As the summer season is approaching near, the best upgrades you can do to cope with hot season is to install a ceiling fan. Ceiling fans are far more productive than pedestal fans and run at the fraction of the price of air conditioners.
Ceiling fan blades plays a very important role in overall performance of your ceiling fan. The ceiling fan blades impact the air delivery and performance of a fan.
In this article we will know about several factors that decide performance of a ceiling fan and some troubleshooting related to ceiling fan.
1. How Many Blades are Best for Ceiling Fan
Nowadays, ceiling fans are available in different number of blades which makes you think how many blades should be ideal choice for your home. We are going to look at the difference between 3, 4 and 5 blade ceiling fans. But before that let’s know some common terms related to ceiling fan blades.
Less Drag
When a fan has fewer blades, there is normally less drag on the motor. It results in faster fan speed and more air efficiency. This will improve airflow and better cooling is achieved. This makes you feel cooler.
Shapes of Blades
The specific shape of the blades makes sure that air is being lifted and circulated around your room.
Ambience Noise
Fans with more blades are known to be quieter than those with few blades. They tend to be more dynamically balanced thus producing less ambience noise and quiet performance.
Number of Blades
3 blades designed fans are aesthetically pleasing and have high speed. With fewer blades means fewer components and less energy to rotate. On the other hand, 4-blade ceiling fans are less noisy and are useful in rooms with an air conditioner, to circulate the cool air around. They are often more stylish and consume more energy.
So if you need a high speed fan then choose 3 blade fan while if you want your fan to produce less noise then choose ceiling fan with more than 3 blades.
2. How do You Fix a Slow-Moving Ceiling Fan
You might have come across such problem when your fans speed become slower than its original high speed. This happens due to negligence in maintenance and less or no cleaning.
Here is a list of actions to fix slow speed fan
Lubrication
Lubrication is key when you are operating any mechanical device which has any moving parts, so you can’t actually neglect to lubricate dynamic parts. Slight lubrication on bearing can enhance the running speed, it can also improve life of fan.
Capacitor Change
Capacitor is an important component of your fan motor. One reason of slow fan speed is weak capacitor. It is the most common problem in old ceiling fans. You often came across such a situation where your electrician asked you to change the capacitor. It is by far the most common and known troubleshooting of slow speed of fan.
Light Weight Blades
Fan blades usually come along with the manufacture and there is no scope for replacement, therefore you may choose light blades for superior performance while making a new purchase.
3. What’s Inside Your Ceiling Fan Motor
Normally, ceiling fan has single phase induction motor. This motor is known for consuming less power. As the name suggest a single phase induction motor needs only one phase for operation.
There are plenty of component inside the ceiling fan motor, lets understand them one by one.
Electric Wires
Every electrical appliance has electric wires. These are the conductor that carry the electrical current to various components of the fan.
Copper Windings
The primary function of winding is to prevent short circuits and thus also increase its longevity. Copper is a great choice for motor winding due to its property like high conductivity. The copper coils called ‘windings’ are wrapped around steel bars or laminations.
Stator
Stator is basically a stationary part. Its primary function is to provide a magnetic field that drives the rotating armature. It also acts as a casing for an electric motor.
Rotor
As the name suggests rotor is a revolving part of the motor which is placed at a particular angle from the stator. Its rotation is induce due to the interaction between the windings and the magnetic field.
Motor Housing
Motor housing is a component that protects the internal electric motor body from dust and damage. Motor housing is outer casing that contains the rotor.
4. Common Reason Why Ceiling Fan Motor Start Making Noise
There may be plenty of reason behind ceiling fan making noise. One must not take this noise causally and show it to expert as soon as possible.
Some common reason for noise are
Loose Blades
The fan blades tends to get loose due to prolong operation at some point of time in such case it suffer with clicking sound. This kind of noise can be easily fixed with just making sure to tighten all the screws of the blade.
Voltage Fluctuations
When there is a lack of frequency or electric issue. There will be on humming noise out of the ceiling fan. Such sound is also produced when the fan is operated with the help of dimmer switch. It could be taken care with voltage stabilizer.
Unbalanced Blades
When there is an unbalance blade which makes fan unstable. It will produce a grinding noise out of fan, such type of noise can be easily fixed with balancing of blades. This issues also persist when there is a collection of dust on the blades.
Miscellaneous
Noise may be due to any part is lose or unscrewed. If any of the component is not in place so it may result in noise due to Collison. When there is a clashing of any two components due to one of component moving from its original position this also create some noise.
5. How to Fix a Noisy Celling Fan
Best way to cool the room is switch on the ceiling fan. You may save plenty of rupees by using fan instead of air conditioning in summers. But a noisy ceiling fan may harm your peace. While running fan it is normal to have a noise if not address with proper preventive maintenance.
Cleaning
As always, cleaning is key to success and it is a simplest way to avoid noise in ceiling fans. It is obvious to have a dust on ceiling fan when it is idle for a long time. This results in noise production while running the ceiling fan.
Wrapped Blades
Initially all the blades in the ceiling fans are in same size and orientation. Keeping this orientation and size in same direction is sometimes challenging due to continued operation. Change in orientation and size would results in wrapped of blades and this produces a lot of noise while running fan. Such issue could be deal with proper balancing.
Keep Upper Canopy
If you look at ceiling fan closely, there is a one canopy which joins the full assembly and ceiling rod overtime this canopy touches the rotating part and create noise. It should be tightened as and when required.
Conclusion
All in all, ceiling fans are very cost-effective alternate for air conditioning in peak summers day for Indian consumers.
Ceiling fans with combination of air conditioning can be used for huge rooms with less numbers of air conditioning units. This will save significant amount of electricity bill and would be an excellent setup for larger rooms.
The basic requirement of India households is to provide a cost-effective way to cope with summers. This can be easily accomplished using ceiling fans with no compromise in performance.
I have also discussed the number of blades and its design wise effectiveness with respect to ceiling fans.
I hope this information will be helpful while carrying out the maintenance and general troubleshooting of ceiling fans.