How Quiet is Your Bathroom Fan?

Look familiar?

This is the Broan 4-Sone 50 CFM vent fan. 

Sounds like a funny question right?! Little did I know that one has a choice in volume and airflow. We recently started minor upgrades to the old homestead, after all, now that the baby birds are testing their wings, Gabe and I decided we should enjoy some of those upgrades before downsizing the nest. We started with the flooring on the downstairs. If you haven't seen it you need to because we have BEAUTIFUL engineered floor and our marriage is still intact. Which means we got such a great deal on the price that we had the professionals install it instead of trying to do it ourselves. But I digress.... We had not even considered the coat closet or the half bath as part of the floor makeover but quite frankly it makes perfect sense and it was still under budget (yes we had a budget figured out for this, a 3 year budget). With the bathroom "equipment" moved into another room I thought, hmmm might as well repaint it while I have this opportunity. You see we had already replaced the pedestal sink with a new cabinet and sink and I just happened to see that very bathroom set up on a paint sample card and wanted to reproduce the same look. So, we went from a dark slate to royal raisin. The color is still darker than the bathroom needs but it was what I wanted and I like it. The reason for the general darkness of the bathroom is due to the L shape of the room. The commode is set back in an alcove without a light over it, just a REALLY loud fan. So off we go to Lowe's Home Improvement store to see what we can find to improve the lighting situation. First off we learned that our house was furnished with the cheapest possible vent fans, which provide the least amount of airflow(50-CFM) and the highest level of noise(4-Sone). I never realized there were levels of airflow or noise volume or quality of vent fan until yesterday. I must say that we are rather disappointed that DR Horton went cheap on these, outlet covers I completely understand; we have changed at least half of ours already for more decorative ones over the years. We had options to upgrade just about everything else in our home since we purchased prior to construction, this would have been an easy one to sell us on had they merely mentioned it.  On the plus side we now know that perhaps it wasn't just long hot showers that the boys like to take that caused the crazy moisture in their bathroom but rather it is an ineffectual vent fan. So now like all home improvement projects, one has lead to more than one. All three bathrooms will be getting new vent fans, including ours just because the thing is crazy loud and we now know that it doesn't have to be. Below is our chosen replacement for the upstairs bathroom off the hall. No more post-shower,  hot Carolina humidity inside the house! FYI Lowe's has a great display that shows you the measurements needed in your ceiling so you know ahead of time if you will need to enlarge the opening for the fan or if the replacement matches exactly. We chose one that was the same so we can easily replace it ourselves after we watch a few YouTube videos.

New and improved! 

This is the Utilitech ventilation fan 1.5 Sone 100 CFM

(which means is it super quiet and has max air flow).