KAZE APPLIANCE SNP100 | 100 CFM | 0.8 Sone | Energy Star Certified | No Attic Access Required | Bathroom Ventilation Exhaust Extractor Fan

Pros: First off I would like to give a shout out to Amanda on the customer service team. I recieved a damage grill cover and she took care of me. The replacement grill arrived three days later after I contacted the service team. Also they have replacement parts on the KAZE website you can order in case issues arise in the future. The unit was fairly straight forward to install even though I had 24" o.c joist. I just modified the included hangers to make them long enough to span from joist to joist. These units are also Energy Star and HVI certified. The unit passes the tissue test as well. This is just a simple test to make sure it applies a negative pressure to the room to facilitate evacuating the humid or stinky air in the room. After a hot shower my glasses are not fogged up either. It takes about 15-20 minutes to clear my bathrooms of humid air. I did test the sound inside and outside the two bathooms I installed them in using the NIOSH sound meter app. The first is a master bath connected to the bedroom which averaged 36.8 decibles (~1.8 scones) outside the bathroom approximately 10 feet away from the closed door. The second is a hallway bath which averaged 36.1 decibles (~1.7 scones) 10 feet away from the closed door. Background noise was about 30 decibles. Granted this is not a scientific test but a real world example of what you might see. Negatives: I don't know what test standard is used to measure the sound level of bath exhaust fans, but I was not getting anywhere near 0.8 scones inside or outside the bathroom. Inside the bathrooms scone levels were on average 52.2 decibels (~5 scones) for the hallway bath and 61.4 decibles (~10 scones) for the master bath. Bathroom size, duct work type (insulated or noninsulated), and duct lenth do affect noise generation though. Both of my bathrooms are on the smaller size. The hallway bath is 50 square feet and the master bath is about 30 square feet. A 100 cfm bath exhaust fan is typically sized for a 100 square foot bathroom. I imagine the noise would be much more diluted in larger bathrooms in terms of square footage or volume (i.e. high ceilings). KAZE does recommend insulated duct be used in their installation instructions. It is code in most places and tends to dampen the noise as well as prevent moist air from condensing back down your ductwork and into your bathroom. I will mention the rise of the duct work in my master bath is only about 2 foot to the roof termiation cap. On really windy days I can hear the backdraft open and close. This does not occur in our hallway bath which has approximately a 5 foot rise to the roof termination cap. Again, my tests are not scientific. I imagine these units are probably tested in a standardized sound proof booth that can eliminate background noise. The noise does not bother me but I know that is a problem for others. Verdict: I would definately recommend purchasing this product. The price, customer serivce, and functionality of these bath fans sold me. Yes, I had to make modifications during installation but that is what I expect with any project. You can anticipate much more noise dilution than what I measured if your bathrooms are larger than my small ones. Update: 01-01-2024 Please make sure you do not over tighten your ductwork to the duct adapter. The adapter is plastic and over tightening it will deform its shape and not allow the flapper to open when the unit is turned on. I noticed one of my bathrooms was taking forever to reduce humidity so I investigated and this was what I found. After this correction it only takes about 10 minutes to noticeably reduce humidity. I also noticed less noise, almost nonexistent most days, from my roof termination vent’s too on windy days.

Installed yesterday. It's bigger, quieter, and moves much more air than the old builder-grade fan I replaced. No access to change the existing flexible aluminum ductwork, But a standard 4" to 3" galvanized reducer fit both perfectly. In retrofitting, it's easiest to remove all the guts from the housing including the outlet duct and internal electrical connection box. It has angled screw holes about mid way up one inner wall so it can be cantilevered off one joist. I added strip of plywood inside the drywall cutout opposite the joist so the housing flange could be screwed to something more solid than drywall, but probably unnecessary given the 4 screws into the joist held it firm. Happy so far.

