Exhausto Fan
Installation & Testimonial

	My name is Fred E. I have been a general contractor here in Portland, Oregon for twenty-five years. I have built or remodeled just about any kind of structure you could name, but capped off my career with a beautiful cedar house on a mountainside with a city view.
	I bought an Exhausto RS 9 from Volko Supply, and found every aspect of the transaction helpful and easy. The salesperson agreed that an RS 9 would easily solve my problems, so I ordered it and found it waiting on my front porch courtesy FedEx ground in about a week. The whole purchasing process took about ten minutes by phone, including free advice.

The chimney is a traditional brick chimney with 8 by 8 flue liners, but the inside of the house has masonry thimbles for woodstoves instead of fireplaces. Cool air often creates downdrafts, and the whole house can become almost uninhabitable due to creosote odors. After a year of trying to figure out a chimney cap solution, or any solution less costly than an exhaust fan, I realized that I had spent about $5,000 worth of brain-time for a problem that can be solved for about $1,000 in materials. Also, my clients were probably about to die of creosote poisoning.

Installation went perfectly. All parts came with the fan, including a really nice speed control. There were extras of the sorts of bolts you might drop, and no parts were missing at all. (My only complaint: the waterproof conduit connector came cross-threaded, though I was able to force the threads back where they belonged.) A technical note: I used an angle grinder with a 4” diamond blade to cut off the flue pipe and to smooth the masonry. It was the perfect tool for the job.

For masonry installations like mine, the fan “floats” on a fiberglass mat, with a keeper cable in case of hurricane-force winds. There is absolutely no sound transmitted to the house.

The unit uses about ten watts, because the slow speed is fine for this installation. Even at full-tilt it uses a mere 40 watts. From all appearances, this fan will run forever. My clients will keep it running full-time all year, and will never smell creosote again!

Thank you Volko for this ultimate and total solution to downdraft problems. Now I really can say I’ve capped off my construction career, and can retire at last.