I’ve noticed that many hotel bathrooms don’t have exhaust fans. Didn’t most hotel bathrooms used to have them?
Surely they do. Maybe there is a central, roof-mounted fan that is connected to a subtle grille in each bathroom.
Can’t recall a hotel bathroom that didn’t have a fan. Many operate on the light switch so when the light’s on, the fan’s on.
I’ve been in more than a few that have no fan whatsoever, and it’s a major annoyance. The bathroom become a tropical jungle when you take a shower, and it’s difficult to mask the sounds and smells when you take a dump.
Some have the central fan system that OO mentions, but they’re often extremely quiet; most of the time it’s because they’re barely moving any air at all.
I’ve been in rooms in the Caribbean with passive exhaust sort of a chimney effect. Not much air is moving, the bathroom steams up a bit during showers, but, hell…you’re in the Caribbean!
Now, at a Best Western in Cleveland, it would be annoying.
I’ve noticed this at various mid-range hotels I’ve stayed at for business travel in the past few years. There is usually a grill that looks like a fan but there’s no way to turn it on and it doesn’t appear to do anything.
Next time put a tissue over it and see if it plasters up against the grill. The volume is usually very low, but I’m certain that building codes require exhaust fans in bathrooms with no window. I don’t if the codes require particular air exchange rates but I think they do (per my architecture-student college roommate in 1979).
Yes, you’d think code would require some sort of bathroom exhaust. However, in the last couple of years, I have stayed in two new hotels that apparently had no air moving out of those little square vents. I tried the toilet paper test, and the paper wouldn’t stay on the vent.
Listen up, hotel chains! People do smelly things in your bathrooms. That aroma spreads throughout the whole suite when there’s no exhaust. :smack: What were you thinking?
In the absence of any statistical data to present, anecdotally I’ll offer that yes, there do seem to be less of them now than in the past. The last five we stayed in, a Mariott, Hyatt, Holiday Inn, Hampton and Hilton in 2 states and two countries did not have exhaust fans. I remember because of the same concerns mentioned in post #4 and am not happy to see others confirm the trend.
Maybe we should inquire as to their presence when making reservations.
I have seen a couple of the cheaper hotel bathrooms without fans. What I find interesting is a trend to separate the sink from the toilet/shower. I thought this odd until I realized that even bathrooms with fans do not remove the moisture fast enough to prevent the mirror from fogging up. moving the sink/mirror into the main room makes sense and allows people to use both facilities at the same time.
In the case of the grille with no air movement, I would suspect that means the roof exhaust fan is either underpowered or turned off. You could complain to the desk manager, but I doubt they would care or do anything about it. There is a slight chance that there is an on-duty maintanace person who could look into it. If it really concerned you, you could contact the local codes officials. Those folks live to do code reviews.
I know the trend at least for residential purposes in Canada is towards centralized exhaust systems that are controlled to manage constant air exchange. I suspect that light commercial would be ahead of this.
If the exhaust system is set up for say, a 90 minute air exchange rate it might seem pretty anemic. The bathroom exhaust would likely be a secondary system so it might be even weaker. Seems like a bad idea to not treat moisture (and odors) that are inherent with bathrooms more seriously but such secondary effects are pretty typical in the evolutionary process of building codes.
If a fan isn’t standard equipment, I would have reservations about making reservations.
Unless the hotel is on a reservation.
That’s what the hair dryer is for.
Although I spend over half my life in a hotel it tends to be the same two or three establishments. I’ll have to take note of exhaust fans when I next go somewhere different.
Many new hi rise hotels will utilize a central air exchange system that will exhaust several times an hour but the room itself has no fan. As an Architect, I don’t care for this system as I like the control within the room, but it isn’t uncommon. Perhaps a Mech. Engineer can stop by and outline the advantages of the system–as I do understand it has several plusses (that I don’t recall right now).
In a properly designed system you will not hear the exhaust air moving and you should not hear the fan itself, it will be on the roof.
I worked in a hotel where in the remodel they put in cheap smoke fire dampers. You could tell which rooms had toilet exhaust by the noise in the hall. No noise ment the dampers were closed to that room. Why did they do that to save money during construction.
If each room had its own exhaust fan it would require more complincated ducting, higher maintenance cost, higher construction costs, an addition of a control switch in each room, and much more.
BTW, it is proper on the last morning in a hotel to write, “I SEE YOU” on the mirror. If the maids do not clean the mirror, the next guest gets a little jolt when (s)he showers.
I’m noticing a lot less of those heat lamps (used to have a timer?), too.
Yep–I remember some of these now. It has been a few years since I worked on a hotel, but I do recall that this system has several advantages. One I recall is that you also guarantee replacement air several times an hour. If the room is vacant for several days and no one flips the fan, I imagine it would get pretty stale within the bathroom. But with a central system each room will be vented several times an hour.