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I have this exact ceiling fan, and so far it has worked nicely. It is mounted in my bedroom, I believe height to floor is about 12 feet and the rod from the ceiling to the actual fan is about 18 inches (estimates here, if you want more specifics I could go and measure).

But for all of summer it was blowing fine - pretty powerfully, but largely hot. Now that the climate has changed and the breeze is cooler, I literally feel absolutely NO AIR below it. When I hold my hand beside it, I can feel breeze up there - almost as if it is sucking air from the bottom and pushing it to the top.

I haven't tested this theory fully yet, by say taping a piece of paper to the roof and seeing how it responds when the fan is turned on, but a lot of this is anecdotal just based on what me and my wife feel.

Is there any reason that the air flow would reverse, without any explicit reason. I was looking for a switch or something on the fan, and I can't find one - so I don't think someone could have flipped it while it was being cleaned, or is there some hidden mechanism that I am unaware of?

Help!

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maybe its got some inbuilt switch to detect temperature differecnes.. but its hard to say – ppumkin Dec 8 '11 at 13:51
1  
Do the blades themselves change pitch? If as you say, there was some cleaning going on, could they have been changed? Are they all pitched in the same direction? – DaveNay Dec 8 '11 at 14:33
@DaveNay I just checked that, and that's exactly the reason. I re-adjusted the blades and they now work like a charm. If you write an answer to that end, I will accept it. – marcamillion Dec 9 '11 at 3:10
Well, I did have it posted as an answer, but apparently someone else thought it wasn't suitable and changed it to a comment. – DaveNay Dec 9 '11 at 3:21
Redo it as an answer, perhaps change the wording a bit? – marcamillion Dec 9 '11 at 7:36

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Most ceiling fans have a reverse switch. In the summer, you want cool air blowing down in the center to give you the breeze. In the winter, you want the warm air from the ceiling to mix with the rest of the room, but without the breeze, so you reverse it and the warm air descends around the sides of the room where you're less likely to feel the draft.

If yours is reversed, then I'd suggest looking a little harder for the switch. It's often on the fan itself when they have the pull chain. However, with yours, I'm going to guess it's on a separate controller. If it's not a dedicated button, you might have to hold a button for a few seconds or some other trick (this is why I never throw out manuals).

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Never got a manual :( Is there another suggestion for places on the fan I can look? Was hoping to find some info about it online, but I can't even find the manufacturer's website...just for the local retailer in Jamaica. – marcamillion Dec 7 '11 at 12:49
There are no buttons, no pull chains, just a 5-speed dial mounted on the wall that I can turn. I also checked the rotation on the fans in the other rooms (all exact same models) and they are all spinning in the same direction (counter clock-wise). I know the little black switch that you normally see on fans, and I don't see one on this one. The speed of the fan is the same as it usually is, it even makes the same sound. The major difference is that it seems that the airflow has just reversed (not the direction of the blades, or anything else). This is very bizarre! – marcamillion Dec 7 '11 at 13:09
up vote 2 down vote accepted

What had happened was someone cleaned the blades of the fan. When they did that, it seems that the blades were slightly bent out of shape. Not enough for it to be immediately visible. But once I played around with the individual blades and restarted, the wind flow changed dramatically.

So if you have this problem, make sure to check to see if the blades were slightly bent/their direction changed. Even if you don't see it with your eye, a small change to the tilt of the blades can have a significant impact to the direction of the wind.

In my case, it literally completely changed the direction of wind flow from top to bottom, to bottom to top (rendering the fan useless, imho).

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