What is going on with ceiling fans
mcmansionhell.com
mcmansionhell.com
I was taken aback by how few of the fans had replaceable lightbulbs! In the entire store there were maybe three or four options with a replaceable bulb!
Call me crazy, but a nonreplaceable LED is a complete dealbreaker. I go through so many LED bulbs! I don't know if my electricity is like particularly bad or if that's just normal? The first LED bulb I ever bought (Shout out EarthLED) in 2008 for like $30 is still going strong, but every bulb I buy these days lasts like two years tops.
Anyway, we did not buy a fan.
I’ve looked at a product called Bond that seems to facilitate it. But haven’t yet tried it.
It wasn't that hard; I used gnuradio with an SDR to see what the remotes were sending and just pressed buttons and flipped switches until I figured out what all the bits were. There was no encryption whatsoever.
Things drawing an average of a few hundred microamps while the fan is running. Probably because it's blasting a keep alive packet once a second or so. It does that because a transceiver costs an extra 50 cents.
I suspect this is a code violation, but considering part of the lighting wiring in the basement had been done with speaker wire and automotive cabling, I don't think compliance was on the top of the previous owner's list.
There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
What?
Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail, never known one to be noisy, and never known one to have inadequate power. I've personally installed a couple and know those got wired straight into AC mains power... so unless they have a converter built in, I figure that every ceiling fan I've ever lived with has been AC powered.
Unless you've been working with absolute bottom of the barrel fans (and those fans are worse than I could possibly imagine), this smells like industry propaganda to me.
> There's no clean mechanism to control a fan's speed in-band on a normal AC wall switch.
OP is asking for a normal pull chain or switch... one that's attached to the fan housing, not some doodad that's embedded in the wall and needs to be specially wired into the fan electrics. I've been to the houses of a few friends that have had fans controlled with a handheld wireless controller, and I can confirm that that was -overall- way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
I'm pretty anti remotes and apps for things, but it's pretty handy when my spouse can start the fan from her phone in the middle of the night instead of waking me to go turn it on in the middle of the night.
Our current one isn't too loud and it has a nice range of speeds so you can run it without it getting super wobbly. But overall, I still dislike fans. :p
I should have been more specific - yes, you can "dim" AC fans and it's purely electrical. "Dimming" DC fans and similar switching loads requires detecting shaped pulses, and is really dirty and not something you want to do.
Lowes? Home Depot? Any other reputable, major home appliance store? Where else does one get a ceiling fan? Are you buying yours from Amazon or Ali Express?
When I moved into my current home 22 years ago, I bought five Hunter ceiling fans from Home Depot and installed them in the bedrooms and living room. Each one cost maybe $100 or so. They've been used more or less daily since then (the one in the master bedroom runs at medium speed all night, every night), and they're still silent and wobble-free. Other than wiping dust off of the blades from time to time, I've done precisely nothing to them.
They don't have mobile apps (there was no such thing as a "mobile app" when I bought them) and they don't have remote controls, but they're pretty great.
But I don't think torque or longevity are actual issues with AC fans. Just efficiency and noise.
DC fans don't have the hum, get up to speed faster, etc. They can operate at a far greater range of speeds and still maintain high power output. AC fans operate in a much narrower envelope.
That's not something I've ever cared about.
Every high-end fan sold today is DC. It's possible that you didn't see the power supply.
> way worse than hauling my ass up to pull a damn chain.
Many people have high ceilings where a pull chain couldn't be humanly reached. Sure, this might work if you have 8' ceilings. Which high-end fans have pull chains?
a) I did a quick search and noticed that Hunter Fans sells many ceiling fans with AC motors at a variety of price points. [0][1] Do you consider what Hunter produces to be entirely mid-to-low-grade? Or are you doing the Scotsman thing where any ceiling fan that doesn't contain a DC motor cannot be high-end?
b) The manufacturer of the fans in my apartment is "Hampton Bay", which are readily available at Home Depot. If Home Depot hasn't fucked up their product categorization, nearly every fan they sell in the SF Bay Area today has an AC motor. [2][3] Given the price, I'd agree that the ones that Home Depot are selling are not high-end fans, but given that the ones in my apartment have given me trouble-free, zero-noise-other-than-the-whoosh-of-blades-cutting-through-air operation for fifteen years and have done the same for previous tenants for who knows how long, I don't see why I'd want a high-end fan.
c) Remember that I said "Every house I've ever lived in over my many decades of life has had ceiling fans. I've never known one to fail...". I've lived in my current place for ~fifteen years now. Even if the fans had been installed new just before I moved in [4] I'm fairly confident that DC-driven ceiling fans were -if available- an extremely high-end option in the US in 2011. Authoritative information is difficult for me to find, but I see weak indications that they didn't really become A Thing until 2020.
[0] <https://www.hunterfan.com/collections/ceiling-fans-without-l...>
[1] <https://www.hunterfan.com/collections/ceiling-fans-with-ligh...>
[2] <https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans/Hampton-Ba...>
[3] <https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans/Hampton-Ba...>
[4] ...I know how my landlord operates and they absolutely were not. Plus, why would you replace something that's working fine and never breaks?
Almost every fan sold at Home Depot (in-store) is on the mid-to-low-end side of things. You'll notice that Home Depot doesn't sell Wolf, Cove, Sub-Zero, Viking, or Gaggenau appliances either.
DC fans were a thing as far back as 2007 (family had some, and they were even cheaper than today's DC fans, though maybe not with inflation.)
If you're in a situation where you have a landlord, the likelihood of your fans being premium is quite low, even in "luxury" apartments. They're a consumable item, and bearings go bad no matter what when you run them non-stop.
Looking at their inventory, they sell twenty six models of fan... sixteen DC and ten AC. You can verify by looking at the numbers next to the "Motor Type" category here [0].
> If you're in a situation where you have a landlord, the likelihood of your fans being premium is quite low... They're a consumable item, and bearings go bad no matter what when you run them non-stop.
Oh I know my landlord doesn't buy anything nice or do anything right. And yet, I've been in this apartment for fifteen years with these nth-hand Hampton Bay ceiling fans that continue to make no sound and have been running non-stop for most of those fifteen years.
Like, I believe you when you claim that that there are fancier fans out there, and it's plainly obvious that bearings are unlikely to last for millions of years, [1] but even if we only consider the past decade and a half of my personal experience with the fans in my apartment, I see no reason to get anything that -based on what you're telling me- is better than mid-to-low end. We don't even need to pile in my other mumble decades of experience to reach that conclusion.
Believe it or not, but there are times where better simply isn't worth it because what's good is so good that you won't notice the difference.
[0] <https://www.hunterfan.com/collections/casablanca-ceiling-fan...>
[1] But -for a gut check- go look up how long automotive wheel bearings typically last, consider how very much more harsh the environment they're deployed in is, and consider that it might be possible to design bearings that would easily last decades in an environment that's -in comparison- zero stress.
Technology Connections "Ceiling fans: the simple idea we keep screwing up" YouTube video is interesting. The old old fans had oiled bearing baths and overbuilt motors, extremely overbuilt compared to today standards which means they'll probably keep going forever. If you are nerdy and interested it's worth a watch.
I went through this pain when I bought ceiling fans a few years ago. Various manufacturers offer switches or remotes you can attach to the wall but that take batteries - the options for actual wired switches are slim. I ended up with a few hardwired Big Ass Fans wall controllers that work pretty well - but their current-gen wall controls are hardwired bluetooth remotes, which is subpar for something that's connected via wire. (And they cost $210/each, which is pretty egregious for a wall switch.)
