Exhaust fans

[fan-of-fans]

Anyone here like exhaust fans? I've always had an interest in them since I was a kid, like any fan.

However, I was always afraid of metal exhaust fans, especially the NuTones with the open grille and metal blades. Seeing the blades in the dark opening was scary to me. Any metal fan was a bit scary as a kid. I would not go in a restroom with one. Once we went somewhere on a field trip and the restroom had one. I finally got brave enough to turn it on.

Just added the modern version of those fans to me collection, the NuTone 8210. These days the original metal chrome grille is now white plastic.

Another exhaust fan I'm interested in is the NuTone Heat-A-Ventlite. It's a combination with blower exhaust fan, heater fan, light and night light. I believe these came out in the 1950s, and they still make a modern version. Are these any good?

I've heard good things about the Panasonic exhaust fans, high CFM but very quiet. There are some other off brand quite exhaust fans on eBay. The newest thing in exhaust fans seem to be the models with blower wheels and DC motors. These move lots of air, while turning slowly, so they are nearly silent.

 

[kirbyklekter]

There was

On one of those home improvement shows where a little 50's cottage was being reno'd by the new owners. In the bath room about half way up the wall near the sink and across from the bathtub was a built in heater fan.It looked so cool. I think it was a Nutone, painted salmon pink matching the rest of the bathroom.

You know how much those demo guys love to tear down walls and the heater wasn't spared as they said it wouldn't pass code and was a fire hazard. Strange that it served 70 years without any problems, it still worked too. It's not easy for me to step out of a hot shower into a winter mornings cool bathroom, I have a heat lamp that helps take the chill off for that. I'm sure that heater blowing towards you coming out of the tub was a nice feature back in the day.

I've also seen exhaust fans built over a kitchen sink nearest a stove where there wasn't a hood over said stove. This was in an older home from say the 30's-40's. Seems like it would be a bit greasy if a person fried a lot of greasy food and the exhaust drew all the steam and grease across the sink from the stove top area and out the wall! Not sure when exhaust hoods became common in homes, I'm guessing the 50's? Billy

 

[madman]

No, not really. In my friend's house, the ensuite bathroom has a (I believe) NuTone light / exhaust fan / heater. It's kind of neat, because the heating element is bare, it looks like an electric oven heating element lol.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Bathroom heaters

The house next door to me which was since demolished had a couple heaters in the bathrooms. One was a fan forced wall heater (I forget the brand). The other was the rectangular ceiling type that had two heat lamp bulbs.

We used to stay at some old motels on the beach as kid. They had round electric ceiling heaters in the bathrooms. They were a metal mesh grille with elements and a small fan behind. I was afraid of them and would be afraid to shower in there for fear the heater would turn on.

The bathroom heaters still make me nervous. I don't like the idea of having something with nichrome heating elements and a metal housing in an area that gets very damp and humid. Seems like a big shock hazard to me.

 

[vacuumlad1650]

My house has a 1950s Air King through wall exhaust fan in the kitchen. I'll have to take some pictures. It really needs to be disassembled and cleaned, but runs like a top

 

[vacuumlad1650]

This is the Kitchen Air King

 

[gottahaveahoove]

Wow!

A real "blast from the past"!

 

[kirbyklekter]

Then there's the cooktop

that has the built in exhaust vent. Either in the middle of stove top or to the rear of the top, Jenn-air was one company that sold those. I saw another brand that had a pop up exhaust fan manifold to the rear of the burners that you could press a button and it would rise to the occasion, or it would automatically come up when conditions warranted.

 

[madman]

Speaking of over the stove hood vents, my grandparents house had one - original to the 1960s/70s house - was a basic burnt brown hood vent. When I tore the place apart to remodel it, I discovered that the hood vent did not exhaust anywhere. While newer ones claim they 'recirculate' - which they do, by simply venting the air back into the room - this one was NOT a recirculating model. It needed to be exhausted out the back, but it was just parked up against drywall. So running the exhaust fan would literally have done nothing at all.

lol

 

[suckolux]

I believe it was called Coppertone

 

[suckolux]

Took a couple of pictures of the interesting exhaust fans down at the landlady's house. Built in 44, but a few updates. I believe the round one would be from the '80s and the chrome rectangle with built-in heat probably from late 50s or early 60s there's one in the laundry room also.

