From what I understand there are 3 ways to wire a bathroom fan:
- Together with the lights (both are on or off);
- Individual switches for lights and fan;
- Put the fan (and maybe the light) on a presence sensor (which usually have a timer).
Now what I would like is to have a switch to turn the fan on and when the switch is turned off it remains on for a while. Is there a way to setup that?
Best Answer
There's no such thing as too many wires between the bathroom switch and the bathroom light/fan/heatlamp/whatever the future may bring. I would run at least 3 hots and a neutral, with 1 hot and 1 neutral being 12ga for a high current device. Even better, install conduit and pull whatever as needed.
I personally hate fans which turn on with the light. I fear I'll wake others during a 3AM bathroom run. It also wastes energy by ejecting nice warm/cool air, forcing the HVAC system to work harder.
This forum is not for "shop for you", but there's no problem getting a single switch that turns off the fan some period after it turns off the light. the fan with a delay. on light+fan, and turns off light and adand continues the fan for a designated period.
There's also no trouble getting rundown timer switches if you want to manually trigger the fan. However if you also have a heatlamp (commonly put on rundown timers), this will be a confusing UI.
They even make fan controls which detect humidity. The question is whether they have, um... VOC detection.
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