Bathroom Fan Leaking/Dripping

bathroomfansleak

Can you help some frustrated new home owners? Our 14 month old new home is leaking this brown liquid into our bathroom. This almost exclusively happens after a snowfall and it starts to melt. We get over 2 cups of the liquid shown in the attachments. I hope we can get to the bottom of this. enter image description here

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Best Answer

You have a roof leak that is dripping either directly onto the fan assembly or onto or into the vent tubing. Probably the leak is around a roof penetration, but we had one due to a defect in the roof decking right above the fan. Water dripped onto the fan assembly, through it, and into the bathroom.

EDIT Another possibility is condensation of water in the tubing connected to the outlet of the fan. The tubing is in the cold attic and so water vapor will condense on the walls of the tubing conducting the exhausted air to the outside. If there is a lot of condensate in the tubing when the fan is turned off, and if the routing of the tubing is level and upward then this would drain down into the fan assembly unless there is a drain to catch it and conduct it away.