Fantech DBF 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.

Update: Jan 2024. The fan started vibrating a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it was time to replace the unit. I was wrong. All I had to do was uninstall it and give it a good cleaning. There was some build up on the blades but not as much as thought there would be because hot air going into a cold attic will produce moisture inside the pipes and the fan. I know I should clean it more often than I do. I do clean the pre filter quite often. The fan has been running for almost eight years with poor Maintenace which shows how good this product really is. After I cleaned it, reinstalled it, the fan is working just like it did when it was new. If it does go bad I will replace it with the same unit. Original review below: 2016: Our house was built with the Dryer on the inside wall of the house so the only way to vent it was through the roof. It has worked for years but was not efficient. I pulled the hose out from the roof and let it blow into the attic. BIG MISTAKE. Not only did it put sticky dryer lint on everything stored in the attic but all the damp air caused mold to grow. I decided that the only way was to install a booster fan. My biggest problem was the central heat and air ducts ran right over the area I needed to mount the booster fan so I had to build a stand for it. I decided to add a lint trap even though I was over 15 foot from the dryer to the booster fan hoping this would keep some of the extra lint out of the booster fan. First off the booster fan is good and sturdy but you will have to do some work to install it. You must install the rubber grommets in the provided plate. I found the metal mounting plate to be light weight but strong enough to support the fan. The nice thing about the light weight support plate it lets you bend it to conform to the round bottom of the fan that you must drill holes in for the screws. Yes it is kind of hard to start drilling holes in a new fan but no two installations are the same. I installed a electric outlet in the attic and put a cord on the new fan in case I have to remove it for some reason. With the lint trap in line there should be very little lint getting into the motor but lint can get into anything. When I compare the quality of the booster fan with the quality of the lint trap I am happy with the booster fan. The lint trap is another story. There are about 3 or 4 different lint traps sold on Amazon but after reading the reviews they are all made of the same poor quality. After you purchase the lint trap go the the hardware store and get some heavy duty weather stripping. You will have to stick one strip in the bottom of the lint trap from corner to corner (see pictures) in the same direction the screen runs to seal the built in screen to the bottom of the lint trap housing. Once you put the weather stripping in the bottom you must put more weather stripping around the top to close the gap that was caused by the weather stripping at the bottom. I put weather stripping around all of the removable top (see pictures) were it meets the main box. This will give you a better seal and should stop most of the lint from escaping. I then temporally clamped the top to the bottom so the edged of the box will make some groves in the weather stripping on the top cover. I found for me the semi ridged pipe works better than the real soft pipe. You can take advantage of the 90 degree pipe adapters available. When using the booster fan you use up to 60 foot of pipe and 6 elbows. UPDATE on the lint trap. I added the lint trap because I thought it was a good idea but I didn't really need it because I was more than the 15 foot they say you need from the dryer to the booster fan. I am so glad I added the lint trap. We always clean the lint filter on the dryer after each use, no exceptions. After only 4 loads of clothes the screen on the lint trap was full of lint. Part of this was caused because I moved the original pipe around and knocked some of the lint that was stuck to the sides of the old pipe loose. The booster fan with the amount of air it moves cleaned out the full 20 foot of existing pipe that comes from the ground floor to the attic. I will be checking the lint trap in the attic more often then I thought I would have to. Sure glad I made it easy to get to.

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.

Works perfect. Any run of the mill diydad can do it in no time. Followed a great video I found on the tube by Thistle Hill Farmstead. Code in my area for a normal dryer vent run is max 35’ and 90° turns count as 5’. I am in the process of remodeling the laundry room and have hated the way they ran the dryer vent for years. It was ran under the house up an 8ft sloop and out the back coming out the top of the crawlspace rim joist. Decided to reroute the entire thing with straight pipe. Straight up the wall across the ceiling and out the back of the house. Before installing this fan Clothes took forever to dry and I burned up heating elements in my dryer about once a year. So much so I make sure to have spares on hand. Now clothes are drying crazy fast and the fan is almost silent. I installed it directly above the dryer and hard wired it into an outlet in the laundry room. You can’t even hear it over the dryer. I did have to email customer service as the unit cycles on and off while the dryer is running. I assumed it would stay on the entire dry cycle but it does not. Customer service emailed me back quickly and it is designed to cycle on and off throughout the drying cycle so it’s operating normal. I did install an additional lint filter ahead of it and it does stick off the wall at least 4 inches so I built a plywood box to recess it back in between the studs a few inches. but so far so good.

