Before we get started on today's post, we just wanted to let you know that we announced the winner of our $100 Father's Day gift card to The Home Depot. Be sure to stop on over to see if you won.

Ok, back to today's post...

One of the features I always remember from homes of my childhood were the loud and obnoxious ventilation exhaust fans in bathrooms. My parents consistently scolded reminded me how important it was to turn them on each time I took a shower, and as a result I always hated them. (I know, it's an odd thing to obsess about as a youngster.)

Their audible whir would rattle along in an often failed attempt to remove the humidity from the bathroom in which it was installed. More typically sounding like a hamster wildly running on a wheel in need of grease, their integrated lights and yellowed plastic surrounds often looked to be the most out of place elements on any given bathroom ceiling. I always found the fans that doubled as heat lamps, very 70s chic, to be the most grotesquely charming. Are these relic fans functional? Debatable. Aesthetically pleasing? Heck no. Something that can be done better? Absolutely.

Photo Credit: Meador.org

Unless you're dealing with an exhaust fan in a powder room where you want to leverage its talents as a noise maker to mask unpleasant commode sounds, a vent fan should not be seen nor heard, but should do its job and then some.

When we decided to renovate our bathrooms we pledged to figure out a better way to manage steam/odor removal from the rooms. What we ended up with is a more than workable solution that has resulted in many a guest saying "Now, how do I turn the fan on? Oh, it is on? Wow, I don't hear it at all."

Using Panasonic's line of quiet inline duct fans, we were able to locate the fan unit in an out of the way attic location, with only a small vent intake on the ceiling. It's worked wonderfully, and it's mounted in a location where the minor hum can only be heard when standing still and silent in the hallway (below where it's mounted).

We like the end results of our guest bath fan so much that we're using the same brand and line for our master bathroom, though the challenges we're facing are slightly different.

First, the bathroom's space is far larger, so we need a vent fan that can remove significantly more air, or a higher CFM (cubic feet/minute). And second, the mounting locations available in the attic would place this fan directly above our master bedroom's bed. The last thing we want is for the hum of this larger (but apparently still very quiet) unit to transfer through the ceiling joists and into our bedroom.

I came up with a little system that should solve our problem. Once I had run all of the ductwork for this fan and secured it in the attic, I realized there was an alternate mounting method. Rather than affix it to something that would rest on the ceiling joists...