Our island home is small, but in an effort to mitigate the milde and moldew we are putting in six (count ‘em!) ceiling fans. They’re really nice fans with remote controls.
I didn’t want to put in wall switches. The house is all single-wall construction, so wall switches would require on-wall wiring. Along with the switches, I think it would really detract from the genuine look of the place. I figured we could make do with the pull chains and/or remotes.
These fans don’t have pull chains.
The remotes work thusly: when you apply power to the fan, you have 30 seconds to press a key sequence on a remote to pair that remote to the fan that just got power. If we had wall switches, we could just pair them one at a time. Instead, they’re hard-wired and they are all on the same circuit. All we can do is turn off the breaker, but then when we try to pair a remote it pairs to all the fans at once to a single remote. Not so good.
Getting to the wiring of the fans is really difficult, so disconnecting them in the thin, overcrowded mounting boxes isn’t an option.
I’m thinking of wrapping the remotes in foil to see if I can limit their range to a meter or less while I’m pairing the fans.
—2p