Our house was built with a really long run of dryer vent through the basement. We replaced a bunch of cruddy old PVC (not code!) with nice steel duct work, took some of the bends out, but it was still inefficient. The dryer was old, so we figured maybe it had run out umph, but its replacement was not significantly better. We were working on all kinds of other solutions when somebody suggested we look at a booster fan. D'uh! After reading earlier reviews, we settled on this model. The directions were reasonably good, though they were more focused on vertical installations than horizontal runs. The metal brace has little rubber feet to "reduce vibration." My question is: what vibration? It is whisper quiet. Given the tight space between floor joists, I found it easier to use the brace as a prop instead of the entire actual support. I ran a strap under the unit and it's fine. The unit is not pre-drilled for the brace, so that is something to keep in mind. The fan works like a charm. Turns on almost immediately after sensing pressure in vent. Cycles off every ten minutes to check for air flow, and goes right back on if the dryer is still running. This is a much simpler solution than trying to wire relays into the dryer circuit. My only question is whether I will need to check the rubber tube from the sensor to the switch for water accumulation. It did collect a little, but it is quick and easy to drain out. Problem solved.

Not recommended. I bought this because the existing booster fan matches the part numbers and pictures in the post. TL;DR - Arrived and the pressure sensor was not working. Returned and purchased Tjernlund DBF2 based on another review on this product. 1) Product that arrived is not the same as in the posting. The part number matched so I figured okay , maybe its a new design 2) The product label sticker was attached in a sloppy way. This is a nit pick, but in my mind I was thinking if they can not apply a label neatly, what other aspects of the assembly are sloppy? 3) I then looked at the flag to see if it was made in the USA, and it is not. It is only assembled in the USA. Now I am feeling a bit mislead due to the big US flag and then a made in Germany label. 4) I continue to install the product and then realize that the product is NOT THE SAME SIZE as the original. It is a half inch taller and seems like it is slightly larger in diameter. Now I am frustrated and have to fix the duct to give a little more room. 5) Next I have the product installed and hook up the electric and pressure sensor. Nothing happens. I double check everything and it is wired properly. 6) I take the fan back out and verify with a voltage meter that the fan itself does indeed work, however the pressure sensor is non functioning and prevents the fan from turning on. After reading another review that the Fantech customer service was poor, I put it back in the box for a return. Entire project was a waste of a Sunday afternoon.

Our dryer was taking too long and we have a very long vent run. I installed this and drying times immediately reduced. We have had it installed for over a year now and rarely notice it is there. It is very quiet and we haven't had to touch it since we installed it. The product was mostly easy to install, but dealing with rigid ducts is never easy for me. We also had to install and reinstall it a few times to get it positioned just right. Adjusting the sensitivity of the sensor was also difficult. Several screws to loosen/tighten, too little range of movement, and cramped quarters all made it a tedious process. I'm sure pro would have no such trouble. Considering a product that installs itself would probably be a little more expensive, I can't really complain about any of the difficulty I had during installation. If you want to do it yourself, be prepared to have it try your patience. Otherwise, just hire a pro. update 8/27/2021: It has been almost 3 years and I still love this fan. It still works great and still has required no maintenance.

Very happy with this unit, it’s working as intended and I no longer have a dryer code error stating there is a blockage. I didn’t have any access to the dryer vent given I have a 2 story house and the 4 inch duct is between the 1st and 2nd floor so I installed in the wall with an access panel. I also wired with 14/2 since it’s only operating at 40w to my washing machine outlet. Had to install a 20a outlet to jump from. No plug is needed I this case as it’s wired directly within the wall cavity.

EXCELENTE