Bath fan vented indoors?
 

Good evening. I'm doing a bathroom in the basement, and am curious about venting options for it. I know it's a bad idea not to vent a bathroom due to moisture issues, but I do not have a good spot to vent it outside. That leads to a couple of questions:

1) Can I tie into the existing dryer vent line that runs outside to vent the basement bathroom?

2) Are there any options to vent indoors through some kind of filter like I've seen for dryer vents which allow you to vent the dryer directly into the basement.

I don't anticipate much, if any shower use at all, but don't want to do the job halfway either. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Tim

Tim,
I don't think tyeing into the drier vent is a good idea. If you can tie into that why can't you cut a new hole and vent the fan through it's own vent.
There is no good way to vent a fan or drier indoors. Those cans your talking about just trap link. The moisture is what you need to get rid of.
If your not showering in there I wouldn't worry about a vent. But if you are placing a show in the room it will be used. Vent it out doors. You can figure out how.

Thanks for the reply. I'll repsond as best as I can.

When they built the house, they had the hole cut for the dryer vent during the roughing stage of construction. They ended up putting a couple of 90 degree elbows in just to bend the dryer vent around the sill plate. Now that the house is done with all of the plumbing and sump installed, there is no good way to get around them without having to remove a bunch of existing PVC piping. Then I would have to try to get up behind it to run the elbows to a new hole outside. Not to mention, I'm not really crazy about blowing another hole through the side of my house for it.

Actually, the majority of the lint from the dryer is trapped with the dryer filter, and as for the moisture, my thought was that since it's in a basement, and I'm already having to run a humidifier due to the dryness, I don't necessarily want to get rid of the moisture, I just want to diffuse it properly into the air for it to effectively humidify the basement.

I found a couple of dryer products that look like they do this, but was not sure if it would be a simple conversion to just hook them up to a bath exhuast fan for similar results.

http://www.improvementscatalog.com/p...bdept_id=11400

http://www.dundasjafine.com/products...erventkit.html



There will be a shower in the room, but it will be used very rarely. Maybe for a week at a time two to three times a year, depending on how often the in-laws visit.

Can anyone see a reason why an indoor dryer vent kit like the ones above wouldn't work essentially the same way on a bath exhaust fan? Or even better, has anyone seen an indoor vent kit designed specifically for bath fans. I guess the only drawback would be that the exhaust fan also helps a bit to diffuse odor when you've had too many tacos and beers the night before as well! :)


Thanks,
TIm

A vent to the outside or a window is needed for code.:)

At least around here.:)

I would be concerned about the two feeding into each other, this aside from the code. Lint and moisture from the dryer would be consistantly pumped into the bathroom. I forsee mold and a nasty mess.

The last two posts are two good reasons not to vent inside and or tie into the drier vent. The products you posted are for driers (electric) and those are the types I was referring to. You can try and find someone that will say it is OK to do this but it is NOT OK to do this. Best bet would be to punch another hole in the house and vent properly.

Thanks for the replies. I definitely want to be doing this to code, and if that's the case, will need to find a way to get it vented outside.

I see more PVC cement in my future.... Yay!