for your health and well-being and not there as a last desperate defence against a faulty boiler. In practice if you don't get mould and it doesn't smell you haven't got a problem.
For a bathroom there is no requirement for the fan to be on for 45 minutes. Ideally it should be adjusted to suit that particular bathroom.
== rant ==
I think annual maintenance checks on modern boilers are a real con. They are not really maintenance checks - the man never does anything maintenance-wise - not even the things prescribed in the manual. He just checks that there is no danger with a gas probe. This takes a couple of minutes and he is on his way.
It is at times like this I am pleased I own my property and can modify it as I see fit (subject to various regulations of course).
== end of rant ==
In my kitchen, there is a separate switch for the fan, and I never turn it on.
What about these gas checks? I have owned my own flat for the last 36 months and have never had anyone in to check my gas boiler or stove. Am I risking any danger? I have always operated under the idea that if the appliance works, there is no need to call anyone in. When it breaks, then it's time to pay someone to come in...
My opinion. Keep the kitchen vent on, at least during the winter months when you don't have any other windows open - whilst a correctly functioning modern flue/boiler shouldn't kill you, if it was not correctly installed or has become partly or fully blocked (mice and birds like nesting in warm safe places), then the first you'd know about it would be when you arrive at the Pearly Gates. But the bathroom vent is another matter. Assuming you have no additional boiler in there, then it is there for condensation purposes only. In my old flat, I found keeping the bathroom door open to be just as effective (perhaps more so) than the fan.
I don't know why they insist on the extractor fan running for 45 minutes after you have switched the light off, DG. Just seems like a waste of electricity to me - not very eco-friendly, is it? Maybe you should get a CORGI-registered engineer of your own out to shorten the time delay. I wonder what your landlord would make of that?
In the kitchen I have a a gas boiler and gas cooker. There is no extractor fan or ventilator. The kitchen has a window that used to open to the outside - it opens into what was a porch area, with the front door to the right, kitchen straight ahead and bin cupboard to the left (but no door behind, so it was open to the air). The previous owner of the house had the area closed in, with a new front door and window to make a hallway and removed the bin cupboard to create extra space (as the council now has wheely bins that don't fit in the bin cupboard). But the original kitchen window is still in place, but opens into another room, rather than to outside. The boiler is less than two years old and was installed after the front door area was modified so I assume it is legal (as gas fitters must be CORGI registered), but I have no idea if this is the case. Like a previous poster I regard annual boiler check as a waste of money and instead have a carbon monoxide alarm fitted in the kitchen so that it alerts me to any carbon monoxide being emitted. If that happens I'll isolate the boiler and use the electirc water heater that is installed and an electirc heather if it's winter for my heating until I can get it fixed.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the gas regulations required something contrary to the electrical regulations.
On some models of fan, there may be a controller inside that allows you set how long the fan runs for after it's been switched off. Another possibility might be that it's so full of dust it thinks there's still a lot of smoke around. Can you take the cover off to clear out some of the dust inside?
The fan is there to extract stale and moisture laiden air from the kitchen and bathroom - I feel that a 45 minute run-on is excessive, but people live in different ways and preventing condesation is all about the dew-point of a room and that varies with temperature and humidity.
All new fans must be isolated outside of the room.
What does strike me as odd is that the fan only comes on when the light is switched on. What about kitchens and bathrooms that have natural light? I always specify passive infra red activated fans with a 10 minute run-on, that way whenever someone entres the room the fans fires up....
Of course if you have no problem with condesation, i wouldn't worry about leaving it switched off.
We altered it to run for five mins after the light was switched off, which seems more than reasonable to us. Mind you, we don't have a bath in our bathroom, in the case of bathrooms with baths (which are used) a ten minute extract might be better to clear all the steam.
Or just set the fan to five minutes, & run it twice when you've had a bath.
Et voila! Excess electricity use & bills sorted!
Of course, every time the landlord did an inspection, it was humming at me again when I got home. And occasionally I got a snarky note about being required to leave it on. Blah blah, whatever.
I very often go into my kitchen.
So the kitchen fan stays permanently off.
I have a hot bath every morning.
I have never seen steam in my bathroom.
So the bathroom fan stays permanently off.
undiluted gas odorant smells so disgusting (according to my daughter, who is a gas engineer) that if just one drop escapes into a room, people will fight each other to get out the door.
Speaking as a gas engineer, I can see no reason whatsoever for the extract fan to be left on, unless you also use a gas cooker. Most modern boilers are completely enclosed and do not leak fumes out of their casings. If yours did do that, an extract fan would increase that tendency.
Great Aunt Annie's comment about the smell added to natural gas misses the point. Carbon monoxide is the gas more likely to kill you when an appliance is faulty. It has no smell whatsoever. You just get a bit drowsy... until you fall asleep and die, looking a lovely healthy pink colour.
My recommendation? Buy an audible Carbon monoxide detector.
And require an explanation from the gas safety check man.
All you other commenters too. If you have a gas cooker and no ventilation, then be warned. These silly rules and apparently unneccessary checks came about because people were dying. In Britain we have a pretty good level of safety compared to some other countries, but every year, a few more die of preventable carbon monoxide poisoning.
Actually, I wasn't intending to make a serious contribution to the discussion, just tossing in something that came to mind on the spur of the moment.
I'm glad you reminded readers about the carbon monoxide. It's horrible sneaky stuff. Years ago one of my cousins was killed by some kind of odourless gas while down an inspection pit for the water board. They changed their procedures after that.
was told she would have to use an
electric fire,surly this is incorrect
this was British Gas who said this
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