Ceiling Fan Tips & Tricks
If you live in the south or anywhere else it gets really hot you need a ceiling fan or fans in your home. We use ours summer and winter. In the summer it keeps us cool and in the winter it keeps all the warm air circulated making it comfortable. This is especially important if you have high ceilings. If you don’t have a way to circulate the warm air downstairs it will be cold downstairs and hot upstairs.
Let me give you some advice on hanging your fans and then we will talk about picking the right fans for your home.
If you look at the picture of this ceiling fan you will notice it is hung using a rather long pole. When you have a great room that has high ceilings you will need to install a pole that will bring the fan where it can circulate air where you need it.
The electrical contractor installed all my fans when the house was being built (To find a good electrical contractor go to the Building Contractor Page). I made sure that I was there the day they installed the Great Room fan so I could see how it looked. My initial pole length was to long and the ceiling fan did not look right in the room. I had cut the pole to a length that would place it roughly 10 feet from the floor. I then cut and additional 2 feet off the pole and it looked balanced in the room.
My advice here is make sure you are present to see how it looks upon installation, so you can make the necessary adjustments to make it look right. Do not attempt to install a fan with a long pole like this alone. It took an 18 foot ladder and 3 of us to get it done.
One more piece of advice. When purchasing a long pole for installing a fan from a high ceiling consider using a ¾ inch piece of conduit and then antiquing it. Why you ask? Because a 10 foot solid brass pole cost and arm and a leg. You can buy a joint of ¾ conduit for peanuts and gold antiquing paint very cheaply. I am not talking about a regular can of spray paint. Spend a little extra and buy a kit that will make the pole look antique gold. I found one at Home Depot
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You will need to clean the conduit very well using a solvent. Then prime it and paint it. I suggest after you clean it with solvent use vinegar to help etch or age the galvanized conduit. You can also use regular iron pipe instead of conduit. Use a good primer believe me you don’t want to redo this after it is hung!
When picking out fans for your bedrooms make sure you take into account the height of the room. Our downstairs rooms have 10 foot ceilings and our upstairs rooms have 8 foot ceilings. The ceiling fans hung in the rooms with 10 foot ceilings need an additional 18 inches of pole length to circulate the air properly. I made the mistake of installing a regular 6 inch standard pole in my master bedroom. I could not even feel the air circulating. Installing an 18 inch pole on the fan made a big difference. I don’t have to tell you it would have been much easier to get it right the first time!
First let me say you really need to buy a quality ceiling fan if you are going to install it in a difficult spot. Nothing would be worse than to have to pull the fan down after a short period of time because it was junk.
I know just about all fans come with a lifetime warranty now, but think about it, is it worth having to go to all that trouble to replace it? All ceiling fans are not created equal. You need to do some shopping and research. A great place to do just that is Lamps Plus
they have a huge selection of name brand ceiling fans at super prices.
My last piece of advice is buy a quality name brand fan for each of your rooms. Spending a few extra dollars is going to save you some real headaches in the long run.
