Ceiling Fans FAQ
What size ceiling fan is right for your room?
Great Rooms
Great Rooms are the warmest, most inviting room of the house. The selection of the correct ceiling fan for this area will set the mood as well as add comfort and style to your home. Great rooms require larger fans. Choose from or selection for 56” to 72” ceiling fans for a welcoming breeze. Don’t forget to choose the correct downrod length and sloped ceiling adapter to assure proper hanging of this fixture.
Large Rooms 15′ x 15′
Large rooms can be easily styled byselection of the right ceiling fan. Choose from ourselection of 52” to 56” ceiling fans that will help provide a cooling breeze in the summer andwith a flick of the reverse switch, force the warm air down in the winter.
Small Rooms 10′ x 10′
Select from our selection of 38” to 48” ceiling fans to assure a perfect fit.
Small spaces and utility rooms can be difficult. Norburn can assure the perfect fit with our 24″ ceiling fans. Don’t forget to use a flush mount adapter in situations where ceiling height may be an issue.
Choosing a down rod.
Ceiling Fans are effective in both the summer and winter. In the summer, ceiling fans are very effective at lowering the apparent temperature by making use of evaporation. When you are hot, you perspire, perhaps only a small amount. This is the body’s way of cooling off – Evaporation of the perspiration pulls heat away from your body. Circulation of the air rapidly increases evaporation. The more evaporation, the cooler the apparent temperature.
Ceiling fans are more than a cooling device. In the winter, a large amount of heated air can collect in a large room with high ceilings before it can even be felt. In cold climates, where possible, heater vents are put in the floor. This is the most effective way to heat a room, because the air will rise. In a room with 14′ cathedral ceiling or higher and the thermostat set at 20 degrees C or 68 degrees F – the uppermost 3 feet can be 32 degrees C or 90 degrees or higher before the thermostat shuts the furnace off.
A ceiling fan breaks up the cool and warm layers, making the overall room temperature uniform. By simply flipping a switch to reverse the fan’s normal, warm air is moved across the ceiling and down the walls. This distributes room heat without creating a cooling draft. The result is that warm air is where you need it – at the level you live in, not on the ceiling. So, in winter you can lower your furnace thermostat by several degrees, again saving energy dollars
What to do if your ceiling fan wobbles?
There are several things that can cause a ceiling fan to wobble
- Loose junction box
- Loose mounting hardware
- Loose blade holders
- Bent blade holders
- Warped blades
- Blades that are out of balance
- Inferior quality ceiling fan
Quality fans don’t normally wobble.
For a ceiling fan to perform efficiently it is important that the blades be flat and that each blade weighs the same. Better quality ceiling fan manufacturers use various techniques to keep warping to a minimum. “Balanced” blades, blades that are electronically matched at the factory are sold as balanced sets of four or five blades, depending on the design of the fan. This, combined with the use of precision quality made components such as the blade holders and motor, help insure that the fan will not wobble when they are newly installed. Cheaper brands do not go through this process, so it is likely that the blades are either warped or do not weigh the same as each other.
Make sure your junction box is secure
Remove the canopy from the top of the fan at the ceiling and try to wiggle the junction box to see if it is not loose. If it is secured properly, you should not be able to move it. If the junction box is loose, you will need to reinforce it. If you have an attic above the ceiling fan, you can reinforce the junction box simply by nailing a 2×4 between the joists above the junction box and then screw the junction box into the 2×4. There are special expandable fan brackets available for applications where there is no attic space. To install one of these, you will need to remove the existing junction box from the ceiling. Slip the expandable fan brace up through the hole in the ceiling, then twist it so that it expands until it is wedged between the joists. There is hardware supplied that will enable you to attach the j-box to the fan brace. Make sure all screws are tight
Your ceiling fan may be wobbling simply because there are some lose screws somewhere. Be sure all screws attaching your fan to the ceiling are tight. For fans other than hugger fans, there is usually a ball at the top of the downrod that fits into a bracket that is mounted to the ceiling. This ball will normally have some type of set screw that keeps it tight. Make sure that the set screw is tight and that the ball does not wiggle on the end of the downrod. If it does, this could be your problem. If the fan does not come with a set screw, then it was poorly designed and you may not be able to solve your wobbling problem. However, you should continue through all of these steps anyway.
Be sure that the screws holding the blade holders to the fan motor are tight, as well as the screws that hold the blades to the blade holders. These screws are the most common to get loose. Although this is not a problem with most better quality fans, some of the cheaper fans seem to have a chronic problem with blade screws, so if yours are loose, you should check them regularly just to be safe.
Check for bent blade holders
Hold a yard stick near the end of a blade and measure the distance from the bottom edge of the blade to the ceiling. Rotate the fan one blade at a time checking them at the same point. You might notice that one or two of the blades hang lower than the rest. This indicates that you either have warped blades or a bent blade iron. You can visually inspect the blades by standing on a ladder and looking at them down the length. Warped blades or bent blade holders are a common cause for wobbling ceiling fans.
If you suspect that you have warped blades or bent blade holders, we suggest that you remove the blades from the fan by loosening the screws that hold the blade holders to the motor. This way you can remove the blade holders from the blades once you take them down and then perform the next two checks. First, stack all of the blades on top of each other. You will easily notice if one or more are warped. If they are warped more than 1/4″, then you may want to consider trying to replace them, although you will need to find the correct blades to fit your blade holders. Next, stack all of the blade holders on top of each other to see if any of them are bent. Be sure to line up the base of the blade holders so you can check the angle that each blade holder is bent to. They all should be the same. If one or more are obviously different, you can attempt to bend them back, but you must be careful since some of the cheaper fans use pot metal for these parts and they can break easily. Finding replacement blade holders is difficult or impossible for cheaper fans, but not so much for the more the higher quality fans. Give us a call to see if replacement blade holders are available for your fan if need be.