› Flat Chat Strata Forum › New to strata – or just strata-curious › Bathroom Ventilation fan smell › Current Page
Agree completely with JT – you need someone competent to review the whole system and fix it properly. That won’t please the Committee at all!
It sounds a curious system, having one fan for the whole building. That fan would have to run 24/7, and chew a lot of power. It’s likely that the conduits are clogged with lint, or that the fan was always too weak, to keep the power bill down.
What to do? If the downstairs neighbour’s fan only runs when the light is on in her bathroom, you could partially fix your problem by installing a butterfly valve in your own vent. When her fan is pumping pressurised air into the system, your valve closes and doesn’t let air/pong into your unit. When her fan turns off, the butterfly opens and allows the roof fan to extract the air from your bathroom as per normal.
I don’t know if these butterflies are available without buying the extraction fan as well, but you can ask at the hardware store.
If you followed your neighbour’s example and fitted your own extraction fan, that would solve the problem for you, but make it worse for the rest of the building. Better get the whole thing seen to and fixed, and make the neighbour disconnect her fan.