Having a steam room at home is not unusual and nowadays many of them are built by the home owner. House owners can choose to either build their steam room from scratch or use one of the numerous DIY steam room kits that include all the instructions and parts required to fit the steam room appropriately. Every DIY steam room kit will point out what is important and one of the main things they will explain is the importance of having good steam room ventilation.
The Reasons for Steam Room Ventilation
As there will be a lot of steam in the room there is the need to make sure that it is all able to escape. If this is not done correctly a number of problems can occur. There will be the need to fit extractor fans in the room to make sure that all the steam can get out. Not doing this or at least not doing this properly will leave the steam in the bathroom and can lead to mould appearing around the walls. It is important to make sure they are fitted outside the cubicle rather than inside it as the steam needs to be able to get out of the bathroom not just out of the cubicle.
There is a theory that if you have a steam room at home and it is not used a great deal then there is no need to bother with special ventilation but this is not a view held by all DIY experts. The time they give for continual use before a ventilation system is required is 2 hours and with a family of 5 or 6 it is easy to see how the time adds up. If there is over two hours of use per day there should be a steam room ventilation system in place. To make sure that it works effectively there will be the need to replace 10-20 cu m of air per user for each hour the steam room is in use. This is however looking at it from more of a practical point of view than a hygiene one as there will not be much steam production lost as a result of the slight loss of heat.
Exhaust Fans
An ideal type of ventilation system will be an exhaust fan and there are benefits to choosing one with a timer instead of a switch. To get the result you want from the fan it needs to be able to do two things. First, there should be eight changes of air per hour and second the fan should not be switched off as soon as the steam room is not in use but instead it should run for 20 minutes afterwards. The main benefit with the timer is you don’t have to remember to switch the fan back on or off. As they are so quiet they are often left on and forgotten about which can prove to be quite costly.