Not at quiet as advertised but not unreasonably loud either. I might remount it with some kind of padding between it and the joists to try to dampen the vibrations of the housing but only if I get bored and want an unnecessary project. Not crazy about how they assumed which direction it would be mounted in. The lost star is more for that than the sound level. You can still mount it however you want but it might take a little extra work depending on what you're trying to do.

I was about to give it one star because it was really loud, at about 58DB, accompanied by a rattling noise. Reading some of the other posts here I realized that the exhaust duct flapper could have been stuck closed. Indeed, it was. After removing the obstructions, the noise went down to about 51 DB and the rattling noise went away. I believe it is even quieter than the Panasonic it replaced. Another clue was that their airflow rate seemed really low, but that is now fixed. It now performs admirably and I am very happy with it. One design flaw, though, is that the three mounting holes on the blower unit should not be threaded. Currently, the screw holes for both the blower and housing are threaded. The consequence is that unless the screw goes through both parts exactly aligned you will get a gap held apart by a segment of the screw. That warps the housing and makes installation difficult. If the blower unit had no threading in its mounting hole, there wouldn’t be this problem. It took me over an hour to figure out why the housing was warped, and probably another hour finding the solution, which was to drill out the threads on the housing.

This fan is excellent so far. It is very easy to install, provided you can put it next to a ceiling joist. If so, then the whole installation can be done from below. Otherwise, if you have to install it midway between the joists, you need attic access so you can mount the included installation bars. (Those, by the way, are taped to the bottom of one of the styrofoam padding panels in the box.) The fan itself is very quiet, but, because it is so strong and moves a lot of air, there is some noise from the air rushing into the vent - not bad, but not whisper quiet like the fan motor. Overall I would rate the noise level as fairly quiet. Because it moves so much air, it ventilates very well, with a noticeable reduction from its predecessor in the steam build-up in the bathroom when taking a shower.

Upon receipt of the fan, I knew that I would have to do a little bit of retrofitting. Unfortunately, I didn't know how much retrofitting I needed to do to have the fan installed. My suggestions to the vendor would be to remove the brackets on the outside for a new construction fit. The brackets hinder the installation in that you need to remove the rivets that are holding the brackets for it to smoothly fit into the 9x9 opening that is required for clearance. Secondly, the support flanges that screw into either a joist or wooden cleat in the ceiling should be at least an inch wider. This is to support older construction where the drywall can be very brittle around the edges of the new cut opening. Thirdly, it is difficult to reinstall the fan into the housing. The set screws are very very difficult to screw back into the housing flanges. In conclusion, the fan is very very quiet for the space that it's in. The draw is excellent and is more than enough for a very small Powder Room. Conduit installation for venting is ample and ease of connectivity for electrical and ground is optimal. The ease of installation is lacking due to the metal support flanges being to shallow. Another inch of flange space from the main body of the chassis wood greatly increase the ease of installation. I had to spend a considerable amount of extra money in repair to my damaged drywall in order for the retrofit to be clean. Can someone from your sales team please contact me regarding this.

I have ordered and installed 3 of these fans. All of them are working great. I did have an issue with the last one I purchased, and emailed the company regarding the issue. They were very prompt in returning my email and addressed the issue. It was a fan motor issue, and they handled it perfectly. Now the fan works excellently and is very quiet. Thank you for the great product. I will be getting a couple more in the future.

For me, a clean bathroom means just that - clean! This starts with great ventilation. My guest bathroom (the one used most by guest) is 28 sq/ft with an 8' ceiling. The original fan that the builder, passes code at 60 CFM, but this is total crap and did not vent out bad odors, often embarrassing my guest). I upgraded to a Home Depot model 90CFM, this vented well, but it was loud, vibrated the ceiling, and burned out in less than two years. I installed this Kaze model (100CFM), and there is no vibration, very quiet, and vents this bathroom really well. All the bad odors are gone before the guest can finish washing their hands. Guest can rest assured the next guest coming in will not be sitting in bad air.

Buen producto