Real job
North Brisbane & Moreton Bay
100 inch HVLS fan in a warehouse
A big low-speed fan hung from the portal frame of a warehouse, moving the hot air off the roof sheets instead of trying to refrigerate a shed.
The bit nobody sees
Every ceiling fan comes with a bracket, and the bracket is the whole job. It has to go into a ceiling joist or a proper mounting block — not into a plasterboard rose, not into a batten held by two clips. A fan that develops a wobble six months later is almost always a bracket that had something to move against.
So the fan goes up in this order: the old fitting off, the mounting checked and made solid, the wiring done and tested, the motor hung, and only then the blades on. Blades last, because a fan with blades on it is a two-person lift and a good way to put a dent in a fresh ceiling.
Speed control
Most new fans are DC, which is why they are quiet and why they take a wall controller rather than an old fan-speed dial. If the room already has a switch plate with a spare position, that is where it goes. If it doesn’t, that is a cable to run, and it goes on the quote before the day.
While we’re up there
If the fan is replacing a light fitting, you usually want both — fan and light on separate switches, so summer nights don’t mean the light is on too. Worth deciding before we start, because it is a second cable and a second gang, and it is far easier to do while the ceiling is already open.
