I noticed something about my ceiling fan a few months ago, and I just can’t figure it out.
If you were to take the five blades off and lie them on the ground, 3 of them are angled so the left side is up, and 2 of them are angled so the left side is down.
I checked out the rest of the fans in the apartment, and the apartment next door (got some weird looks), and all of the fans have either 1 or 2 blades like this!
Is there some sort of science going on here, or did my apartment complex get a deal on some ceiling fans that weren’t put together right?
The wooden blades are connected to a metal bracket by 3 small screws. From there the bracket makes a 90 degree turn upwards and then mounts to the spinning part of the fan with 2 large screws. From what I can tell, there would be no way to adjust them, because of the way the brackets are shaped.
The three small screws that affix the blade to the bracket… are they laid out in an equilateral triangle? If so, is it possible that undoing them, rotating 120 degrees and refixing would solve the problem?
Mangetout, that is a good idea. I went to look to see if this was possible, but the metal brackets actually twist to make the angle that the blades attach to it. Flipping them over would not work.
Spartydog, the fan does have a switch to change the direction that the blades rotate, but that would still leave me with 2 angled up, and 3 angled down.
I guess I could take the fan blades from the common room fan and swap them out with fan in my bedroom. I am not sure how much of a difference this will make in how it works, but I might sleep easier at night knowing its done.
It sounds to me like the fan comes in two versions. One for pulli8ng air down and the other for pushing it up. Could have been a “do it yourself job” by someone who mixed up the brackets that hold the blades.
With these two factors combined, this fan is unlike anything I know of. I can’t imagine any reason why it should be that way, especially if there is a reverse direction switch. Sounds like its time to call the manufacturer or get a replacement.
Is it possible for you to post a picture of your fan intact so we can see the hub & blade arrangement? You’ve described something really, really weird.
I’m not suggesting you’re putting us on or hopelessly clueless; I’d just like to see what the heck those bozos at the apartment complex or fan manufacturer came up with.
Yes, the brackets holding blade to motor are usually chiral. So to get it wrong as described, someone would have had to have cast both isomers of the part.
My WAG - either somebody took all of the blades off of the ceiling fans to clean them or whoever hung all of the fans originally put all of the blades in a big pile and then attached them to the fans haphazardly.
I’ll bet that if you check around you’ll find that there are at least two different brands of fans in the area and some have up-angled blades and others have down-angled blades. A little blade swapping will fix the problem.
I have what appears to be the same fan, except mine does not have the lamp
option. (The bracket design appears identical.) But all my blades angle the same way.
That looks like a pretty old fan. Perhaps at some point someone decided to spruce up the building’s interior, and had all the fan blades removed and replaced. Not noticing that some of the fans were left handed and others right, they mixed the two blade types randomly when they reassembled the units.
I think you just stumbled across the answer right there. I’m guessing that there were several fans to be installed at once with different blade configurations. The installers didn’t take the time to make sure they correctly matched up from one fan to the next.
On a side note it never occurred to me that fan blades would not be made the same angle across the US… that is to say that while rotating counterclockwise (reference point of looking up to the fan) that the fan blad angle would be blowing air down.
Darn, to be honest, I was hoping for some straightdope secret science of ceiling fans to be revealed, but I guess I’ll have to get out the screwdriver instead…
It does make a lot of sense though to think that someone took all the fan blades off, and then didnt look at them/didn’t know/didn’t care when they were putting them back up.
I agree, I never would have thought ceiling fans (especially ones that appeared to be made by the same company) to have different facing blade angles.