 

[suckolux]

Ops, one more

 

[fan-of-fans]

Cool fans, the Air King looks good!

That round one with light, is a NuTone Heat-A-Ventlite. They still make those, but with a white grille, not sure if the silver is still made. It should have a heater and a night light too.

The Emerson reminds me of a Fasco, they made some with lights on each side like that. They had a fan that ran two directions, blowing upward for exhaust or downward for heat, with a rod element around the fan. Some of them didn't have the heater function, some had a night light as well.

 

[suckolux]

I think it's gold finnish

 

[suckolux]

Everything in that bathroom is gold

 

[superocd]

I was FASCINATED by any kind of fan as a kid

My childhood revolved around my fascination with fans, then power lines & power infrastructure, household appliances, air conditioners and furnaces, vacuums, restaurant equipment and commercial washers and dryers. I built a stand fan out of Fiddlesticks when I was 4-5 years old. It resembled a windmill. Everyone thought my windmill was cool, but I corrected them and said it was a "fan-o"! Pretty much every picture I drew in preschool had a fan of some sort in it (power lines, various household appliances and commercial equipment were also frequently drawn). It was a topic of curiosity at the parent teacher conferences. They kept some of my assignments and there would be detailed drawings of things a young child wouldn't typically draw: Broan range hoods, Square D disconnects, Carrier WeatherMaker RTUs (on a thank you card, I made sure to draw that on the roof of the Pizza Hut our first grade class visited on a field trip), Holmes fans, Hobart dish machines, Blodgett ovens, McCall refrigerators, Kenmore washing machines, Sanitaire vacuums (I thought the Sanitaries that the custodians used were cool, and I loved the sound of them), Osterizer blenders, Emerson Quiet Kool window ACs, Presto electric fry pans, yada yada...it got to the point that my first grade teacher politely asked me not to draw anything electrical or mechanical for a change.

All of my teachers thought I was going to be an engineer, and so did my parents. My grandparents bought me all kinds of fans from the auction, and cut the cords off so I wouldn't hurt myself. Yet for some reason I was afraid of certain types of fans, like attic fans, bathroom fans with metal axial blades (oddly enough, the plastic centrifugal wheel-type blades didn't scare me) or industrial exhaust fans. I still liked them, but was nervous about being close to one of these.

I remember seeing our attic for the first time when I was 7 years old. On one end of the gable was a Clark gable attic fan, with six blades. It creeped me out seeing the silhouette of that fan in the dark attic. My room was under the end of the attic with that fan and it gave me nightmares. Our bathroom had a Nutone-Mercury-Scovill fan (the kind with the plastic grate) which had a metal impeller fan. Found that out when I shone a flashlight into the grates in the dark bathroom to see what it looked like -- big mistake, lol, because l saw the shiny, steely glint of the blades as it spun down. I thought that the bathroom fan and the attic fan were going to fall out of the ceiling and chop me up. I would run out of the bathroom if I turned it on by accident. There was nothing I could do about the attic fan. Every so often, I'd here a faint rumble in the ceiling at night in the summer. It was on.

What was weird was that I had NO problem sitting on our big green Rheem Corsaire condenser unit when it was running. Didn't even seem phased about the big aluminum fan whirling at high speed right under my butt. Looking back, I think my fan fear came from metal fans I couldn't see. I was a weird, strange little kid.

Now, go figure, I'm a HVACR tech and am constantly around all kinds of fans -- I've seen some big, mean looking ones, lol. It's all second nature now. Even though my dear of hidden metal fans has been long gone, my childhood love of fans hasn't waned all that much though -- I've got a few fans in my collection, my favorite being the avocado Manning-Bowman box fan I've completely restored. Wife hates it but I love it.

