Hey evrybody. I am doin a small grow with a bathroom extrator fan providing the ventilation, but its tooooo noisy and i wanna slow it down! so i was wonderin if a regular dimmer switch meant for use with domestic lighting would do the job? I cant see why not as they are for mains elec use and are rated for use up to 400w. As long as i dont turn it down so low the fan stops turning the fan motor shouldn't be damaged.
Any Ideas? Any1 tried this before?

Yes and tbh bathroom fans are shit, they're not meant to run 24/7, your gonna need to have a extraction fan with carbon filter if you want to hide the smell properly, plus you need to get fresh air in there as well, the fan and cf take out all the stale hot air, plants need fresh air.
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also light dimmer switches aren't very good either.......get a fan dimmer switch, they look the same but have a fan symbol on the switch, about the same price i think, get them from any b&q etc.

thanks, I know the fan i have isnt ideal and its a bit shagged already but i cant afford decent one! I have cut a passive intake vent in to the bottom of the grow room door to allow good air flow with the fan vent at the highest point. no carbon filter yet as my baby is still vegging on a 200w cfl and so not too stinky. I came up with a DIY Carbon Filter design (similar to the ideas posted on this forum) that i intend to put together in the nxt 2 wks with the current fan and Activated Charcoal Pellets from this site i found. I'll set up another crappy fan on passive intake when the filter is installed or possibly have both fans extracting with the filter in-line, between the two fans. I gotta experiment a bit. plus cus its such a small grow (about 2 m3) i reckon i should only need to cycle the fan for a minute or 2 evry 10 minutes with fans at full power(the fans shift approx 125 m3 an hour so roughly 2 m3 a minute). I want to see if i can turn the fans down to about half power so i can run them on a '5min on-5min off' cycle (and they wont be so loud) I'll start a grow diary when i can be arsed!

cheers tho m8 A trip to b&q is in the wind.... I can feel it!

we all gotta start somewhere havent we?

all i had was 9" osc fan for ventilation, door open for in/outake, cheap lowbay lamp, fed on tomatorite and grown from seed in 12" pots

these little things do come in the end cos after every crop you'll think 'right i gotta get that and that now'.

ventilation is a must though, sort that out first and you'll be fine

Run that (or most, for that matter) fans on a 5min on/off duty cycle and it'll be knackered quicker than even leaving it on 24/7, IMHO.

Sorry KidSinister but the fan you have will be even less efficient once you start trying to get a draw going through a filter.
You is gonna have to bite the bullet mate and invest in summat with some suck.

Bu.

cheers evry1 I'll take your advice and get better extraction asap! I still gotta try and sort out the noise problem with the fan tho. I might put it in a box (insulated). i saw a thread on here somewhere discussing that. oh yeah and i see what u mean Scribble, that would knacker it further! i'll leave it on but slowed down. Bugger, you guys got me worried tho! I might have to consider only using the 200W red CFl for flowering (I was gonna wack a 250W HPS on aswell) cus of the lack of extraction. I'll monitor the temp and see if the fans can keep on top of it. It has stayed reasonably cool in there so far, probably due to the shape of the grow space. Its under the stairs so has a sloping ceiling (max height of 4' 6'') which forces all the hot air to rise to the top where the fan is sucking it out.

anyway sry, stoned, rambling, cya and thanks all!