Toilet seat with built-in fan sucks out the stench
Bad bathroom odors are conquered by Fresh Air Plus, a toilet seat with a fan and exhaust pipe that banishes smells to the outside.
We are in a golden age for toilet technology. Recent years have given us highly entertaining innovations like toilet landing lights, home toilet wave-to-flush kits, and Bluetooth-equipped toilets that can be flushed using an app. There is no stopping the forward progress of toilet tech, as evidenced by Fresh Air Plus, a newcomer to the lavatory scene.
Fresh Air Plus is a Kickstarter project that replaces your old, lifeless toilet seat with a seat that has a built-in exhaust fan designed to capture and safely vent unwelcome odors outside your house. The Kickstarter promotional video describes the issue as "stinky, gross, and sometimes socially awkward." The seat has a sensor that detects when someone is sitting down. This triggers the fan to turn on.
The seat also has an anti-slam lid that closes softly. The best part of all is a series of purplish and red blinking star lights on the side that let you and any visitors know that this isn't your momma's toilet seat, it's a high-tech beast of a bathroom machine.
The installation process involves removing your old seat, attaching the Fresh Air Plus in its place, plugging the seat into a wall socket, and then connecting a hose to an exhaust vent running outside. The biggest issue here is that you probably don't already have a small round vent in your wall, so you'll have to get handy and put one in or hire somebody to come do it. It gets a little trickier if your bathroom doesn't have an outside-facing wall. This situation requires running the hose through the wall to connect up with the ventilation pipe used by your bathroom ceiling fan.
Just be careful if there isn't much room between your house and the next. You may end up venting a stream of bad smells into your neighbor's open window.
Fresh Air Plus is trying to position itself as a more budget-friendly alternative to spending bucks on candles or air fresheners, or venting out your precious heating and cooling through a ceiling fan that takes forever to clear out the air. You'll have to decide if your $180 early-bird pledge or $200 standard pledge is worth the potential for eventual savings.