 

[fan-of-fans]

I was the same way almost exactly! All of my drawings were some kind of fan, appliance, or wall sockets. In kindergarten the teacher would allow one person to draw on the white board each day at the end of the day. I remember drawing some building with A/C compressor units outside. I drew so much the teacher made me stop because the odor from the markers was so strong.

I'd spend hours looking over the appliances in the Sears catalog. Later I'd draw houses and one side of the paper was the exterior with the opposite side being the interior. I'd draw in all the light fixtures, exhaust fans, switches and sockets.

And yes, axial exhaust fans were scary to me, but ones with blower wheels, not really. We had NuTone 696 exhaust fans in our house growing up (the most basic, cheapy kind in almost every house in America) and I remember my dad taking the grilles off and cleaning them. I wasn't afraid of those at all.

When I was a kid most guys were into monster trucks and drew pictures of those, but I didn't get much into cars until much later in life. I hardly paid any attention to them until I was probably almost 12. Sports came even later, almost into the time I was in college, I didn't pay attention to them or have a favorite team.

 

[kirbyklekter]

I'm still laughing

@superocd reply#15 and fan-of-fans reply@16

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your two posts this morning. Great writing style and funny and totally relatable. You drew me right in. Pours a second cup of coffee and settles in for a good read. This is stand up comedy material for real!

For me as a child it was the final spin cycle on washing machines. I had a particular fetish for GM/Frigidaire Unimatics from the early to mid 50's. No other washer then or now has the same unique sound at the beginning of the spin cycle. That whirring of the start windings is all you hear for about 10 seconds and then the rush of water exiting through the plumbing, would give me life.

Regardless of whose house I was visiting,what we were doing, I would use any excuse I needed to get to the washer at the start of the spin cycle. I didn't bother with Maytags because you couldn't lift the lid high enough to get a peak without stopping the spin and that would be crossing the line at someone else's house.

My mom got a call once in a while from a "concerned mom" of a friend or two. One said," I don't need to look at a clock when Billy comes running through the kitchen and out to the garage. I know I have about three minutes before I need to go change out the wash to the dryer.

@superocd " It was a topic of curiosity at the parent teacher conferences."

@fan-of-fans " I remember drawing some building with A/C compressor units outside. I drew so much the teacher made me stop because the odor from the markers was so strong."

@Me Good as it gets, thank you!

 

[suckolux]

Just had a moment with the heataventlight, for sure noisy exhaust blower on one side,heat blows down on the other. Could not find a night light, unless it's very well hidden, no switch that I can see either. He used all push button light switches, except for the exhaust fans have timers. Very cool

 

[fan-of-fans]

It may well not have had a night light if it's from the 80s. I think I heard the night light was a more recent addition. Now these come with two Decora rocker style switches that have two switches on each, along with a two gang wall plate that has each function printed on it next to the switches. I think the older ones in 80s/90s came with Despard style or duplex toggle switches with a stainless steel cover plate.

 

[suckolux]

Kitchen and bathroom refresh 84-85. The push button light switches are very strange to get used to and of course you can't tell if they're off or on

 

[superocd]

One of the substitute teachers lived behind my grade school

Her enclosed porch was the laundry room. I only know this because I remember being out at recess and hearing a woo-wooing sound coming from the slightly ajar door. It was a 1970s Whirlpool washer in avocado green. Stupid second grade me, I go into her house and lift the lid a bit since I was curious. I've only seen the wash action of our GE Filter Flo (later a Kenmore direct-drive), Grandma's direct-drive Kenmore and Aunt Kathy's Frigidaire but never ran into someone with an old Whirlpool. She was definitely home because her blue late-70s Thunderbird was in the carport (she lived alone). She walks into the laundry room from what I assume was her kitchen and asks what I'm doing in her house. I don't think Usain Bolt could have been faster at running out of her house than I was. Got in big trouble for that.