FANTECHDBF 110 Dryer Booster Fan 4" Duct 167 CFM

UPDATED 8/6/15:Still LOVE this unit, and it has continued to work flawlessly! I had marked my phone's calendar for the one year mark since installation as a reminder to crawl under the house (where I installed it) take it apart and clean it, clean the exhaust vent as well (as best as I could) and put it back together as general maintenance. I'm glad I did, as the unit had some build up lint for sure inside of it. Not that you would know it, as it continued to run perfectly, but could've perhaps reduced the life of the unit had it gone too long, I don't know. Anyways, quick and easy to uninstall, clean, and reinstall, and I reset my calendar for another year and I should be good to go. Definitely recommend this to anyone with poor drying due to long vent runs.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I typically don't write reviews, but I wanted to share how incredibly well this unit works for us and for the price is worth every penny!A quick back story. We bought our house a little over a year and a half ago, and it has upstairs laundry. Our dryer, which was bought used off some friends awhile back was really struggling to dry our clothes, especially large loads. We're talking taking two to three 70 minute cycles to dry clothes. So when black Friday came around we went and bought a brand new set. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to give us the drastic drying time increase we were expecting, so then we hired a company to come out and clean the exhaust line and that is when we discovered two things. First, the line was clogged with all sorts of lint from years of use without being cleaned, and second, the dryer line was pushing 40 FEET LONG!! For whatever reason, the idiot builders of the house decided (my guess is they forgot until it was too late) that rather than putting the dryer next to the exterior wall upstairs and having it exhaust a total of 18" out the wall, instead they put it as far away from the wall as you could in the room, and have the exhaust go 90* down, 90* to the right, then 6 feet towards the middle of the house, then 90* again down, drop an entire story to go under the house into the crawl space, 90* bend again and then a 30ft run to the side of the house. Mind you now, that each 90* bend adds about 5-7ft equivalent length to the dyer run.So after the cleaning we still weren't seeing very good drying times, and our brand new dryer was getting very hot to the touch as it tried to dry clothes, and push the hot moist air out the exhaust line. We had tons of wet lint build up inside the dryer to the point that after every load (which typically took two cycles) we would have to wipe down the door from all the small wet lint, and we even had some instances where the moisture would build up so much inside that we would get beads of water rolling down the front of the dryer from the dryer door.This is when I started researching products, and ultimately came to buy the Fantech DBF 110 Dryer booster fan, and absolutely couldn't be happier with that decision!! Install was pretty easy, the hardest part for me, was wiring in a new outlet under my house so that I had the option to unplug this unit when it was time to do preventative maintenance on it vs. having it hard wired 24/7. One negative for my application, was that the really cool feature of the auto on/off sensor (another reason I bought this unit over others) doesn't work for me. The reason being, is that I installed it on the straight run under my house, and there is just too many 90* bends ahead of the unit that cuts down the force from the dryer upstairs and it doesn't have enough pressure to activate the sensor. So I had to simply follow the wiring diagram in the manual and rewire the unit so it just ran 24/7 once plugged in. I then bought a RF switch that I plugged it into so that I now have what looks like a car key remote hanging next to my dryer upstairs, and when we run a load, we push the button on the key fob, and it turns on the fan, and when we're done it we hit the button to turn it off. It works out really well, and we will save the life of the fan a little by not running it all the time.Bottom line this unit is worth every penny, we can now dry large loads of laundry in 40 minutes, and on smaller loads, even less. I would happily recommend this product to others who have similar needs. Total now, I've had this unit in place and running for about a month with no issues.

Works well and not too hard to install. One complaint is when you use the 3 rubber grommets to mount the fan assembly to the mounting plate, the three associated screws are too short (1/2"). Not long enough to make a good connection.

We purchased this booster to replace the 20 year old booster blower on our 2004 SeaRay 480 sedan bridge. The washer dryer combo was not drying clothes properly. We spent hours trying to remove the old booster unit from a tiny space under the vip guest bed. We got it out, the new one all hooked up and it didn’t work:0 5 hours of tedious labor. My husband tested it by disconnecting the clear tubing from the base and blowing into the tube; the fan kicked on so the blower was good. Turns out we had a blockage in the washer dryer combo machine, not the 4" venting system, that prevented enough airflow to start the booster. The boosters sensor needs to feel the air from the dryer to turn on. The washer dryer combos do not have much airflow to begin with, hence a working booster is a must have. It took 5 hours to figure out how to get the poorly designed washer dryer boot cleared. We heard the vacuum suck something up, so we assembled it all back together and the booster works as designed. It runs an extra 10 minutes after the dryer turns off. On a boat, this is not an easy replacement job. According to my husband, the directions are awful, but now my clothes are drying better. The 4” wide exhaust system on the boat is too long so this booster attaches to the 4” flexible vent hose and helps suck the air out to the vent located at least 20 ft away from the washer dryer. The part is expensive, but necessary. The fan is very quiet. You don’t know it’s running even if you are sleeping on top of the bed its located under. Periodically check the booster's clear tubing. We read this sometimes gets clogged and needs replacing. Since we were unable to remove all the surrounding wood and paneling we used the existing bracket that was from the old unit. We probably replaced a working unit but once replaced we were not going to remove it. My husband did not re-adjust any settings to the booster. Again, awful minimal paper directions, he had to use a QR code and try to read the manufacturer directions from his phone. Hopefully if you are a boat owner the job is not as complex for you and my review helped. The booster does do its job as described.

This is a great price for for a dryer vent booster fan. Installation was pretty straight forward, but remember to think about ongoing maintenance as you install though. Plan to have a grounded electrical cord and strain relief to wire it in (or romex). (I used a cord with a plug so I could easily unplug it when it comes time for maintenance). Also remember that the rigid ductwork also will need to be removed periodically for cleaning. I found the Fantec FC4 mounting clamps to do the trick. (Sold separately). I mounted mine about 25’ into the run (directions say more than 15’) so the lint isn’t too wet and sticky.As for operation, the blower is powerful, and handily handled my 45’ mostly horizontal run across the ceiling of my garage. I see lint getting blown out with every load. It’s pretty quiet too. I was concerned at first over when it would shut off until I read that it stays in 10 min after the dryer shuts off to make sure everything’s cool. (Lint is most likely to ignite when the dryer is first shut off and it’s still hot. My dryer always does a cool down at the end of the cycle -now I know why.