There absolutely is. If you have a fan with a light controlled by separate wall switches, you have two hots running to the fixture. Take one, and leave it unswitched always on to the fixture, and use the second switch (or fan controller) and use it as an input to the controller on the fan. Done.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
This message brought to you by the hours I've spent annoyed by exactly this misfeature in our new bedroom fan. Fanimation does sell a wall mounted remote that can be wired inline with a switch, so at least there's a single point for master power and a remote you can't lose. Unfortunately, there's a noticeable delay between flipping the switch and the light turning on.
This is common, but it's also not uncommon for only one circuit to be wired. The "clean" qualifier is because even if you have that line, you don't have a common DC ground.
> Unfortunately, I haven't seen this implemented anywhere.
Many Z-wave switches use the three-way traveler line for out-of-band signaling (instead of a traditional three-way switch arrangement.) (Homeseer, Inovelli, etc.) This line will communicate dimming, double taps, etc.
What I'm proposing is taking that unused extra wire, wiring in either a separate AC fan controller, and letting the fan controller in the fan take that as an input (drawing essentially zero current), and adjust the DC output based on it. No DC outside the fan itself (as it is presently), no need to pull another wire. On the downside, now your soft remote and hard AC fan controller can be in disagreement.
We have no Z-wave in the house, but I appreciate the tip.
Yes - doing this is quite ugly, electrically, is all. Dimmable LEDs, etc. do this same thing (with the load supply, not a separate line - you couldn't get away with this on a fan.)
There is.
I specifically purchased a Fanco Horizon DC fan as it has an optional physical wall switch which connected to the existing wiring for the fan it was replacing.
The caveat being if you use the wall remote, it's not compatible with the model with built in LED light fixture. This was a non issue for me as wanted to avoid any fan with built in LED light due to when the led panel fails, it'll be extremely difficult to replace vs having independent lights in the room.
I think most DC fans don't support wall remotes because it's cheaper and simpler not to, and provide a remote control instead. It's not a technical issue as you can absolutely find DC fans with wall controllers they are just harder to find.
How did it work electrically? This is what I mean by "clean."
I tried changing channels in the remote but that didn't seem to help much. With the second neighbor, the fans were in my living room and their bedroom. We agreed to control fans in shifts (I turned mine off at night).
It's hard to believe it's just a very unlikely coincidence. Maybe the channels are too few or narrow to be useful? How hard would it be to implement some psuedo-UID?
Are you mad? That would cost low-single-digit pennies per unit!!! </pennypinching_bigco_derision>
That's what I meant when I wrote, "I tried changing channels in the remote but that didn't seem to help much.", and wondered "Maybe the channels are too few or narrow to be useful?".
It might be that POE power supplies get hot - I've noticed the POE hats for the raspberry pi need a fan
Me - I have the exact same bulbs in my off grid property, and in my on-grid property. On grid, it's about 18 months MTBF. Off grid - it's been seven years and I haven't had to replace a single bulb yet. On-grid our power is anywhere between 205 and 235v, often has spikes up to 260+, and has like 99% uptime. Off grid, it's 230v, day in, day out. Grid power is terrible in most places.
I have this issue as well, of burning thru LED lights.
Now if only DC wiring and appliances were more common/mature, could possibly drop the “inverter” part altogether. If I were single I’d try more seriously for a full-DC system, but as a married man I’ll probably just stick with everything AC.
A sensible first step is just a little rack of cheap lithiums (I’m using pylontech) and an inverter charger like a victron multiplus - planning on adding to our on-grid home as it has become tedious dealing with the outages.
"LED bulbs" die because they have to rectify 110VAC (hot) into LEDs (hot) into an enclosure that was designed for incandescents.
In a proper enclosure, with cooling (it's a fan), they will actually live their fully-stated lifetime - assuming the fan's upstream power supply makes it.
But in an "old school" hardware, you'd then replace the bulb and get a new "lifetime" out of it, here you have to throw everything away.
An AC motor has basically nothing inside that can fail (maybe the capactitor, but that can be replaced), and can work for a hundred years and more if properly maintained (mostly cleaned).
On average ~6 hours per day (living room with night owls living there), is ~2000 hours per year... 5 years at 10.000hours expected lifetime for the leds, 10 if the stated lifetime is 20k hours... that's not really that long.
Lightbulbs came in sockets because they were meant to fail. First by accident, later intentionally. They were also quite breakable because they were made of glass. LED lights don't have these problems unless they're designed to. Which is the meta-problem - how do you know which ones are planned obsolete?
Forcing an LED system into a lightbulb from factor has quality and cost implications though. A good LED light has a separate power brick inside the enclosure. Which is what you see in these fan lights.
I would hope that at least some of this would get standardized over time
Let me know how the non-replaceable sealed bearing packs in these AC or DC fans fare after 10,000 hours.
In a proper/high-end DC fan, the bearings are failing before any motors or LEDs.
Regardless, in a Big Ass Fans Haiku, the downlight is a completely separate/replaceable module - and it isn't going to fail before the bearings or motor.
Edison screw LED bulbs are the inferior design by every objective measure.
...your AC-powered ceiling fans are failing (or even "just" substantially degrading) after a little under fourteen months? What garbage are you buying?
They are also substantially more quiet (silent) where every Hunter fan from $150-$550 had terrible hums. YMMV.
A recessed can or “upside down” ceiling fan globe with an open bottom is technically an enclosed fixture since heat rises.
Typically fans with built-in LED downlights are engineered to actually dissipate heat - and they have a much larger area to do it in. Edison-format bulbs are inherently space-constrained.
Lights with non-replaceable bulbs can actually be far better, because they can be designed for their environment. Recessed downlights with built-in LEDs for example can thermally couple the LEDs directly to the metal housing, so the heat can be dissipated into the surrounding air, instead of into the recess.
The only place where this doesn’t happen is in the country of Dubai. Because of national law, lightbulbs sold there are required to have very long lifespans. That’s why there is a world-wide grey market business for taking existing LED lightbulbs apart, snipping off a resistor so that they pull about half the amperage and then putting them back together, and suddenly their lifespan is increased by 10-100x. This is called a “doobie”, after the name of the country. Check out “bigclivedotcom” on YouTube if you want to see this in action.
You will notice this if you buy Philips Ultra Definition bulbs in Dubai, versus the same bulbs sold at the same amount of lumen output from the UK or elsewhere in the world. The “doobie” version has twice as many LED filaments inside, compared to the UK version. Same price, way different life span. Philips is one of the better manufacturers of lightbulbs, and nowhere remotely close to the only one doing this.
With regards to LED light fixtures (ones that don’t allow you to screw in your own bulb), most manufacturers do the same thing. They’re designed to fail early. Who wants light fixture styling that is fifty years old, just because the LED lights inside haven’t failed yet? They want to make you buy new fixtures every couple of years, just like they do for bulbs.
Yes, there are exceptions in both cases. But they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. And if you haven’t studied up on the Phoebus Cartel, you can start with the article on Wikipedia.
Dubai isn't a country. It's a city in the United Arab Emirates.
The Dubai bulb isn't some trick Big Lightbulb doesn't want you to know about, it's an engineering tradeoff: lower current on more filaments gives you higher efficiency and lower temperature but at higher cost and with substantially lower light quality (CRI).
You'll find that after EU energy labeling, there are products available to European consumers that well exceed the specifications of the "Dubai" bulbs. Look for EU energy class A. They often come with a 5-year warranty and rated lifespan of 50000 hours. The "Dubai" bulbs were rated for 25000 hours. You'll also find though that they're substantially more expensive and usually don't have a CRI above 90.
