I recently bought a 1986 built SFH and I'm a newbie home owner. My first DIY project is to replace a bathroom exhaust that croaked recently. This has turned out to be not so simple. Whoever installed the original fan did a shoddy job that the exhaust does not seem to be connected to the external vent at all. The moisture has been leaking to the attic and insulation all the while. The whole thing is a thick moldy black mess. I'm surprised why all the moisture never leaked thru the drywall. My guess is the exhaust never worked even though it was making a lot of noise before it died.

How do I go about fixing this now? Make a bigger hole in the ceiling, find the vent and connect the exhaust of the new fan to the vent? I cannot access this from the attic since this bathroom has a cathedral ceiling and there is NO available crawl space. I can see a vent on the roof right above the bathroom so I guess there is a working vent which was never connected to the fan.

Thanks in advance.

-VM

 

The roof vent you refer to may be a simple sewer vent. you may not want to tap into that!
IMHO...
I would remove the ceiling by cutting a much larger hole and remove any and all of the "moldy black mess." This would be my first concern to remove all of the mold if that if what you have. This can be very dangerous to breath and may require a licensed professional to remove, if you have mold inside the ceiling and it has penetrated any of the wood or wall/ceiling board.
Once clean, Then you can worry about changing or installing a new vent properly.

 

Thank you. Who do I call to get rid of mold?