Bathroom Exhaust Fan Cleaning in Las Vegas

The fan is still spinning. That isn't the same as working.

A bathroom exhaust fan fails quietly. The motor keeps turning and the noise keeps happening, so nothing about it says "I have stopped moving air" — but the blade has picked up a felt coat of dust, the grille has closed up to maybe half its open area, and the fan is now stirring the room rather than emptying it. The usual first sign is the mirror. If it fogs and stays fogged for a few minutes after a shower in a house where it used to clear, the fan is loaded.

Las Vegas loads them faster than most places. This is a dusty valley, that dust gets pulled through every running fan in the house, and the bathroom fan is the one nobody ever looks at because it lives on the ceiling behind a plastic grille. We routinely open covers that have clearly not been off since the house was built.

Two other things make it worth doing here. Bathrooms in newer valley builds are often interior rooms with no window at all, so the fan is the only ventilation there is. And when a fan stops clearing moisture properly, what you get is a slow damp problem in the one room least able to dry itself out.

What we actually do

1. Cut power to the fan at the switch and confirm the blade has stopped before anything comes apart.
2. Drop the grille, which on most units is two spring clips rather than screws, and take it away to be washed rather than dusted in place over your sink.
3. Vacuum the housing, the blade and the motor casing — the blade is where most of the loss is, and cleaning the grille alone while leaving a furred blade is the version of this job that looks done and isn't.
4. Wipe the damper flap at the top of the housing and check it swings freely. A flap stuck shut turns a clean fan back into a sealed box.
5. Refit the washed grille, restore power, and confirm the fan pulls — we hold a sheet of tissue to the grille and make sure it holds against it.
6. Photograph before and after, and note which of your fans we did.

Up to three, once a year

Three vents covers the great majority of valley floor plans — a primary bath, a second bath and a powder room or laundry. If your house has more than three, tell us when we survey it and we'll sort it out then rather than picking three at random and leaving the rest furred up.

Annually is the right interval for a normal household. A bathroom that gets several showers a day, or one downwind of ongoing construction, loads up faster — we'll tell you after the first clean if yours is one of them.

Which plans include it

Included on Autopilot plus. Frequency is once a year, and the parts are in the price — you are never billed separately for them.

• Autopilot lite — $32.99/mo · not in this plan
• Autopilot — $69.99/mo · not in this plan
• Autopilot plus — $76.99/mo · included

Compare the Autopilot plans side by side.