Ceiling fans, good and bad

[Nic0]

With all of the hot weather lately I am thinking about installing some ceiling fans to compliment the two wall mounted aircons that I have at opposite ends of the house.

Which are the better ceiling fans, metal or wood, four blades or three blades. I can get three bladed metal ones very cheaply from a wholesaler. I am thinking about installing the fans myself and getting an electrician mate to run the wiring, does anyone have any tips for installing other than follow the manufactures directions.

Are the four bladed fans from Kmart or BigW any good?

This is a great forum guys, keep up the good work.

[ozwinner]

I'm a great FAN of this forum too..............
Sorry couldnt resist.
Booo hiss..........

Cheers, Allan

[Sturdee]

..... does anyone have any tips for installing other than follow the manufactures directions.

In addition to the instructions make sure that your ceiling height is adequate, I have seen one fan installed where the bottom of the fan came down to the same height as the top of the door and any tall person had to duck when in the room or get decapitated.


Peter.

[bitingmidge]

Don't panic over heights.

I am 190cm (5'15" in the old measurements!) which makes me a tad taller than the average bear.

Standard doors are 2040 or roughly 6'8".

In a new house with minimum 2400 ceiling height (8'0" nominal) a standard fan will hang with about door head height above it.

In our house, fans are more or less over the beds, and unless you wave your arms around a lot, you won't hit 'em.

The el-cheapo three blades are fine, mostly you'll only use the lowest speed anyway. Make sure you get a reversible "winter" setting, which works a treat in dragging warm air through the house.

Cheers,

P

[macca2]

Metal blades are quieter than wood or rattan blades and 3 blades are more efficient than 4 blades.

As hot air rises to the ceiling a the normal cycle pushes it back down , I dont see the and avantage of the reverse winter cycle, even though I have it on my fans.

Cheers
Macca

[Barry_White]

One point that should be considered is that timber fans actually run quieter than metal ones. I can atest to that because I have a metal fan and it is noisy especially on high, but my daughter has timber ones and they actually run quieter.

[RETIRED]

One tip.

Install them away from lights. The shadows thrown at night will annoy hell out of you.

DAMHIKT.

[Nic0]

Thanks for the replys, from what i have seen most of the metal three bladed fans seem to be balance better than the four bladed wood ones. All fans seem to make a fair bit of noise at high speed. The fan and light combinations seem to make the most amount of noise and I havent seen a good design yet.

What would you guys recommend for lighting in a bedroom, to install a fan in the middle of the room i have to remove the light. I leaning towards instaling two lights on one of the walls but my partner likes those 12V halogen lamp things.

[dale]

Originally posted by Nic0
The fan and light combinations seem to make the most amount of noise and I havent seen a good design yet.

We had the fan/light combo in the house when we bought it. The main problem with it was the very limited wattage globes you could put into them.
Also the light was signifcantly lower, and affected the way the light was distributed around the room.

[bitingmidge]

I dont see the and avantage of the reverse winter cycle, even though I have it on my fans.

Neither did I for the first 20 years.

Last year, new house, new fans, looked at the switch on the side and thought "wonder what that does really...".

Living in a rather temperate climate, we have no need for central heating, but do have a stove type fire place for the odd occasion when it gets chilly.

Reversing the fans in the bedrooms (at low speed) was amazingly effective in drawing warm air through the house.

We are convinced!

P

[Jigsaw]

We have ceiling fans in the lounge, family room and 3 bedrooms. I agree with not having the light under the path of the blade because of the flickering effect. It is not as important in the bedroom (for us) as if we are in bed reading we use the table lamps for light.
The problem we have in the bedroom is that we have different temperature settings. Some nights I have to sleep under the doona (rather than sleep with nothing on) whilst SWMBO has the fan going.
We have smaller diameter fans (3 feet I think) in the bedroom and larger ones (4 feet) in the lounge & family room. The larger ones go slower to move the same amount of air. One fan has the reversible switch but we don't really use it as we have ducted heating. On one occasion the fan would not turn on and I thought it was stuffed only to discover the switch was not in the clockwise or anticlockwise position, it was half way in no mans land.

[macca2]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Nic0
The fan and light combinations seem to make the most amount of noise and I havent seen a good design yet.


We have had Mistral fan/light combos in two houses now and am very happy. A bit more expensive but good looking and quiet.

Cheers
Macca

[soundman]

I hate ceiling fans they are a dangerous & hudeous blight on any room, also bad fung swi (or whtaever).

that said we have a couple & have been arround many for extended periods of time.

yess metal fans tend to make more noise ARRRGGGH anoying little tick tik & squeek noises as the blades flex on their mountings.
fourbladed wooden fans most certainly are quieter at low speed.

It is much easier to correct out of balance in a four bladed fan.

better quality fans are worth the money.

Be very particular when mounting them and dressing the cables & shrouds. this may eliminate many small ARRRGGH anoying noises.

Observation.
Go into any church or public hall with a lot of cieling fans, there will be at least one that makes AAAARRRGGH anoying little tick,tak, squeek noises.

are you sure you don't want one more aircon unit.

oh if you decide to paint a cieling fan, make sure you gat exactly the same amount of paint on each blade. It is so easy to put them out of balance.

stay cool

[ceilingfanrepai]

With all of the hot weather lately I am thinking about installing some ceiling fans to compliment the two wall mounted aircons that I have at opposite ends of the house.

Which are the better ceiling fans, metal or wood, four blades or three blades. I can get three bladed metal ones very cheaply from a wholesaler. I am thinking about installing the fans myself and getting an electrician mate to run the wiring, does anyone have any tips for installing other than follow the manufactures directions.

Are the four bladed fans from Kmart or BigW any good?

This is a great forum guys, keep up the good work.

The metal bladed fans move more air more efficiently. The trade off is that you get more "wind noise" than a fan with more (wood) blades, and they're less "pretty". I would go with the metal bladed fans for larger areas and the wood ones for areas like bedrooms.

Especially with the wood fans, there are drastic quality differences. You get what you pay for. More information is available here:

http://www.ceiling-fans-n-more.com/ceiling-fan-faq.php

And specifically on the metal bladed fans here:

http://www.ceiling-fans-n-more.com/i...iling-fans.php

[scooter]

If you look around you can get 140cm 3 blade metal fans which move a bit more air (if that's what you're after) than the usual 120cm jobbies.

Use coins or small washers and trial & error to balance the blades so it runs as smoothly (and quietly) as possible on higher speeds. Note that despite balancing the fan to run as smoothly as possible in the usual direction of rotation, it will likely not be as smooth in reverse.

Tape the balancing weights on securely...


Cheers................Sean