Regarding planned obsolescence, in many cases I can believe that a product will fail earlier than it would if designed for longevity. Rather than planned obsolescence, I believe this is simply a result of being cheap, a consequence of the race to the bottom. If you're buying cheap Chinese fixtures for $10, or cheap Chinese bulbs for $2, you're not going to get a high-quality, long-lasting product.
If you want products that last a long time, buy them and use them properly. If you want bright lights, make sure they're adequately cooled. Consider buying lower-voltage fixtures and bulbs so that you can have a separate power supply and don't put the full ~230V to ~3V conversion in a tiny space.
There was one time I bought some cheap ones from Amazon, and several of them failed within a few months. There was also an LED bulb in the front porch light (so, outside) that lasted around 10 years, despite being outside and used daily. I had several of that same type and that particular one lasted longer than all of the others, where the others were all inside and not installed upside down. So yeah, it varies.
Regardless of all of that frustration, thank the gods we no longer have to deal with CFL
I also find it hard to believe someone really does like CFLs as much as buttocks describes, and it makes me wonder if they are in fact just trolling.
Anyone that says they like CFL has to be trolling. Any other answer is just inconceivable to me.
And nowadays you can get E27 LED bulbs for 75 cents at IKEA, which is cheaper than incandescents ever were. Not sure how they managed that, because it sounds insane.
Your comparison of USB-A to USB-C is nonsensical and does not actually acknowledge the issue of why the existing screw in bulb direct replacement have issues
Screw-in sockets are more durable and long-lasting than any replacement so-far, most of which have been replaced again (remember those weird fluorescent mini-bulb sockets?).
Well, we can certainly argue with 110 or 220 is a better voltage for a house. It is quite clear that 12 volts is too low.
And it's not like we need to just stop producing Edison socket styles tomorrow. But let's make sane standards today.
My current apartment has dedicated circuits in the living room and bedroom. But in the living room they're in awkward places.
I always had to resort to multiple lamps that would plug into an outlet so I could place them where I needed them. Running 12 V for the bulbs would require rewiring most of the apartment.
Now, I'm not against having a new socket standard. But it would have to be connected to 220 V.
Its not like your bulbs are plugging straight into your wall outlets. You've got some kind of lamp fixture that the bulbs screw in to, correct?
Your lamps would still plug into mains, same as they do today. The lamp fixture overall would contain the driver components, hopefully in packaging which lets it manage heat well and have good build quality. But whatever parts do fail routinely should be able to be easily replaced with some kind of standardized socket. It just seems like we're trying to squeeze too much too cheaply into a form factor that's ill suited for the requirements by trying to shove all the driver circuitry into the same envelope of an older Edison A-shape socket style bulb.
This has already kind of been a thing for a while with low voltage halogen lamps. The bulbs themselves aren't made for mains voltage, the lamp structures themselves give the right voltage for the halogen mini bulbs. I've replaced a few bi-pin halogen lights for LEDs with drop-in replacements (especially for outdoor lights), but this same kind of bulb packaging hasn't really been very common for interior lighting from what I've seen.
> Now, I'm not against having a new socket standard. But it would have to be connected to 220 V.
Why would it need to be 220 V in the "socket" for the bulb? Why do we need lamps themselves to just be a frame to hold a wire, why not put the driver circuitry in there to step it down to whatever voltage we decide to drive the DC LED bulbs at?
I was talking about the lamp itself. Maybe I used the wrong term? I meant the fixture which holds the wire and expects a bulb. That fixture needs to go into mains, because that outlet may have to also service something else entirely.
Now, sure, usually those fixtures tend to be larger than the bulbs, so they could hold the conversion circuitry. I'd be fine with that. But the commenter I was replying to talked about having an alternative DC circuit for the lights.
At 48VDC you could run 16AWG like 100ft and still be fine as long as the lights pull around 60W or less all together (which works out to ~12 lights on a circuit). And that circuit would only add another ~2W or so in power losses when energized.
That circuit is essentially what power over ethernet does today so you could replace romex with PoE Type 3/Type 4 plenum rated ethernet and it'd be like half the cost.
And if you really want to optimise for losses you could put the switches on the ethernet data line and use that for sensing rather than running the PoE circuit out to each light switch (and then de-energise the PoE circuit when the switches report off). Bonus points in that this would allow you to "reprogram" which light switch controls which circuit without needing to do any re-wiring.
And again, your whatever voltage, 48 volts, is way too much for an LED, so we still have a power supply. What's the difference between a power supply running on 48 volts DC versus 110 or 220 volts AC? Ultimately, there's not much of a difference, well, you could do a very cheap linear regulator and be horribly wasteful of power, but more likely you're going to be doing a social power supply, which is going to be more complex and have similar efficiency losses. I'm not enough of an electrical engineer to know this for sure but I would suspect the power supply in your Ethernet switch and then the second one to get to that your voltage is less efficient than just having a single power supply that goes from regular line voltage to whatever the LEDs need.
You still have to run romex for the other circuits. But it's not hard to run those on a separate breaker. Rooms often have like one and a half 15A circuits each because lighting used to draw so much power but now you can drop it down to one 15A circuit per room and run a single circuit that switches out to the entire house off of one 15A breaker.
> what's the difference between a power supply running on 48 volts DC versus 110 or 220 volts AC?
It's already DC. A properly sized buck converter based LED driver is going to have like 80-95% efficiency when the LED is on (and it's trivial to draw no power when off) and they are like 0.25USD per IC.
They are going to have equal or better performance than AC->DC switching mode power supplies because buck converters are already the simplest and most efficient type of SMPS.
Amazon is a tough place to buy stuff like that due to fakes.
You make a good point though, I probably spend more time thinking about light bulbs than the average person. :)
Mounting options that allow larger LED lights allow you to use lights that are more thermally efficient without sacrificing any replaceability. JIS C 8310 mounts for example.
I learned recently that Dubai is also the name of the emirate. I don’t have a good understanding of the UAE governmental structure, but the Emirates do seem to have their own governments. Maybe it can be thought of as a country in the same way Scotland can be thought of as a country.
Also, Dubai is effectively a city-state, as the vast majority of the population of the Emirate lives in the city itself.
They aren’t designed to fail, they are designed to work around some predictable model during the warranty and extended warranty period.
As far as I'm aware, we've got comparable bulbs available in Canada. We've got the Philips 95 CRI ultra definition bulbs and the ultra efficiency bulbs.
The UltraEfficient bulbs seem better-specced than the Dubai bulbs - the standard A19 of the latter is specced for 6W/600 lumen/25k hours at 80 CRI, while the bulbs I can buy at the drug store here are specced for 5W/810 lumen/50k hours at 80 CRI.
I also have Nanoleafs that I have had for about six years and so far no issues. They run for about 12 hours a day on most days.
I am in BC,CA. I gotta take apart my lights and see what they are.
The reason most consumer LED bulbs fail early today is because consumers are low-information buyers who make purchase decisions based overwhelmingly on price and secondarily on aesthetics. The typical buyer has no way to accurately judge the actual design longevity of a bulb on the shelf. Yes, bulbs have lifetime ratings, but even if people bother to read them, those ratings in many places are not well regulated and reflect an ideal scenario that oftentimes is not reflective of real-world use.
The sales success of these race-to-the-bottom bulbs has driven higher quality bulbs off of the shelf at most retailers. You can get well designed long-life LED lighting, but you'd need to step up to commercial/industrial options. There are long life bulbs available, but they generally are designed for uses where they are difficult to replace... because in those use cases a high product price can be justified by lower labor costs to maintain their installation... e.g., bulbs for use high up on a structure, factory lighting, continuous use, etc.
