> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
There absolutely is. If you have a fan with a light controlled by separate wall switches, you have two hots running to the fixture. Take one, and leave it unswitched always on to the fixture, and use the second switch (or fan controller) and use it as an input to the controller on the fan. Done.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
This message brought to you by the hours I've spent annoyed by exactly this misfeature in our new bedroom fan. Fanimation does sell a wall mounted remote that can be wired inline with a switch, so at least there's a single point for master power and a remote you can't lose. Unfortunately, there's a noticeable delay between flipping the switch and the light turning on.
> If you have a fan with a light controlled by separate wall switches,
This is common, but it's also not uncommon for only one circuit to be wired. The "clean" qualifier is because even if you have that line, you don't have a common DC ground.
> Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
Many Z-wave switches use the three-way traveler line for out-of-band signaling (instead of a traditional three-way switch arrangement.) (Homeseer, Inovelli, etc.) This line will communicate dimming, double taps, etc.
Maybe I'm missing something, but there's no DC wiring in the walls in our bedroom. The default install is a single AC hot, neutral, and ground running to the fixture. We have an extra (unused) hot because the old AC fan had separate switches for the fan and light.
What I'm proposing is taking that unused extra wire, wiring in either a separate AC fan controller, and letting the fan controller in the fan take that as an input (drawing essentially zero current), and adjust the DC output based on it. No DC outside the fan itself (as it is presently), no need to pull another wire. On the downside, now your soft remote and hard AC fan controller can be in disagreement.
We have no Z-wave in the house, but I appreciate the tip.
Yes - doing this is quite ugly, electrically, is all. Dimmable LEDs, etc. do this same thing (with the load supply, not a separate line - you couldn't get away with this on a fan.)
I've only ever been on the software side of the world, so I don't doubt you. It's clearly hackish and might not play nicely with a multi-location switch loop either. I wouldn't be surprised if the NEC has some objections as well :-)
mmm, I don't know if you'd call it clean but I have a late-1990s ceiling fan with a feature they called "fan flick" - turn it on, it comes on at the last selected speed. Want to change the speed? flick the power switch (toggle it quickly) and it changes by one notch. It's tedious, and you only get to change it one direction until it wraps around - but no wireless, no additional wiring, just "short power interruption" as a signal...
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
I went through this pain when I bought ceiling fans a few years ago. Various manufacturers offer switches or remotes you can attach to the wall but that take batteries - the options for actual wired switches are slim. I ended up with a few hardwired Big Ass Fans wall controllers that work pretty well - but their current-gen wall controls are hardwired bluetooth remotes, which is subpar for something that's connected via wire. (And they cost $210/each, which is pretty egregious for a wall switch.)
> DC fans are infinitely superior to AC fans (noise, torque, longevity, etc.), which is unfortunately why this became a thing.
What?
Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail, never known one to be noisy, and never known one to have inadequate power. I've personally installed a couple and know those got wired straight into AC mains power... so unless they have a converter built in, I figure that every ceiling fan I've ever lived with has been AC powered.
Unless you've been working with absolute bottom of the barrel fans (and those fans are worse than I could possibly imagine), this smells like industry propaganda to me.
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
OP is asking for a normal pull chain or switch... one that's attached to the fan housing, not some doodad that's embedded in the wall and needs to be specially wired into the fan electrics. I've been to the houses of a few friends that have had fans controlled with a handheld wireless controller, and I can confirm that that was -overall- way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
Where are you getting ceiling fans that don't squeak and/or hum? (Or perhaps, what are you doing to maintain them)
I'm pretty anti remotes and apps for things, but it's pretty handy when my spouse can start the fan from her phone in the middle of the night instead of waking me to go turn it on in the middle of the night.
Our current one isn't too loud and it has a nice range of speeds so you can run it without it getting super wobbly. But overall, I still dislike fans. :p
> Where are you getting ceiling fans that don't squeak and/or hum? (Or perhaps, what are you doing to maintain them)
When I moved into my current home 22 years ago, I bought five Hunter ceiling fans from Home Depot and installed them in the bedrooms and living room. Each one cost maybe $100 or so. They've been used more or less daily since then (the one in the master bedroom runs at medium speed all night, every night), and they're still silent and wobble-free. Other than wiping dust off of the blades from time to time, I've done precisely nothing to them.
They don't have mobile apps (there was no such thing as a "mobile app" when I bought them) and they don't have remote controls, but they're pretty great.
Not op, but we have old, AC ceiling fans that are wall controlled. They run 95% of the time, no maintenance, no squeaks, no nothing. Obviously anecdata, but this is representative of my entire life's experience with AC ceiling fans. I doubt these were either the cheapest fans nor the most expensive, fwiw. I'm sure the prior owner did nothing to maintain them either
I should have been more specific - yes, you can "dim" AC fans and it's purely electrical. "Dimming" DC fans and similar switching loads requires detecting shaped pulses, and is really dirty and not something you want to do.
The ceiling fan in my bedroom was installed no later than 1981 (possibly a few decades earlier) and is utterly silent. On high you can hear the rush of air and thats it.
> Where are you getting ceiling fans that don't squeak and/or hum?
