I recently moved into a new house. One of my first orders of business was to have ceiling fans installed. They all have lights included. Two of them have remote controls. While I am not having any trouble with most of the fans, one of them is giving me fits. The fan works fine, but the light will turn on by itself, any time of the day or night. I’ll walk into that bedroom and turn it off by the remote. But eventually it will come back on with nobody (including my two cats) around. Curiouser and curiouser!
Do you have the pamphlets that came w/ the fan? That would be the best place to start. Then the manufacturer should have a toll free customer service line and/or a wbsite. If those don’t solve the problem you can try calling the installer.
I would guess that you have a radio wave not IR control. You may have a loose electrical connection. Redo the wingnut and such. You may have a defective unit. You may have interference from other electrical devices in your home or in the neighbors house. Does the neighbor have the same fan? Lastly it’s a good idea to have each fan on different channels, but may not available for your model. Electrical item with remotes will say which of the channel the manufacturer has put into the unit, when they offer multiple channels. It will say This unit channel A or channel D, you get the idea. Check for loose connection first.
I had a remote controlled ceiling fan in my house, and it worked with only the two wire setup a lamp-only fixture would have – the two wires is probably why they put in a remote-controlled fan. In its case, the fan would randomly turn on. There’s circuitry inside (solid state in this one, no relays) that was evidently randomly leaking (shorting) to the fan circuitry. In my case it was easier to crawl into the attic and add the second switched wire and install a conventional fan. Since I use X10 anyway, I still have remote control, and eliminated the extra, special control for the fan. So, it was win/win.
Wait a minute, don’t do anything drastic. The same thing happened to me, and the fix is simple. You didn’t recode the remote when you put up the fan, did you? :smack: Pop off the battery cover on the handheld transmitter, take out the batteries, and you’ll see a wee little box with a row of switches on it. On the receiver inside the fan, there’s another little code box just like it. When the fans leave the factory, they are all coded the same. You need to throw one or two of those switches to recode it. Make sure the ups and down on the fan match the ones on the transmitter. Now put everything back together, and it’s fixed.
The problem is, one of your neighbors also forgot to code his fan, :smack: so he’s turning yours on (and you’re probably turning his on, too.) When I recoded, I decided each switch by coin tosses, so I’d get a fairly random sequence. Write down the sequence, and tuck it into the battery hole. That way, if you ever bump a switch while changing batteries, you won’t have to tear apart the fan again.
She also said she has two of these units installed in her house. Maybe both have the same codes and shes been unknowingly turning one on while in the other room with the other fan/remote.
Actually, I have two remote-controlled ceiling fans that are different. I seldom mess with the one in the family room unless I have company or I’m watching TV. And that’s the one I have no trouble with. The glitch with the light / fan in the one bedroom appears random. It will even happen when nobody is here. I have thought that perhaps a neighbor’s remote may be set to the same frequency and it trips my light too. I wonder why it would not also trip the fan though??
By the way, it happened last night and again this morning before work. :eek:
