Ceiling fan speeding up on its own

univera

I wanted to post this in electronics, but I didn't want to catch hell.

I just had a ceiling fan installed last week. Minka Aire Acero with a wall control. No remote. On two occassions I noticed that the light section turned on by itself, once in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. Then, while I was sleeping in the early morn hours today, I was awakened by a noice coming from the fan and found the fan to be going full speed.

We did have a good rainstorm at some point as well. Any ideas by the electrical crew as to what might be happenning? I have another, different Minka Aire fan in my den but haven't had a problem. I'm wondering if their is voltage issue or something.

Or, could it just be a poltergeist in my fan? But seriously..

VR3

Its a...ghost

dorokusai

Kill it....kill it NOW!

ND13

Vr3MxStyler2k3 wrote:

Its a...ghost

Poltergeist

janmike

Either call an Electrician or you know who to call.
"Who you gonna call?"

Frank Z

Bad control.

wingnut4772

"Get Out"

Mazeroth

"Run to the hills! Run for your life!"

mrbigbluelight

walked through the Halls of Karma,
shook hands with both the Devil and God,
turned your eyes to the inside to see
where your energy has gone

At least that's what the electricians at Black Oak Arkansas think.

Beekyman

Ghost in the machine...call an electrician.

aaharvel

"God is in his holy temPle."

univera

janmike wrote:

Either call an Electrician or you know who to call.
"Who you gonna call?"

Just got home and found the cat swinging from the blades and there is now green goo hanging off the blades. Do you feel this is serious....:eek: :eek: :eek: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2425349042434612063

For what it's worth, Bill Murray just bought a house right down the road where I work on Sullivan's Island. He is part owner of the Minor League baseball Riverdogs. Perhaps he still has his ghost gun.....:rolleyes:

disneyjoe7

Loose connection or line noise could be the problem. Don't know much about line noise, but I did move an outlet from one phase to the other once for noise. Other then that bad fan control.


BTW I'm not an electrician by trade so be easy on me.

univera

disneyjoe7 wrote:

Loose connection or line noise could be the problem. Don't know much about line noise, but I did move an outlet from one phase to the other once for noise. Other then that bad fan control.


BTW I'm not an electrician by trade so be easy on me.

Thanks for the serious answer. You may have hit on the head. My air conditioner unit is RIGHT outside my bedroom. I'll have to check to see if they are on the same circuit. Could the A.C. cutting on cause my fan to make noise? It was odd, loud noise, and then I noticed the fan had gone from low to high?

When you say fan control, do you mean the actual wall control plate? Or something inside the fan. That's the only way it operates (wall plate.) Here's my badass fan. I highly recommend these fans if you want great, modern style at a good (Ebay) price. Much better than crazy retail.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Minka-Aire-Acero-F601-BS-BN-Nickel-Restoration-Hardware_W0QQitemZ180021679178QQihZ008QQcategoryZ20699QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

My other fan (the one that isn't possessed.) http://cgi.ebay.com/Minka-Aire-F531-BN-Modern-Flyte-Ceiling-Fan_W0QQitemZ180022076585QQihZ008QQcategoryZ20699QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

Shizelbs

Throw a head of iceburg lettuce into it. That should fix it up good.

PolkThug

It has too many bad Thetans attached to it. Call Tom Cruise for help.

ESavinon

Find out where the fan was made,then try to talk the gremlin in it's native language. Tell it to cease and decist.

McLoki

We had a similar issue with a ceiling fan that we had. I think it was a ground issue and had the installers come back out and remove the remote control (hooked it directly to a wall switch) and that fixed the issue.

Sorry I dont have more details, but apparently it is not that unique of a problem.

Michael

disneyjoe7

univera wrote:

Thanks for the serious answer. You may have hit on the head. My air conditioner unit is RIGHT outside my bedroom. I'll have to check to see if they are on the same circuit. Could the A.C. cutting on cause my fan to make noise? It was odd, loud noise, and then I noticed the fan had gone from low to high?