The reason Dubai has better bulbs is simply because they have decided to require it. The reason the US has shit bulbs is because Americans love buying $0.80-1.50 light bulbs. The Dubai bulb is an order of magnitude more expensive. This is a hard sell at Walmart. And the TCO of the $0.87 bulbs on Amazon is still less even accounting for early failures if you are a homeowner who is not factoring in labor costs.
Modern LED bulb lifetime is the result of similar factors: wanting more profit. But I think this is being achieved more through aggressively reducing manufacturing cost rather than planned obsolescence.
Operative word here is "can".
These lightbulbs, while using less electricity, use much more energy to produce. And I wonder what with their substrates, if that isn't more difficult to recycle too. I'm not sure, and don't want to judge, but if both every efficiency and recycling are harder, then these bulbs aren't really energy and environmentally efficient.
Traditional light bulbs have taught us that lights naturally have to be "consumables". That has been far less true for energy saving lamps (of which I have maybe 2 or 3 still left which I planned to replace by LEDs once they die, but they just won't). As far as I can tell, this isn't at all the case for LEDs.
It's much more likely that lamps and ceiling fans made out of plastic break from accidental physical impact or turn ugly due to natural UV discolorization or similar. And probably most will live on until replaced due to changing tastes.
It also prevents the user from changing the bulb if they want a different color temperature or better CRI. Most of the built-in lights I see are in the 3000-3500K range, which is cooler the warm white I’ve chosen for the house. If I could swap the bulb it would be an easy fix, but if it’s built in then I’m stuck with it.
A high CRI single color temperature bulb beats them in light quality.
Most people aren’t going to notice, but if you’ve done any work with color, lighting, or photography then the average consumer LED lights feel terrible. They’re mostly blue light with a little bit of other colors to make them appear white to the eye.
For the overhead lights in the main area of the house and in the kitchen, we went with 3500k. The kitchen lights are on when preparing food and the overhead lights in the main area are used pretty much only when cleaning.
Task, accent, and decorative lighting are warmer. The specific temperature depends on the purpose of the light.
What I want more of are dim-to-warm lights. For example in our master bathroom, it would be nice to have candle-like light late at night and have super bright (high CRI) coolish light while cleaning or getting dressed. All the best systems though are pretty expensive (Lutron Ketra for example) and not terribly DIY friendly.
I wish it caught on to have LED lights powered by a barrel jack DC plug like you have for most electronics. It would be a huge win for longevity. Sure it's not backwards compatible with fixtures designed for light bulbs, but the cases we're discussing here are complete light fixture replacements anyways... The fixture could have a barrel plug that you connect to an inexpensive commodity DC power brick which you then hide away in the ceiling.
I’m under the impression at this point that they just do not do well inside can lights. I honestly don’t think the average lifespan is much higher than incandescent in that scenario.
This 120v-using USian has had many fail, and if they don't fail by intermittently blinking and flickering [0], they fail by slowly giving me worse and worse and worse headaches [1]. Unless you choose to count the fact that they were technically still emitting light, I've never gotten the rated lifetime out of a screw-in LED bulb.
[0] ...as all of the ACE Hardware ones did...
[1] ...as all of the dimmable [2] CREE ones did...
[2] These were never attached to a dimmer. At the time, the advice was to get LED bulbs rated for use in a dimmer, as it was believed that that would get you higher-quality construction.
I bought some high CRI LED bulbs from some place recommended in an HN post.
Being that you're unwilling to name the vendor or brand, or even a proper link... it doesn't seem a rousing recommendation. Is it an affiliate link, I wonder.
We live in San Francisco so there are only a few days a year when we need a fan. Like this weekend.
From my order history:
Prominence Home Saybrook, 52 inch Indoor Farmhouse LED Ceiling Fan with Light, Pull Chain, Three Mounting Options, Dual Finish Blades, Reversible Motor - 51592-01 (Matte Nickel)
Sold by: Amazon.com
Supplied by: Other
$99.22LED bulbs can be designed to live almost forever, but many of them are not designed so, for savings in cost, but the selling price may be poorly correlated with the manufacturing cost.
I have about two dozens Philips LED bulbs (4000 K color temperature and equivalent with old 100 W incandescent bulbs, i.e. 1500 lumen) of the kind that fits in legacy Edison sockets for incandescent bulbs. They were bought more than 15 years ago and all continue to work perfectly fine. I did not have to replace any of them.
Nonetheless, if I would buy today new LED bulbs, even of the same brand, I think that the chances are slim that they will be equally reliable.
In the past, you could rely on the brand of a product to inform you about the expected quality, but today buying any product with a certain brand provides no guarantee that the quality will be the same as for an apparently identical product bought one year earlier.
Oh take a look at the recall list of any car company in the world and you will find they all make simple mistakes, constantly. Probably a consequence of price pressure at all times. While cars are lasting longer than they used to on average, I feel like it’s been getting worse in some ways with cars lately turning into computers and good car/engine companies lately turning into bad tech companies without that much tech experience who outsource important parts and do lousy integration. And yeah, building assemblies or modules with non-replaceable parts is becoming more common.
Case 1: Ford Taurus wagon, my wife calls in a panic because it's blowing all hot air, and the dash is awash in lights. I get her to shut it off, wait a bit, and limp the last few km home. Turns out the serpentine belt goes around a pulley, the center bolt of which is screwed into the engine block. When the bearing started to go, there was friction, and the belt spun the bolt out and it fell off. It could have been reverse threaded, like one pedal on every bike, ever. But no. If it had, the bearing would screech, we'd get it replaced, instead of just silently falling out with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Case 2: Chevy Venture van, where the lights on the rear door all stopped working. Turned out the wiring harness for them ran through this accordion hose at the top, plugged into the bottom of a rain gutter across the top. So as soon as that hose broke its seal with the trough, the whole harness is shorted.
Funny, I have never experienced this sort of stupidity in the Toyotas and Hondas that have followed these last couple American-branded vehicles.
Which probably use the exact same serpentine belt idler running counterclockwise as your 1990s Taurus....
(There just aren't all that many different idler pulley configurations across the industry at any given time)
This sort of stuff absolutely pales in comparison to the sort of "people used to deride the Germans/French/Italians/British for this sort of engineering" type behavior that has permeated the industry.
120 years of lessons learned undone in 120 college credits.
Automotive engineering is "high" engineering. Like "high" tech it suffers deeply from people trying to implement all sorts of showboaty crap they learned in college without truly grasping the bigger picture and the tradeoffs this will subject the whole system to.
That is abnormal compared to my experience. I have a lot of bulbs in my house between recessed lights, fixtures and lamps, probably 150-200 in total, and in the 5 years I've been in this house I've had, I think, 3 bulbs in total fail.
I resorted to buying a “smart” fan, pulling credentials for it, blocking it from all internet access, and controlling it exclusively with Home Assistant and the remote control it came with. These things are so flimsy nowadays and I couldn’t find anything of decent quality.
> I have a few questions regarding your products and spare parts:
> - Would it be possible to order a replacement lampshade for this Globo fan and deliver it to [place], [country]? The model is Globo 0350/0351, I have attached a picture to describe the part I need.
> Unfortunately, no—that item is no longer in our product range.
>- Is it possible to order other spare parts, like LED modules for this or other models?
> Unfortunately, no
> - Separately, is the Elina model available with a shorter rod? The ceiling height in the room is approximately 2.6m.
