Cat room fan
Hi all; My husband has a plan to ventilate the room in our basement that is used mainly to house the two cats' litter boxes. He wants to install a fan in the ceiling of that room and attach a duct that will link up with the dryer vent, which is directly above it. The room is right next to the outside wall, so doesn't think the ventilated air will have far to go, but my worry is that I'm going to have that cat-pee smell getting back up into the dryer, and the clothes! Also, he wants to put the fan on a timer; that part shouldn't be hard, I think, but I'd welcome any thoughts on it. The room right now has an unfinished ceiling. Thanks! Sonya
Hi Sonya, I too would be concerned with cross flow to/from the dryer. I once did something else that could interest you, though a different approach. The litter box used at the time was a 20 gallon plastic (washable) trash can with a swinging door cut into the side for the animal to do thru. The bottom of the door had a magnet which triggered a timer set to run for about 10 min. When the cat entered, the fan started and ran for the time deemed sufficient to minimize odor. So two forces were at work to control odor -- the fan plus the enclosed litter box (trash can). Now they have nice enclosed litter boxes (removable top) available which couldn't be obtained at the time. The vent consisted of a standard dryer vent kit which I installed near one of the basement windows. I had removed the glass from one section of the window and replaced it with either a piece of plexiglas or something. Elements of that project may be more useful to you than others, but I wanted to present the entire picture of what had been done at the time for maximum benefit. Let us know what you wind up doing! Joe
Thanks, Joe and Sherri, for your thoughts. I can use your posts as evidence to my sweet and well-meaning husband that maybe this isn't the best way to go about this! Joe, your litterbox setup sounds ingenious. I wish we had a window to vent through in that room, but all we have is an old, inoperative central vaccuum system. That's a question for another day, I think! I wanted to mention that we're having new windows put in - I think I had asked in this group for opinions about replacement windows. We decided on the Milgard fiberglass windows with wood cladding on the inside. These should look really nice with the brick, since the outside of the frames will be a dark brown. We had planned to go with vinyl at first, but these fiberglass windows look nice and I think they'll last a long time. Thanks again for all the help, folks! Sonya