A fellow blogger, Jeremy, wrote a post about the benefits of a quality home inspection, and I have to say that I completely agree with all of this. Unless you are buying a new build condo for an awesome deal, you should always get a home inspection before buying real estate.
When we got our home inspection, it uncovered some serious issues, like asbestos in the attic. Fortunately we were able to negotiate a much lower price to deal with the asbestos, but if we hadn’t had the inspection, we’d be ignorantly living in a house with asbestos in the attic; we would be on the hook for it’s removal when we found out about it.
Our house did have a few other issues, but nothing we couldn’t handle.Our house was built in the 1960s, and, as a result, has some 1960s problems. For instance, some of the house has galvanized piping in it. Luckily, it’s not the entire house, but this is not commonly used these days for a reason.
They did funny things in the 60’s, and one of those things in our house included not venting the main floor bathroom.
The bathroom does have a vent in it, but it doesn’t go outside – it goes into the attic insulation. It also does not have a fan attached, so it is essentially worthless. The last thing we need is moldy attic insulation, especially since it’s brand new and we just laid it.
We noticed condensation building up in the loft windows, which is a cause for concern as that’s what causes mold. Mold is dangerous for your health and your wallet, so we investigated why it was building up.
We found that our venting left a lot to be desired, so we went to home depot and bought the necessary supplies to vent the bathroom properly. My partner is a carpenter, but he’s not a residential carpenter and has no experience with venting. We relied mainly on Youtube and Google to find out what to buy and how to vent it. I think anybody with a computer and some common knowledge would be able to do this, too.
We bought the vent (which came with the switch), and the rest of the material for around $50, and the labour was free because we did it ourselves.
This saved us a ton of money. First of all, if we had left it and it ended up causing mold in our home, we’d have to have that remediated. That’s not cheap, as you have to have somebody in a Hazmat suit come in, tear up the drywall, and replace it. Then you have to have a safe disposal system in place, which is really expensive. They usually have to replace the insulation as well, as it has the tenancy to get moldy when things are actually venting into it.
We saved money not only in potential costs by allowing mold, but also by doing this project ourselves instead of calling somebody in to do it.
So the saga continues – what project will we take on next?
Glad you took care of that! $50 is nothing to prevent a much more expensive problem!
Man, you guys are busy! Don’t you just love home ownership? 🙂
This is such a great project. I always tell people to replace their vent fans when they start losing power. The bathroom exhaust fan will save you tons of money in avoided mold remediation, plus your bathroom will feel cleaner! Way to be
This is something that we need to do asap in one of our bathrooms! I keep forgetting about it.
This was a good catch on your part to add the fan. I cannot remember the last house I was in that did not have a bathroom fan in it. As far as the home inspections, I think some mortgage companies actually require it to be done too. I could be wrong. Either way it is a definite must. I would also highly recommend having the seller pay for a year home warranty to protect you from any unforeseen issues that did not show up on the inspection.
Awesome work doing it yourself!! I applaud you! Looking online and with youtube, you can definitely figure out most things you need to know about something like that, so great job!! You’re a blue collar couple at heart. 🙂
DIY surely helps a lot to save. And of course, doing the venting right away saves you a lot of future expenses.
Good call – mold sucks and it’s good to just to prevent it in the first place!
Looks like an important but quick little project. Nice!
Good work!
I paid my electrician to replace a decrepit bathroom vent fan in my house…climbing up there and fooling with the wiring is beyond my meager DYI skills. Your observation that some houses had vent fans in some bathrooms but not in others is so true. The building code in our area must have allowed contractors to omit the fan if a bathroom had an exterior window — of course EVERY homeowner loves having the bathroom window open on a 30-degree night or during a 115-degree day. 😀