> Available only in the specified length
Ask a friend who is an interior designer. There are great fans on the market, but building a quality fan costs money and for whatever reason the walk-in stores don't want to have those, so instead they add baubles to justify a ridiculous mark-up. (Good tell for quality: warranty.)
> These fixtures are also revolutionary in that they are extremely cheap in the short run – many of these fans cost under $200 – but expensive in the long rung, as the LEDs usually cannot be replaced, causing the whole apparatus to be thrown away.
A few years ago we had a relatively small pendant lamp (I think there were like 6 or so hanging lights total) over a stairwell that we really liked. It was installed by the previous owners just before we moved in, and about 7-8 years later 2 of the lamps died (not sure if it was the actual LED or just the electronics like another sibling comment mentioned). We were a bit aghast when we got an electrician and he said the only reasonable thing to do would be to replace the entire chandelier.
It's just so ironic how LEDs were supposed to be the "environmental" choice yet they were just another tool for our disposable economy.
I replaced it with something similar in aesthetics but twice the price, including replaceable LEDs (GU10).
As a side note: replacing a light fixture is mostly easier than I expected except that you need a couple zip ties on hand to keep the new fixture close to the installation site while you attach the wires. Also, wire nuts are miserable and you should use lever nuts instead (check Home Depot).
Lots of manufacturers are simplifying assembly design by making the lights non-replaceable much like phone manufacturers glued their batteries in. Fewer clips / screws / gaskets / sockets / wires etc.
Of course, the refrigerator model isn't made anymore and probably isn't under warranty.
Interesting, I heard that in the beginning of the 20th century they were selling light bulbs which never burn out. Until they realized they would go out of business. Maybe a similar thing happened with LEDs.
The LEDs themselves are probably fine, but the driver is dead.
This happened to us, and the people we bought the house from had actually bought (but not installed) a new controller. Turned out the problem wasn't the controller at all. Rather, all the houses on the street had been built at the same time by the same company, and most (maybe all) had ceiling fans that came with a remote. Inside the remote and inside the fan was a DIP-switch consisting of four switches, each switch labeled with a 0 and a 1 depending on which way you pushed it. And all probably came from the factory with a 0000 setting.
You guessed it: while ordinarily the controller had a limited range, sometimes (windows open? controller pointed in a certain direction? I don't know) one neighbor's controller would activate someone else's fan. The solution was of course simple: set the DIP switch in our fan and controller to some other setting, like 0101. Since I did that, the poltergeist has been unable to operate our ceiling fans.
>The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining (predr.ag) 1147 points by bonyt on April 1, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 325 comments
Also this story is about problems with the connection of their house, not the wi-fi. I find it hard to believe that a networking engineer and his son that's also an engineer use the incorrect term?
Re: your other comment. When my dad has problems with the internet, he will say the wifi is not working. And this isn’t incorrect, even if the source of the issue is not happening between the router and his device. Sure, the underlying issue may be something else. But by that logic putting anything but the final root cause in the title would be misleading or “real network engineers wouldn’t do that”, but I would argue that would just be bad storytelling..
Depends on the OS. Linux and macOS ping will keep pinging until you ctrl+c. Windows ping I guess is what you're talking about? Even then, I assume Windows ping has a command-line option to change the default number of pings.
> Even if you increase the count, after 20 lost packages wouldn't you have decided the connection isn't up?
Maybe not? It feels like you're just trying to come up with random excuses as to why this isn't real.
> Also this story is about problems with the connection of their house, not the wi-fi.
The connection to their house is a point-to-point line-of-sight WiFi link between the house and the author's father's office building.
But also no, they weren't that good in 2024, which is another reason to recognize it's not LLM slop.
I have AI blind hate fatigue.
Edit:
Heck, a year or two ago, someone accused me of being an LLM here on HN, sir, English is just my second language, I sometimes fumble it organically, thank you very much, I also have a touch of ADD.
I don't use LLMs for my comments, I write the dumbest things I think of and eat the downvotes, I make it a point that if I'm posting comments or writing a blog post, an LLM is only going to tell me suggestions on what to tweak, but for the most part I post raw if its just a comment on a forum.
AI is great at saying nothing specific really flamboyantly or juicing up very little substance with a whole bunch of that sort of puffery that's endemic to corporate communication. It is very bad at the subtle pairing of tone and diction with subject matter and audience that humans just do naturally.
That's the kind of language style LLMs picked on (recent attempts to make their writing more common-people, particularly Claude, notwithstanding), and the jarring/sloppy part is mostly just that you don't expect to see this kind of language in a bug report or commit description or design draft. If you got such response from a person in such context, you'd accuse them of showing off and making communication difficult. But it's not bad English - it's too good English for context.
Better, perhaps yes. But AI writing is entirely recognizable as non-human, so it is easy to spot it as AI slop.
The vast majority of people are not good prose writers. Nor are LLMs.
It doesn't matter if two houses have the same identity as long as the remote in one doesn't reach the fan in the other.
The wikipedia article for the four color theorm discusses higher dimensional life like being in a 3-d apartment building. If you live in a Klein bottle you got other problems beyond ceiling fans.
And of course complains.
But they are technologically informed complaints.
And his research is original.
Not a book report cribbed from Wikipedia.
So does YouTube. It rewards longer videos both monetarily and algorithmically.
This is why there's been so many videos over the last few years that are just barely over 20min or just barely over 60min.
The result is video essays that could be 5min that are padded out to 20min.
And I’m not advising that they should do anything different! Who am I?! I’m just pointing out that the culture of YouTubers is fundamentally about deliberately subjecting yourself to the most extreme audience capture.
Ben Jordan used to do almost entirely synthesizer stuff, now it is all privacy and security focused because that is what he got rewarded for. NatswhatIreckon, did all manner of comedy stuff like making fun are car shows, he ended up fixated on cooking because one video exploded in views back 2020. Heck, MrBeast used to be a minecraft channel.
In getting rewarded, they tend to lean into that. I don't blame them but also it does mean they become risk adverse at times.
Additionally, "the algorithm" rewards channels that have a lot of watchtime & retention (because againg, this leads to more ad placement opportunities for Youtube). So if you are able to produce long-form videos that keep the viewers engaged and watching, your videos are more likely to be recommended, which reinforces the popularity of long videos.
I for instance don't subscribe because I want to know about old toasters, christmas lights and the internal combustion engine. If that was the case, I'd subscribe to channels specific to that topic. I subscribe to Technology Connections because I like his videos, and if I learn a thing or two along the way, that's a nice extra
- the algorithm rewards it
- livelihood is parasocial community that is helped by length
- creatives seek challenges; ambition becomes length
What a testament to the manufacturing advances that have made it profitable to cater to every possible taste, budget, and architectural layout. It’s incredible actually.
This is why my "fancy" lighting fixture is an old track (whose proprietary lights died a long time ago) wrapped with an extension cable with 5 standard sockets on it, and some standard light bulbs in it. We dress it up with ribbons and stuff for the seasons. It doesn't look as nice as any of the things in that article, not even the gaudy and tasteless ones, but when a bulb burn out, I put a new one in and get on with life, I don't throw out an entire fan and buy a new one.
I'm old enough to remember when I was promised LEDs would last approximately forever without having to be replaced.
Yep, I remember that when Obama banned most incandescent lights because 'LED lighting is the future and 100 year lifespans blabla'.
Mind you, we used CFLs in the warm season, and incandescent in cold seasons. Incandescents are 100% efficient in cold seasons (heater AND light).
As much as I deign to admit, Trump reversed Obama's ban. And Biden reinstated it. I don't think Trump reversed Biden's reinstatement though. He's been way too busy with wrecking the country for shits and giggles.
