DIY: Replacing Ceiling Bathroom Exhaust Fan

What: Replac­ing an old Nutone exhaust fan (orig­i­nal to the 1989 house) that had­n’t worked for years.

Sup­plies: Flat­head screw­driv­er, replace­ment fan (Broan-NuTone QuicK­it 60 CFM 2.5 Sones 10 Minute Bath­room Exhaust Fan Upgrade Kit), Wet-dry vac­u­um, tooth­brush (option­al)

Time: 10–15 min­utes (in the­o­ry)

New Cov­er
New unit, motor side
New unit, fan side
  • Old NuTone Cov­er
  • Pull it down from the ceil­ing
  • Squeeze the clasps to pull it from the ceil­ing
  • Repeat with the oth­er clasp
  • Pull the plug care­ful­ly
  • This old one is so clean because I vac­u­umed it last week­end when I was look­ing at it, but it was dis­gust­ing!
  • Flat­head screw­driv­er
  • Twist
  • Ew.
  • Old dust and grime
  • Vent with flap­per
  • Wet-dry Vac
  • Vac­u­um out the nasty stuff (I also used a tooth­brush and suc­tioned as I went)
  • 1 clasp hole on one side
  • 2 clasp holes on one side
  • Try­ing to fit it in. I’m doing it wrong in this pic­ture, you should slide the dou­ble clasp into place first before push­ing up the sin­gle side
  • After about 1.5 hours of war­ring with the fact that the ceil­ing hous­ing thing was unse­cure, I final­ly was able to snap it into place
  • The key here was to remem­ber to push/fix/bend the met­al of the slot towards the motor unit so that it can actu­al­ly catch the tab. It should make a nice *SNAP* sound.
  • Place the clasps in the slits like the old one and BOOM, you’re done!

Help­ful Hints:

  • I had the hard­est time snap­ping the new unit into place because the hous­ing was­n’t secured very well. I don’t have attic access, so it was hard to see up there (and I got stuff in my eyes, so wear safe­ty glass­es!). There was a lot of try­ing to strong arm. Since I man­aged to dis­lodge the entire hous­ing from the screw it was sit­ting on, I fig­ured that hav­ing con­trol over keep­ing the hous­ing still was an advan­tage, so I was able to snap the new unit into place while it was hang­ing out of the ceil­ing before turn­ing my atten­tion to re-secur­ing the hous­ing.
  • If loose hous­ing is an issue for you, the best bet would be to try and attach it to a wood joist if you can get to it. That would have made this so sim­ple. For that I would have need­ed a drill to get through the met­al and screws.
  • Along­side hav­ing the hous­ing free so that I could snap in the new unit, mak­ing sure that the met­al slit where the unit’s met­al tab is sup­posed to snap into place is push­ing for­ward to catch it was real­ly impor­tant.

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aowam

RDH, Dog mom, gamer, eater, creator

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