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Replacing bearing in fan - Vent Axia Sentinel Kinetic Plus B


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Following on from the excellent post by @DOIGAN where he replaced the bearings in one of the fans from his MVHR, this is a short post to detail the steps to replace the bearings in the extract fan in my Vent Axia Sentinel Kinetic Plus B (being a slightly different model and fan to that of the link below)

 

The process I followed is basically the same as laid out by @DOIGAN in his original post. I've added a couple more pictures and descriptions below.

 

 

To get at the fans, the unit has to be stripped down.  First the duct spigots and blanking plates are removed.  Both the back and front covers are then removed, allowing the top and side panels to be taken off - the side panels slide/interlock with the top and bottom panels.  You should then have access to the fans on either side which are bolted to the poly core:

 

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I then disconnected the power connector to avoid having to try and unplug from the motherboard / cause any other issues.

 

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From this point I followed the process as per @DOIGAN

 

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Removing the circlip was a bit challenging, as for some reason the hub assembly would not depress, it turns out because the spring beneath wasn't seated properly.  I managed to get the circlip off, but naturally it pinged up into the air and I spent several minutes searching for it until finally finding it some distance away.  The bearings themselves (one on either end of the hub) popped out easily.

 

I used the same bearings as @DOIGAN

 

Reassembled and back into the MVHR unit.  

 

Cost - my time and £7.99 for a pack of 10 bearings vs £298.43 + VAT + shipping charge for a replacement fan from Vent Axia.  Vent Axia were unable to give me any detail of the bearings used when I emailed to ask.

 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Short update to this. The replacement bearings seem to have failed, as the fan has been getting noisier and noiser.

 

This may simply be the fact the bearings were cheap and poor quality, but nonetheless annoying. I have therefore replaced them again but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of improvement (same batch of bearings).

 

I really don't want to have to replace the fans themselves given the cost, but other than getting some different bearings there's not much I can do or think of doing.

 

Given the cost of replacement fans, and the fact the other fan is now making a little noise, if new (better quality?) bearings don't work, I'd be as well replacing the whole unit given the cost of the controller/control board (also known to fail) runs to several hundreds as well.

 

While nothing lasts forever, and I  accept that bearings costing less than £1 fall into that category, its still frustrating.

 

Having looked online, there are several suppliers from which I can buy the right size bearing. Can anyone suggest a quality bearing brand to go for (rather than the no name ones I've tried)?

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Most decent bearing suppliers can supply good ones, I once replaced my motorcycle wheel bearings (with decent ones ) for a tenth of the cost of BMW ones. SKF and Timken are the two top bearing manufacturers.

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Spent years replacing various "sealed" bearings in my mountain bikes. From large bottom bracket and headsets to small suspension linkage bearings. Found huge differences in quality and always went back to SKF. Was hard spending £120 on a handful of sealed bearings but they always lasted longer.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I think I may be having bearing issues on my Ventaxia Sentinel Kinetic too.

How loud is your unit on normal running? Before/after the new bearings.

I've been having noise issues at the vents since I installed the system, I've since installed silencers which helped, but I was just in the loft working on the next round of silencers.

I've not been up there in a while and thought to myself that it's actually the unit that seems quite loud/noisy, even in the low 15% setting. Which reminded me of this thread. It seems odd as the unit has few runtime hours on the display.

Edited by LeeV
Clarify my question and a tidy up.
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  • 7 months later...

Many thanks to those who’ve contributed to this thread. I’ve just replaced the bearings in my Vent Axia Kinetic MHVR following the directions above. Unit is 6 years old and had become more noisy with some louder squeaking which sounded like a bearing being tortured. I encountered two issues: when disconnecting the motor cover the circuit board was left on the motor - there are a number of pins connecting it to the motor holding it in place, though was fairly easy to lift off and carefully put to one side. The second was that the bearings were a different size than those above! I’ve shown the motor number and bearing measurements from my unit, so a bit of a setback though quick enough to come from Bearing King - I ordered some high efficiency SKF bearings, more expensive though still only £24 for four.

Enclosed are some photos of the process - including one of the poor old bearing that had clearly failed (one of the motors was much less free spinning than the other). While I had the unit off the wall, we took the opportunity to clean the vent pipes using a pull tape and home made microfibre “sweep” - photo included for those interested.IMG_3301.jpeg.f4a2aea96e95477c0e0a9ddde1a74e8f.jpegIMG_3303.jpeg.163104f6c192841006950811c6991e8f.jpegIMG_3305.jpeg.819de4241d10c537288c5e5084934c4a.jpegIMG_3306.jpeg.6e0e226e2ad8cd0f3ec5cb18f7dd9895.jpegIMG_3307.jpeg.9933032969dfb3231bdc11ccd9a4cc73.jpegIMG_3308.jpeg.4df4659250cd797fd8a0f0f32b7c4e04.jpegIMG_3309.jpeg.68bc79b00d211f774e7a3ad468a89d01.jpegIMG_3313.jpeg.3436486c638286640a56f21919ba326d.jpegIMG_3314.jpeg.b1448aadcf8bab3a18cb2cb0099493b7.jpegIMG_3322.jpeg.1b673df401c346da0ac103315b98eef6.jpegIMG_3321.jpeg.4778df7bfb54e1660078ad2ff6ea86e9.jpegIMG_1605.jpeg.dbca085e36c7a28b3e216f90eef10302.jpegIMG_3270.jpeg.7f8f59d9c5051690801118bc295ce48d.jpegIMG_3271.jpeg.93d5b37f839a48e937840e2c82028c9b.jpegIMG_3272.jpeg.a8d3bc09a524566c150600112d24e45d.jpegIMG_3274.jpeg.b78035b9ae48c11f36ff9e308efdd80b.jpeg

IMG_3315.jpeg

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