But what the LED manufacturers figured out is they could overdrive LEDs and use substandard electronics for driving them. So sure, LEDs are more efficient, but they're the same old burnout cycle that's forced on us.
And we know all of this by the fact that Phillips makes "Dubai Lamps", and you can't buy them at any price. https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...
I will say I've had a number of Hue bulbs starting back in about 2018 and have yet to lose one except for a surge that got an unprotected strip. Otherwise, plenty of white and color bulbs have worked steadfast for nearly a decade while costing a fraction in energy. That said, I do miss the warmth of incandescent lighting, but I don't miss replacing bulbs multiple times a year
That's resistive heating, which is the most inefficient means of heating. Worse than natural gas or heating oil, and much worse than a heat pump.
Worse than a heat pump, yes, but very arguable whether NG is more efficient. Arguably, NG powering central electric power generation and then used for resistive would be overall more efficient. Central NG will be more efficient and also there’s substantially less opportunity for NG leakage if piping was reduced.
NG is definitely cheaper (at least in the US), but that’s not really related to efficiency or emissions cost.
Also, if you’re in the electric ecosystem, swapping to heat pump systems will obviously be lower overall power in basically every scenario, and it gives an easy transition path unlike NG.
Maybe... I've got a NG furnace now and am looking at adding a heat pump, and even with a pretty expansive budget, I'm struggling to make the numbers work on actually removing the furnace entirely vs. doing heat pump + furnace. (And the near-impossibility of upgrading my home service past 100A makes it extra complicated if I want to electrify everything.)
If the evaluation is total lifetime cost to you, using the equipment you currently have almost always wins out. Same with purchasing more efficient hvac and such: the cheapest/lowest efficiency hvac is almost always the most cost effective. That tide could turn with sharp increases in NG or electric prices… but it hasn’t historically been true for many years.
It depends on the particular furnace or NG generator in question, but if you take the best case for each, then this does not appear to be true.
The most efficient combined cycle NG plant is around 65% efficient, without considering transmission losses. The most efficient NG furnace is 90+% efficient.
A 100 Watt light bulb consumes 100 Watts. It emits 100 Watts. That's 8,190 BTU every 24 hours, and it is perfectly efficient at doing this.
At $0.1745 per kiloWatt hour, it costs $0.419 to produce those 8,190 BTUs.
A natural gas furnace at 90% efficiency, meanwhile: Yeah, 10% goes right out the pipe and is lost.
But if natural gas costs $1.346 per therm, then producing 8,190 BTUs of useful heat costs closer to the realm of $0.123.
One thing costs about 42 cents. The other thing costs about 12 cents. 42 moneys is more than 12 moneys. :)
---
I might opine that the most cost-efficient way of dealing with an incandescent light bulb is usually to immediately replace it with an LED bulb, and then landfill the old thing even though it still works.
4-packs of 100 Watt-equivalent LED bulbs are $12.97 at Wal-Mart, or about $3.24 per bulb. If it's the heating season and natural gas is being used at 90% efficiency, then replacing the incandescent pays for itself in about 300 hours of use. The LED will then continue to work and save money for thousands of additional hours.
Compare that to a modern NG furnace, which can be 90% efficient or more.
So if you just want heat, burning the NG directly is generally more energy efficient than burning NG to boil water to drive turbines to generate electricity and then converting that electricity back to heat via resistive heating.
Those initiatives were legislated during the Bush administration in 2007.
They were rolled back some during Trump's first term, in 2019.
Restrictions were re-introduced under Biden, in 2022.
Replacing a bulb is a trip to my stash of bulbs in the laundry room, then throwing the old one in the trash.
I don't have time in my life for a fan with non-replaceable bulbs.
In either case, learn to do hot air rework?
Don’t waste your time or eyeballs with “driverless” devices. Get a chip-on-board LED, e.g. Bridgelux’s products, along with a matching driver (I like Luminus Devices’ small drivers - they have good startup and dimming behavior).
Aside from usual electrical safety, anyone designing what is effectively a luminaire needs to make sure that the driver matches the LED and that the driver is compatible with the dimmer in use. Matching the LED means that the driver produces an amount of current that that LED’s datasheet data is acceptable and that produces the amount of light that is desired and dissipates an amount of heat that can be managed. And that the LED’s voltage drop at the design current is in range for the driver. These LEDs are constant current devices, so you’re thinking about current first and voltage second. Read the datasheets!
Unfortunately many cheap luminaires are based on modules that are either driverless LEDs (which are terrible due to essentially unavoidable flicker and lack of regulation) or are line-voltage-supplied integrated devices. These are likely to be hard-to-find modules. There may not be room for a discrete driver and separate LED.
But then, the problem is, it depends on the specific fixture. They aren't exactly putting "EASY TO REPLACE LEDS" on the box. I can't climb up to the store display model and start hacking away at it to see if I can get to the LEDs, replace them, and reassemble it correctly.
What I saw last time I was in a store where the fixtures were on eye level looked like a lot of glue, one-way tabs, and LED strips of unknown and custom provenance were being used. I'm not really looking for this sort of experience in a lighting fixture. YMMV and more power to you.
Fixing an LED fixture is within my wheelhouse. I can repair them.
I just don't want to.
It seems like a much better use of my time and money to just screw in a different light bulb and forget about it.
LEDs mean that the light itself is cheap so you can basically ignore energy usage concerns.
Generally, I think it is better to have:
- multiple dimmer sources of light instead of a single bright central light
- shades to diffuse the light (or lights pointed at walls or ceilings) instead of having bright point sources
- some ability to adjust brightness (eg reasonable quality dimmable LEDs)
- replaceable ordinary-looking bulbs from a reputable source (if you have 10 bulbs, it will be sad if one fails and you can’t get a similar looking bulb with a matching brightness and temperature)
- lamps, potentially wired up to light-switches for the room, which can provide light closer to where people will be and from better directions (eg maybe you sit somewhere where you can’t or don’t have a nearby wall-mounted light so a lamp can provide good light for reading). This also works in rented accommodation where one has less control over built-in fixtures.
- general considerations as to the purpose of the room (eg brighter cooler directable ceiling-mounted spotlights are more useful in a kitchen than a drawing room)
- sparing use of can lights (though this can be difficult if ceilings are low)
> In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue number. It said, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Except "traditional" it seems.
https://www.amazon.com/Hunter-inch-Indoor-Ceiling-Light/dp/B...
All of the stuff available is basically a mix of the elements the author puts on his 8 images on the beginning of the article. Where only 2 of them have fans that can actually vent a room.
So, a ducted fan! That would be a sensible and practical design if your ceiling needed extra thrust for takeoff.
Cheap and stupid goods with threatening auras, indeed. Possibly a step up from the 90s when it was cheap and stupid goods with a Memphis Group primary school aesthetic. Hard to choose.
I had to look that up and found some pretty cool articles. I like that the vapourwave trend from the 2010s created a lot of focus on the different aesthetics of software and everyday things on the internet.
The latter two links are from a dedicated "aesthetics wiki". I tend to like the detailed user-created content on fandom.com wikis, but I loathe the site itself. At least a lot of the fan wikis have moved to wiki.gg, which has a much less intrusive design (speaking of aesthetics).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Group
Before they die, the Maitlands lovingly restore their Connecticut Victorian home and even keep a model of the whole town up in their attic, as if capturing for themselves a bit of the town's bucolic New England charm. When they die, the Dietzes move in, and Delia declares psychotically, "I'll go crazy if you don't let me remodel this house!" With help from the obnoxious Otho she strips away the traditional Victorian trappings and turns the house into a modernist, Memphis-inspired nightmare, forcing the Maitlands to watch in horror as their hard work is destroyed (that is until they summon the title character). In keeping with the movie's structure as a "reverse ghost story" in which the ghosts are nice and the living humans are the horror.
Personally I find Memphis fascinating (though I wouldn't want to live there). I especially appreciate its influence on the design language of Sonic the Hedgehog games, as a complement to the greater variety of slopes, gradients, and curved ramps the early games afforded, to showcase the greater capabilities of the Sega Genesis. (That's really entirely why Sonic exists; some guys at Sega played Mario 3 and figured that they could "do Mario, but better".)
Imagine clear blades with each blade displaying cat hairballs spread out on the edges, spinning them above your head. It will harass you, give ammo to your in-laws to harass you, create marital strife (when are you going to clean that?) and then death as you fall off the ladder and break your neck on the coffee table, despite surviving four frontline deployments...
> is Venice an island or is every block in Venice an island? Is Venice an archipelago?
Fun fact: Venice is, in fact, an island, and every block in venice is an island, and venice is an archipelago: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TfbkNvrLU55E9n9KA
They are awesome cards, but they're not islands. I think ultimately Richard Garfield made a mistake calling the blue basic land "Island", instead of something a bit more general involving water. But it seems like WotC's art department decided to pretend he did anyway, and so we get these cards called "Island" even though they're not. Which is funny to notice, but doesn't actually affect anything, so that seems like the right solution.
> Fun fact: Venice is, in fact, an island, and every block in venice is an island, and venice is an archipelago
I agree that was a weird complaint—yes, Venice is definitely an archipelago. I guess when you're on a rant, sometimes you overstep.
I suggest only buying enclosed rated fixture lamps because they put out less heat and will last longer in an open or enclosed fixture.
Don’t buy any of these junk fans. Get a normal looking fan, with a quiet DC motor, that takes standard light bulbs with a medium base (e26 in the USA).
Skip modern AC motors, nobody today can seem to build one that doesn’t whomp when it runs. Older AC motors weren’t so cheaply made and don’t usually suffer this problem.
If you have an older fan 25+ years old, you can often rebuild them and end up with a better fan than anything you can buy today.
If you’re building a new house (or doing a rewire) put two light switches in every bedroom, one for the fan the other for the light kit.
If you’re getting a fan with a remote, get one that will let you change the spin direction from the remote.
Get the correct size fan for the room.
Friends don’t let friends buy Hunter Fans, they are all hot garbage. Though they do follow through with their warranties.
I used to recommend the house brands at lowes (harbor breeze) and home depot (hampton bay). But they both had a big quality drop post covid.
I've tried some of the well rated fans from Amazon and they've been ok too.
I would tell you to look at the installation guide before buying. You can always find them online links are usually on the store website. What you are looking for is ease of installation. Some models are stupidly complex with how they go together, making it impossible to remove or adjust the blades without completely taking apart the fan. Others have minimal screws and snap on blades. Easy to put together doesn't mean a worse fan.
LEDs integrated into fans are the worst idea. If they're not bright enough, you're hosed. You generally can't change the color. Just stick to proven fixtures, and let me put my own choice of bulbs in it!
The other problem is just how houses/apartments are designed in the US. You should always have a separate wall switch for fan and lights! Why they couple the two - I can't fathom.
LED retrofit bulbs (Edison screws) are just shit no matter what - your choice will basically almost always be inferior to something that can be integrated into a fan by virtue of the technology.
Down-facing light from ceiling fans is also just bad, even on a $2000 Big Ass Fans Haiku. Central-point overhead lighting is displeasing.
And how many of them can I control with SmartThings, etc?
With my own bulbs, I can have it how I want it. I pick the fan based on the fan's capabilities, and not worry about the light.
> Central-point overhead lighting is displeasing.
No arguments there, but most houses/apartments in the US are built in this brain dead way. When I lived abroad, it was much better. The lights were always on the walls - often opposing walls. This way, light is coming more at an angle downwards, and you can position chairs/beds/couches such that the light is behind you, and if you're reading a book, the pages are being lit up by it.
Replace the entire LED base with a brighter one if you need more lumens. If you do the same with a standard e26 or candelabra bulb setup, you’ll have the exact same issue with bulb longevity. Brighter bulbs stuffed into the tiny enclosures will absolutely cook.
https://mcmansionhell.com/post/829127919552151552/what-is-go...
you're telling me I can find a replacement for the LED base?
When I looked, the fans were all listed as having irreplaceable bulbs. That is one of the complaints in the article.
> If you do the same with a standard e26 or candelabra bulb setup, you’ll have the exact same issue with bulb longevity. Brighter bulbs stuffed into the tiny enclosures will absolutely cook.
LED bulbs shouldn't cook. I'm not talking incandescent, but LED bulbs. I use them all the time. They last a decent amount of time.
Depending on which one you mean in the article… the super gaudy ones with extremely custom light fixtures would be hard. The basic led based that have crazy fan blades? Yeah, no problem.
Here’s an example (there’s a million like this in a variety of sizes, lumens, and color temps, just the first example I found on Amazon): https://a.co/d/0aP9nKdJ
> LED bulbs shouldn't cook. I'm not talking incandescent, but LED bulbs. I use them all the time. They last a decent amount of time.
But they do. They’re obviously not as much heat as incandescent lights, but if you’ve ever felt an LED bulb after it’s run for awhile, they’re typically too hot to touch. And fan enclosures are very harsh environments: no airflow and fully enclosed typically.
It may depend on the bulb, but while warm, most of the ones I use aren't too hot to touch.
(Well, OK, the base may be - where the connection is. Will need to test out).
> And fan enclosures are very harsh environments: no airflow and fully enclosed typically.
Ah, that explains your stance. I definitely don't want fans that have them enclosed. Something like this is fine:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Hampton-Bay-Rockport-52-in-Indoo...
But it is interesting you menition enclosed. All my rooms that don't have fans have the bulbs fully enclosed in a ceiling fixture. They last a decent amount of time.
Usually that's the hottest part. And it's also the area most likely to be damaged by the excess heat: the power electronics
> Ah, that explains your stance. I definitely don't want fans that have them enclosed. Something like this is fine:
That example would be considered to be considered an enclosed luminary, actually. The bulbs are facing downward and the backside is enclosed by the glass/plastic globes which trap heat. You'll get more airflow than the fully enclosed ones... but it's still much worse than an open air bulb (or, bulbs where the bulbs face upward), and the place where you screw the bulb into the socket is going to be the hottest point since convection causes the heat to travel upwards.
Also, generally, the more modern designs have an enclosure because it spreads light out with the diffusion of the globe. You can use ring LEDs or other various patterns more easily that way.
Poor cooling, poor light emission, poor longevity. Philips Dubai lamps aren't bad in this line, but Feit, Philips' normal products, etc. have high failure rates when installed in most enclosures (fans, cans, tight sconces, etc.)
The problem is coupling the light source with the fan. Ceiling fans should not supply light. Period. As I said in another comment, in other countries, you have separate fixtures for these. No one buys a fan with light fixtures. It's stupid.
Reading lamps don't exist in those places.
Heck, you could loosen the "angle" part - I still haven't found one.
I mean, sure, you can always wire it.
I actually ended up with one fan that looks exactly like the enclosed one (I had limited clearance and needed something small). It works fine as both a light and a fan. If the bulb goes out, I can just replace the whole thing (it wasn’t that expensive).
For the other one, I bought something higher end bc I had enough clearance to go with larger blades (44” Minka Aire Light Wave). The light is a plug-in module, so if it goes out, I can find a replacement (assuming they still make the module).
Overall, these combined units aren’t perfect, but they let you add a fan without needing to add more wiring. The one thing to be careful of is to make sure your electrical boxes are fan rated.
I wonder if that's due to social media having made the visual aspect of things more important?
I recommend the author to go and talk to a few women. It's a very demanding request, but I insist on it. Once he understands and internalizes the logic of "my shoes are uncomfortable but they fit my purse", he'll be able to:
1. Understand that different designs have different proportions of practicality and looks, because different customers can have different expectations. I know it's hard to believe, but there are places on Earth besides Arizona, and in some places you only need to turn on the fan once a year gently, all the other days it just hangs there and is visible. Just like a woman won't be putting hiking shoes for an event where she's sitting by the table all day long (men tend to do that).
2. See the concept of "style". It might sound like an outrageous claim, but bear with me: different people like different things! Just because author doesn't like particular design, it doesn't mean that the design is objectively ugly. Shocking, I know. Different people want to build different vibes in their rooms, which is why we have a variety of designs, fitting different styles.
If the author can stomach the idea that there is life outside of Arizona, I'll try an even more radical idea: China exists. Like, really. 1 billion people that aren't Americans. They don't speak English. They don't use Latin alphabet - they actually don't use an alphabet at all! They don't say "Hello, how are you? I'm good, thank you, what about you?". I'd really love the author to spend a few minutes to imagine that. Because my argument is that, even though I have little proof of it, the Chinese might enjoy different ways of having the product presented, and the author is bitching about seeing marketing that was designed by and for the Chinese audiences.
Many times I pass by an ad and I think to myself, "This ad obviously targets American customers but I'm in Europe. Do Americans really think that their culture is the default, universal culture that joins all of humanity?".
They use Latin alphabet. For typing in Chinese
I do not see wireless remotes for ceiling fans as a good idea. I especially* do not see wireless remotes for ceiling fans as a good idea when the remote is intended to be the ONLY WAY TO CONTROL IT.
I went to Wayfair and searched ceiling fans and holy moly this space has changed! I thought to myself, "I don't see these when walking through my local bigbox hardware store?" So I went to Lowe's website and fandeliers are an entire category now.
I refuse to own a home built after ~2015 due to this and other factors. Electricity on my kitchen island, toilets that can flush human sized shits, and proper lighting fixtures are non-negotiable for me.
Cooper makes the HALO RL series LED can retrofit modules that can be had for $30 with adjustable color temp and dimming capable, with a five-year warranty.
We built our place in 2017 in Philadelphia, and our kitchen island has electricity. We did get non-servicable LED ceiling lights. It took 10 years before one of them started to blink. Rather than wait around for all of them to fail, I replaced the entire house with newer, slimmer LED lights, for less than the cost of a fancy floor lamp. The new ones let you select brightness and color, and were a breeze to install, and run much cooler, temperature wise.
I don't miss having to change light bulbs, and upgrading the lighting one a decade is a trade-off I was willing to make.
>Recent revisions to the 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC) — specifically Section 210.52(C) — change how receptacles can be installed in kitchen islands and peninsulas.
>The updated code removes this allowance in local jurisdictions that have adopted the unamended 2023 NEC. In those jurisdictions, receptacles located on the sides of islands or peninsulas can no longer be installed to meet the required countertop outlet provisions.
You can have pop-up ones but that would be a builder choice.
They move a lot of air. They’re quiet. You can move them around if needed. You can take them with you when you move. No installation costs.
Cars are way more fun but the return on investment sucks.
These fans with integrated LEDs rarely publish their CRI or have a good one if they do so I dismissed them.
You will actually need to dig deep and order from some shady websites to get one in regular wood with a regular shape.
cost around 50EUR here in Czechia
https://stropni-ventilatory.heureka.cz/trio-reality-r6659203...
though I have ceiling fans in every habitable room already like 10 years (Westinghouse, it was just cheapest model with similar design (different lamp shade) as link above bought in Hornbach or Obi), tried 1st year in new flat without AC, but before 2nd summer installed AC everywhere, great combo to make AC more energy efficient, the best investment in Europe would be AC, no ceiling fan will help you alone when it's 35-40C in shadow
ceiling fan is great low cost easy to install investment for short term temperatures between 25-35C in shadow, for something like 33-35C+ for more than one week it's useless though
I don't really get the anti-AC fetish in some parts of Europe
It's mostly just bitter renters. Floor units suck, and you can't get the awesome window units that people in America have, because vertical sliding windows are uncommon. If you own your own property, the best investment you can get would be a mini-split AC/heat pump. Not only does it cool you in summer, but it provides very cheap heating in the winter.
Hate these new BLDC fans!
for me just having a brushless motor and a remote was good enough lol. maybe smart home functionality nowadays perhaps.
I believe the term is "Schadenfan", the misfortune fan
They certainly can, with the right tools. A bag of bulk LEDs imported from China is surprisingly cheap.
> A bag of bulk LEDs imported from China is surprisingly cheap.
Like a lot of repairs it's not the parts that cost it's the time of even somewhat skilled local labor to repair.
Meanwhile, making products for the tasteless: $$$
Yes, those are some crazy fans.
1. Almost all are "appified", aka proprietary crappy BT protocol with required corporate spy/app.
2. Non-replaceable LEDs means burnout = e-waste.
3. LEDs are overdriven meaning they're intentionally ran to burn out sooner.
4. Many of the "fans" are indeed blades on a motor. For they blow? Nope. But they do indeed suck.
5. Many are just hideous and garish pieces of garbage. But "in matters of taste, the customer is always right".
Phillips' Hue line tends to be somewhat expensive and nothing amazing to look at, but they're at least not the dodgy nonsense you can find on Amazon and Wayfair.
Our current stage of capitalism where retailers are just dumb hosts for garbage is very annoying... this is true of everything from ceiling lights to food delivery. There are enough degrees of separation involved now that no one holds each other accountable for poor quality anymore. You open a return and it either ends up in a landfill or shuffled on to the next sucker.
But really what annoys me the most is that they seem stuck in the 90s. Even the really expensive ones come with crappy white remote controls. Why aren't they just coming with a Matter/Thread chip so I can control them from my Apple Home?
Maybe I'm just an old man yelling at the birds, but why would I want one more point of failure in something that should be simple?
If you're into nice lighting, central light from the center/top of the ceiling is another no-no. I.e. the article's domain "mcmansionhell.com" kinda fits this.
I.e. one can read the critique on ceiling fans also as a critique on eye-cancer-causing central ceiling light fixtures. Rotating blades attached or not.
On that note, we installed a ceiling fan in our bedroom to aid with the constantly hotter European summmers.
All fans we looked at were either (a) also a lights and (mostly)/or (b) ugly as hell.
Finally we remembered seeing a beautiful art-deco fan in a retaurant in Italy, a year before, and photographing it at the time. Google image search found the product; boy was it expensive.
The blades are heat-pressed plywood using old/original molds, from the looks of it. [1]
Curiously the Spanish company behind it, Faro, were also among the few fans we had found browsing that we liked.
But they were all very minimalist and for that room we needed something a little bit 'more'; but w/o crossing the kitsch threshold.
[1] https://faro.es/en/collection/cuba-old-gold-ceiling-fan/
But those central ceiling lights are already pretty bad, and strapping them below rotating blades only makes thing ten times worse, even ignoring the optics of the fan itself. If you put in some effort you can do much better with a fan like yours and separate lighting. It's however not entirely surprising that the majority of the market caters to the quick fix of a light-fan combo