I do think your AC unit is causing the problem, the juice / current in cycling my cause a surge spike (think noise). I think your trouble will be 10 fold if this is on the same breaker, as these maybe wired with the same feed. The breaker box will must likely not have 2 wires under the same breaker (I think it's against code). What I was thinking noise on one feed may be causing trouble, moving the breaker for this ceiling fan to the other feed may fix it. So if this is breaker 3 than breaker 4 is other feed, where all odd are the same feed the even the other feed. Taking a voltage meter you would have 0 volts between odds or evens but 240 volts between odd and even breakers.


My trouble house (I was a field service tech once) was a X-10 base light switch for (? I forgot) the switch was on the same feed as the garage door which had a RF remote receiver which was causing noise. Moving the breaker from odd to even fix it, this had drove my nuts finding this as this wasn't my first call back. My personnel quote Installation people install it, Service tech's make it work.

disneyjoe7

McLoki wrote:

We had a similar issue with a ceiling fan that we had. I think it was a ground issue and had the installers come back out and remove the remote control (hooked it directly to a wall switch) and that fixed the issue.

Sorry I dont have more details, but apparently it is not that unique of a problem.

Michael

That would fix touble if you didn't use the remote.

wingnut4772

We just give silly answers to hide the fact that we don't have a clue....that and your house is haunted.

univera

disneyjoe7 wrote:

That would fix touble if you didn't use the remote.

There is no remote to this fan. It is only controlled by the wall switch. It may be possible there is a remote link, but I don't recall seeing that as an option.

univera

wingnut4772 wrote:

We just give silly answers to hide the fact that we don't have a clue....that and your house is haunted.

Hey, I'm all about silly answers. Please, keep them coming. I just also wanted some real advice. Gotta be that Poltergeist. Last night, before going out, I got in the shower and my bottle of shampoo has oozed down the side of tub. I couldn't figure any logical explanation. Had to be a paranormal event. :eek: I took a photo, but I haven't attempted to post a photo yet and don't quite know how.

disneyjoe7

winging wrote:

We just give silly answers to hide the fact that we don't have a clue....that and your house is haunted.

In short that why Polk Forum is GREAT

Some will make you laugh, some will get you straight :cool:

disneyjoe7

So lets figure what breaker is working what OK. Turn off the AC breaker is the Fan still working? What is the breaker for the AC what #? What breaker # is for the Fan?

univera

disneyjoe7 wrote:

So lets figure what breaker is working what OK. Turn off the AC breaker is the Fan still working? What is the breaker for the AC what #? What breaker # is for the Fan?

5&7 control the AC. One big double switch. 15 is for the fan/master bedroom. The fan stays on when the AC breaker is off.

disneyjoe7

Your AC is 240vac your fan is 120vac.....

So moving it wouldn't fix it.

Sorry I'm out of answers.

Maybe the fan controller is broke.

mrbigbluelight

Curiosity got the best of me, so I googled your fan, "Minka Aire Acero".

I think DisneyJoe may be on the right track, ie, fan/AC combo is funking things up.

Instead of a voltage spike, though, I'd say he's getting a big voltage dip.

You didn't say what wall control the Minka Aire Acero came with, but their website (http://www.farreys.com/ceiling_fans/casablanca/fan_controls.html)
shows some pretty fancy-schmancy wall controls with some pretty cool features ("Safe-Exit", "Home-Minder", "Light-Minder", etc)

All those extra features are solid-state, probably run off a simple PROM chip.
When you get a big voltage spike when the AC starts, the voltage dip is greater than some predetermined level (10% ?).
The SS wall control thinks "Oh, oh.... powers off !" and switches or STARTS to switch into some pre-programed safe state.

How quickly your voltage returns to normal varies, so your wall control's response to that varies, too; sometimes it fires up the fan on high, sometimes it turns on the lights.


At least that's one theory.

If not that, than I'd have to assume that your house has been hexed by a vengeful neighbor.
The cure for that ? You have to go outside at midnight with a shovel to dig up the offending hex charm.
Evil spirits will be able to see you if clothed, so you must remove all clothing. To cloak any noise you may make while digging, whistle loudly, "I'm a little teapot short and stout". They will confuse this with the wind.
If possible, have your wife take pictures of this operation, and post them on CP so that we may critique this operation.

schwarcw

I think it's a ghost!

danger boy

i think it's Satan myself... :rolleyes:

schwarcw

Here he is:eek: