Page 47 - Green Builder May-June 2020 Issue

Airflow and Light: Double Defense
SOURCES: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL, KING SAUD UNIVERSITY, NATURE
Bad air antidote. Broan’s new, near-UV wavelength bath lamp can stop tile-destructive mold as well
as remove humidity in a room.
Goodbye, Mold
and Bacteria
Broan’s new bath fan, designed
for in-room replacement, marks
an innovative first: preventing
mold and bacteria with light.
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Up until now, the best way to halt this wasteful cy-
cle, short of scheduled, yearly visits to seal the tile
grout, is to remove humidity from the bath quickly.
Bath fans, if used regularly, accomplish this, but
grout can still become saturated and provide mold
a foothold. The introduction of a mold-killing light
to the ceiling unit chassis is a natural evolution.
Lauren Weigel, senior product director for
Broan-NuTone, says the company’s recently re-
leased SurfaceShield Vital Vio Powered Exhaust
Fan stemmed from a need for greater sanitation in
bathrooms. The fan contains two lights, a standard
3500K LED for illumination, and a second antibac-
terial lamp. Either can be operated independently.
“It’s a near-UV wavelength lamp,” Weigel ex-
plains. “Normal UV can be harmful to the skin,
so we kept it in a safe range for people. It will kill
mold and bacteria, but not viruses at this point,”
she notes. It should be noted that Broan-NuTone
also offers a LED upgrade grille cover and light
module that allow you to upgrade an existing LED
to a SurfaceShield LED.
“We’ve designed it so you don’t have to crawl
around in an attic to install it,” Weigel adds. “You
can do everything from inside the room. If you have
an older, existing fan that’s moving 50-70 cfm, but
noisy and energy inefficient, this fan can go in the
same spot. You cut a slightly larger hole in the ceil-
ing and slide the fan housing in. The duct assembly
can be easily attached from inside the housing, no
attic access required.”
The 110 cfm unit can also be installed piece-
meal. In other words, you can install just the fan, or
just the LED light, or just the bright white, louver-
free grille.
Lamp and Timer Upgrade-Ready
One question sure to come up in this time of the
COVID-19 pandemic is whether the light in this
unit will kill the virus. The answer is no, but with a
caveat. To my knowledge there is no commercial
DECADE OR MORE AGO, Green Builder virus-killing ceiling unit for baths available, but
the technology may be ready for the marketplace
published an article titled “Building
Blind,” about the many building products
A in a home that don’t last as long as they soon. Research is promising on far-ultraviolet C
(far-UVC) light, a high frequency UV light said to
be safe for humans.
should. Near the top of the ledger of shame were
tile shower enclosures. Another question buyers may have is whether
Once a tile shower is completed, and the con-
tractor coats the grout with waterproofing silicone the unit can be integrated with timers and sensors.
According to Broan-NuTone’s tech department, it
for the first and probably the last time. But grout is can be wired to work with the company’s DH100W
cementitious. It absorbs water, unless it is recoated Dehumidistat wall control.
In any case, the smart, modular design of the
every year or so. Homeowners rarely if ever do this.
So mold grows. Mildew forms. Grout turns black. AR110LVV means that Broan can easily develop a
Homeowners panic and tear the whole thing out module that will slide into the installed fan unit, in-
and start over. Tiles that should last 300 years are corporating whatever lamp, sensor or other device
tossed in the landfill at less than seven years old. is on the cutting edge, for years to come.
May/June 2020 GREEN BUILDER 41
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