I would like to get a ceiling fan installed in our living room. However, there is no light fixture on the ceiling in there.
Is it possible to get a ceiling fan installed?
Would a place like Lowe’s or Home Depot install a ceiling fan for us, or would we have to go to a specialty lighting shop to get that done? Mr. Neville and I are both very un-handy, and I’m scared of working with the electrical wiring in the house, so we’d need someone else to do the job for us.
If it is possible to install a ceiling fan in our living room, about what should it probably cost, excluding the price of the fan itself?
You need an electrician to do this. Possibly Lowes has a guy on staff that installs fans. I bought a garage door from lowes four or five years ago and they had a guy install it for me. I think it cost me about a hundred bucks.
Any licensed electrician would be able to install the circuit for the fan, the box and attic support, and the fan itself.
Best bet is to talk to some friends locally and find out who they have had good experience with in similar jobs. If you buy the fan, you’re looking at roughly $250 or so, depending on how your house is built, your attic access, and where your electrical panel is. Some localities might require a permit as well.
You’d want someone licensed as an electrician. The fan installation itself is very easy, but if you don’t have an existing fixture, someone will have to install a fixture, run wires through walls/attics and install a wall switch. Any electrician would be happy to also install the fan after all that.
Your local big box store may have someone they recommend. Make sure whoever does the work is properly licensed and bonded.
Your local big box store may have someone they recommend.
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I know Home Depot has a policy against recommendations I assume Lowes and others would have similar policies. Lowes and HD do offer fan installs as a service but I’d expect its limited using an existing ceiling box.
Independent stores or electrical suppliers are more likely to give you a recommendation.
I’d recommend calling an electrician. You’d pick out whatever fan you want and They’d do the rest. Price for the job will be from 150-300 depending on access. If your talking a downstairs room with a finished room above its a lot harder then say a second floor room with an attic above thus more money.
If you have an electrician come to your house make a list of any other electrical issues you might want checked out and let them know before hand.
When we moved into our house there were few ceiling lights. We got an electrician to install a bunch, and the boxes to support a fan in one room, and I bought the fan and put it in myself. You’d be paying the electrician for the time required, but it isn’t a hard job and shouldn’t take all that long.
We had our fan, which came with a remote, wired into the wall anyhow, so we can turn on the lights in the winter without playing with the fan. Now the remote for the lights stopped working (though the fan still does) and there is no pull chain for the lights, so we wind up unscrewing the bulbs when we want the fan on without any lights. I’d recommend a pull chain anyhow.
You don’t have to do all the stuff that other posters are suggesting. I once rented a duplex that desperately needed a ceiling fan in the living room. I bought a metal octo-box and securely mounted it to a ceiling joist with lag screws, mounted the fan to that box, and used a swag chain thingie with a few appropriately located mini-hooks to get power to the box from a wall outlet.* Probably about $10 apart from the cost of the fan. When I moved, I merely had to patch a couple of 1/4" holes in the ceiling.
All you would be doing is plugging a device (that happens to be ceiling mounted) into a wall outlet, so I can’t imagine that any kind of permit or inspection or electrician’s license would be required.
If my brief description does not set off “Aha!” bells in your head, you probably should get someone to help you. In my case, I happen to be a pretty handy guy.
Mind you, my approach was rejected by my ex as an egregious violation of her decorating taste*, despite the fact that her living room needed a ceiling fan nearly as much as mine did. YMMV.
But this is a code violation almost everywhere in the USA. You can’t power a permanently mounted electrical fixture with an extension cord.
Actually, it’s not very likely to be a problem, especially if the cord is overhead where it won’t get stepped on, caught by a vacuum cleaner, chewed by pets, etc. But if there ever is a problem, your fire insurance company might use this as an excuse to not cover your loss.
Generally, if it requires tools to move it (like loosening those lag screws you mounted it with), it is considered permanently mounted. If you can move it with your bare hands, like a table lamp or a swag lamp hanging from a ceiling hook, it’s considered temporary.
Technically, I guess that some of the new home theatre systems with a large TV screen mounted to the wall would be considered “permanently mounted” and thus ought to be ard-wired according to the code. But I’ve never heard of an inspector insisting on this. (Though they often require a dedicated outlet for such systems.)
FWIW, flat screen wall mounts (at least the larger ones) usually come in 2 pieces - there’s a plate you mount to the wall (with screws or bolts) and a plate/fixture that goes on the TV with machine screws/bolts (into holes that the TV manufacturers put in their TVs that meet some industry standard. Then you hook the TV plate to the wall plate. And this may be why it’s an exception - even though mounting the plates took tools, actually putting the TV on the wall by mating the plates together does not require tools.