Well I'm trying to add to my list of home improvement/repair skills. We recently had water dripping from the ceiling in our bathroom and when I investigated it was coming out of the ceiling exhaust fan. I've been poking around in the attic and from what I've been reading it seems to be a bit of a hack job as far as the ceiling/exhaust fans are concerned. Seems that there was some condensation that would accumulate and then back flow and end up coming out of the exhaust fan and back into the bathroom. Couple of things. The duct work was simply duct taped to the exhaust port and that seems to have rotted over time and seems to have gone to shit. So that will have to be replaced. What I've read is that I should use aluminum tape and a duct clamp to make that connection tight. My major concern though is the length that the duct work runs in the attic. There were several pieces of duty that were duct taped together to make the long journey out to the side of the house- some plastic, some metal. It's probably ~40ish feet (I haven't had the tape measure up there yet and that is a rough estimate) and I'm wondering if this distance is too long for the fan to actually do anything. Alternatively should I route the exhaust out of the ceiling (seems like a daunting task) or I've seen some exhaust systems ported out of the soffit. Or should I just hook up the fan to a new 40 ft of duct, clamp it down tight and call it good? Also - should I take this opportunity to replace the fans? They seem fine to me but I don't know much about bathroom exhaust fans (which should be obvious by now....)
Any thoughts? Advice? Thank you in advance.