Lowes? Home Depot? Any other reputable, major home appliance store? Where else does one get a ceiling fan? Are you buying yours from Amazon or Ali Express?
I don't know about those reasons, but an AC fan uses ~100W on low and my DC fan uses 5W. You tune out the hum, but the AC fans hum and the DC fans don't.
But I don't think torque or longevity are actual issues with AC fans. Just efficiency and noise.
DC fans don't have the hum, get up to speed faster, etc. They can operate at a far greater range of speeds and still maintain high power output. AC fans operate in a much narrower envelope.
DC is much quieter and energy efficient. Can't comment on the longevity etc
Technology Connections "Ceiling fans: the simple idea we keep screwing up" YouTube video is interesting. The old old fans had oiled bearing baths and overbuilt motors, extremely overbuilt compared to today standards which means they'll probably keep going forever. If you are nerdy and interested it's worth a watch.
> I figure that every ceiling fan I've ever lived with has been AC powered.
Every high-end fan sold today is DC. It's possible that you didn't see the power supply.
> way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
Many people have high ceilings where a pull chain couldn't be humanly reached. Sure, this might work if you have 8' ceilings. Which high-end fans have pull chains?
> Every high-end fan sold today is DC. It's possible that you didn't see the power supply.
a) I did a quick search and noticed that Hunter Fans sells many ceiling fans with AC motors at a variety of price points. [0][1] Do you consider what Hunter produces to be entirely mid-to-low-grade? Or are you doing the Scotsman thing where any ceiling fan that doesn't contain a DC motor cannot be high-end?
b) The manufacturer of the fans in my apartment is "Hampton Bay", which are readily available at Home Depot. If Home Depot hasn't fucked up their product categorization, nearly every fan they sell in the SF Bay Area today has an AC motor. [2][3] Given the price, I'd agree that the ones that Home Depot are selling are not high-end fans, but given that the ones in my apartment have given me trouble-free, zero-noise-other-than-the-whoosh-of-blades-cutting-through-air operation for fifteen years and have done the same for previous tenants for who knows how long, I don't see why I'd want a high-end fan.
c) Remember that I said "Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail...". I've lived in my current place for ~fifteen years now. Even if the fans had been installed new just before I moved in [4] I'm fairly confident that DC-driven ceiling fans were -if available- an extremely high-end option in the US in 2011. Authoritative information is difficult for me to find, but I see weak indications that they didn't really become A Thing until 2020.
Branded "Hunter" is mid-to-low-end, yes. Big Ass Fans, Modern Forms, Modern Fan Co, Matthews Fans - all are 100% DC. I believe Casablanca (Hunter offshoot, almost all DC) might have some AC fans, but don't quote me. I've had 3 Hunter AC fans fail, all had hums. I use my fans non-stop.
Almost every fan sold at Home Depot (in-store) is on the mid-to-low-end side of things. You'll notice that Home Depot doesn't sell Wolf, Cove, Sub-Zero, Viking, or Gaggenau appliances either.
DC fans were a thing as far back as 2007 (family had some, and they were even cheaper than today's DC fans, though maybe not with inflation.)
If you're in a situation where you have a landlord, the likelihood of your fans being premium is quite low, even in "luxury" apartments. They're a consumable item, and bearings go bad no matter what when you run them non-stop.
> I believe Casablanca (Hunter offshoot, almost all DC) might have some AC fans
Looking at their inventory, they sell twenty six models of fan... sixteen DC and ten AC. You can verify by looking at the numbers next to the "Motor Type" category here [0].
> If you're in a situation where you have a landlord, the likelihood of your fans being premium is quite low... They're a consumable item, and bearings go bad no matter what when you run them non-stop.
Oh I know my landlord doesn't buy anything nice or do anything right. And yet, I've been in this apartment for fifteen years with these nth-hand Hampton Bay ceiling fans that continue to make no sound and have been running non-stop for most of those fifteen years.
Like, I believe you when you claim that that there are fancier fans out there, and it's plainly obvious that bearings are unlikely to last for millions of years, [1] but even if we only consider the past decade and a half of my personal experience with the fans in my apartment, I see no reason to get anything that -based on what you're telling me- is better than mid-to-low end. We don't even need to pile in my other mumble decades of experience to reach that conclusion.
Believe it or not, but there are times where better simply isn't worth it because what's good is so good that you won't notice the difference.
[1] But -for a gut check- go look up how long automotive wheel bearings typically last, consider how very much more harsh the environment they're deployed in is, and consider that it might be possible to design bearings that would easily last decades in an environment that's -in comparison- zero stress.
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
There is.
I specifically purchased a Fanco Horizon DC fan as it has an optional physical wall switch which connected to the existing wiring for the fan it was replacing.
The caveat being if you use the wall remote, it's not compatible with the model with built in LED light fixture. This was a non issue for me as wanted to avoid any fan with built in LED light due to when the led panel fails, it'll be extremely difficult to replace vs having independent lights in the room.
I think most DC fans don't support wall remotes because it's cheaper and simpler not to, and provide a remote control instead. It's not a technical issue as you can absolutely find DC fans with wall controllers they are just harder to find.
There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.