Requirements of your bathroom ventilation grille

It is very important to emphasize the importance of the bathroom ventilation grille (and of other humid areas in your home), as extractors are the initial component of the ventilation extraction system. The applicable current regulation is the CTE DB HS 3, Indoor Air Quality. Do you know how the document influences your bathroom extractor? In this article we explain its placement requirements.

Placement of the bathroom ventilation grille according to the CTE DB HS 3, Indoor Air Quality

According to the basic document, "dwellings must have a general ventilation system (hybrid or mechanical), so that air circulates from dry rooms to humid ones. For this, living rooms, bedrooms, and lounges must have intake openings; and restrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms must have extraction openings. The partitions located between the rooms with intake and the rooms with extraction must have passage openings."

Placement of the grilles

The extraction grilles, which must be connected to extraction ducts, shall be installed a maximum of 20 centimeters from the ceiling. The distance from any vertical corner or edge must exceed 10 centimeters.

It is very important to note that the kitchen and bathroom are the most humid rooms in homes, and therefore, the levels of pollutants inside them are also the highest. According to standard UNE-CEN/TR 14788:2007 IN Design and Dimensioning of Ventilation Systems in Residential Buildings, the rates of pollutant production in homes are as follows:

• Due to respiration of people (CO2)It will depend on the level of activity. For a normal and usual domestic activity of an adult: -While sleeping: 40 g/h (or 0.014 l/s of vapor) -Active: 55 g/h (or 0.019 l/s of vapor). -Inactive: 0.004 l/s (The emission period is considered as follows: living rooms, 4 hours; bedrooms, 10 hours)

• Humidity production index: -Cooking: 2 kg/day (electric stove), 3 kg/day (gas stove) -Personal hygiene (shower or bath): 0.2 kg/day x person -Washing clothes: 0.5 kg/day -Drying clothes indoors: 1.5 kg/day

Ventilation grille in bathrooms: beyond current regulations

It is very important that the extractors of your ventilation system are able to adapt to the relative humidity of the rooms. There are on the market hygro-regulated extraction outlets that ensure a variable flow depending on the relative humidity of the room. Made of white polystyrene, they can be mounted on the ceiling or on a vertical wall. Furthermore, thanks to their presence detectors, they can provide a complementary flow to the system.

This type of extractor is part of controlled hygro-regulated mechanical ventilation systems, whose purpose is to individually extract stale air and renew it with fresh and impurity-free air according to the detected humidity levels (thanks to the hygro-regulated system) or with constant flows (thanks to the self-regulating system). Its operation, based on the principle of sweeping air within the homes, is completely independent in each one and offers an excellent balance between ensuring indoor air quality and consumption autonomy according to occupancy and use.