Last fall one of the ceiling fans in the back family room finally died. During the summer we run the fans in this room constantly so I wasn't surprised when one of them quit working.
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| The old fan |
I'm not sure why we have waited nearly a year to replace the fan. I started looking at replacement models this spring and I looked at a lot of fans. Last Saturday Susie and I were at Lowe's in Orem and saw a fan that we both liked. I did some on line research and decided that it was just what we were looking for so Tuesday I picked up two new fans. I bought a Hunter Regalia with dark bronze finish and cherry wood blades. This model mounts close to the ceiling and has a 60 inch width, 8 inches longer than the current fans.
Thursday morning I got out the instructions and read some reviews on line. Both indicated that the fan could be easily installed in about an hour. My personal experience confirmed that installation time was one hour but working out the screwy wiring in our house to get everything working was a different matter.
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| Fan installed and first blade in place |
It took just a few minutes to remove the old fan and working slowly I had the new fan in place in about an hour. Then the fun started. The old fan speed was controlled by a variable speed switch that used a dial to adjust the fan speed. I wanted to change to a standard single pole switch. That should have been pretty straight forward except that the fan wiring was mixed in with the wiring to the lights above the control panel that are controlled by a dimmer switch.
With 6 switched and 6 different sets of wiring coming into the electrical box it took quite a while to figure out how they were all wired. I tried several different configurations before I finally got the new fan to run. Then I tried to wire the lights above the panel. I tried everything. I was up and down the back stairs at least 35 times turning the breakers on and off.
I finally decided to go to Home Depot and get a different type of switch to replace the dimmer switch. While I was at the Home Depot it dawned on me that the trouble with the dimmer switch was that the bank of lights are controlled by a second switch on the other side of the family room. When that light went off in my head I was able to return home and get the thing wired correctly.
So it took one hour to install the fan and about 5 hours to figure out the wiring and get both fans and the lights on the dimmer switch to work. But it was worth it as the new fan and light are much more stylish. This morning it took me about an hour to remove the other fan and install the new fan. With no wiring required the job was easy and the matched pair of fans really move the air.
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| Both fans installed and working! |
