Should bath fan ducts be made from metal or plastic?
If you live in a cold climate like Minnesota, I recommend plastic. Why would someone want metal? It gives you a smooth interior, which means less air turbulence, which means more airflow. The end. That's the only benefit that I can think of.
The downside to using a metal duct is that metal is an excellent conductor. The metal will be continuous all the way to the bath fan terminal, which means you'll have a very cold duct during the winter. This leads to copious amounts of condensation, which leads to stains at the ceiling. It doesn't matter if the duct is insulated or not.
With a plastic, insulated duct, you'll still get some condensation inside the duct, but not nearly as much as you'd get with metal. For this reason, plastic is just about all that's ever used in Minnesota.
Just plug in the fan you're using, what your desired flow rate is, and what type of duct you'll use. They'll tell you how long of a run you can have. The minimum required flow rate is 50 CFMs.
Reuben Saltzman is a second-generation home inspector with a passion for his work. Naturally, this blog is all about home inspections and home-related topics in the Twin Cities metro area. In addition to working at Structure Tech, he is also a licensed Truth-In-Sale of Housing Evaluator in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and several other cities.
FLIR has a relatively new pocket-sized infrared camera with all of the bells and whistles of the much larger and expensive E6. It boasts the same resolution as the E6 but it's a fraction of the price at only $699. With these features and benefits, this camera ought to put the E6 out to pasture.
I recently had an informative email exchange with a past client that highlighted the discovery of some especially nasty water damage behind the stone siding at her townhome. I was curious about the events that led up to the discovery, and it all came down to one person being very curious and very persistent. I thought she had such a great story to share that I invited her onto our podcast, which you can listen to below.
Stone siding might be the most problematic siding that we come across as home inspectors. This stuff is failing left and right all over the country, and most of time the homeowner has no idea when their wall is a rotted mess behind the siding.
Take a look around any room full of home inspectors, and you'll notice we look a lot alike. We are almost all white men with a lot of gray hair. It's as if there's an unwritten rule that you have to be an old white guy to be a home inspector.
