Bring on the Cool!

And no, I'm not talking about the weather--although it is being a little bipolar this week. We started the week with record breaking temps near one hundred, and today's high is supposed to be in the sixties. Whatever.

Rather, I'm talking about installing fans in our house to help keep our cooling costs down! When we built the house, our builder put in fan boxes and all the necessary wiring for fans, but we opted to just put in light fixtures to start since it would save us a few hundred bucks. Well, we finally we able to justify the cost of getting some fans, which meant Darrell had the wonderful pleasure of installing them. And let me tell you, it was quite the process.

Taking down the old fixture--which was a little bit more challenging that it would seem

One blade down, four to go!

Building fans is messy business

Putting on the finishing touches!

Unfortunately, the photos don't quite document the entire headache that we had with this fan. After I snapped that last picture, Darrell flipped the fuse back on and we gave it a test run. The light worked fine, but only if you used the remote, and the fan blades didn't really do anything. After a brief consultation of some information online, Darrell decided that he need to re-wire the fan so that it would operate off of the light switches and not the remote. So we had to take the fan back down, which is a two person process--I have to hold the fan up while Darrell readjusts the wires. And that's one heavy fan. But, we got it done, and he had the wires figured out because the light switches now worked to operate the light and fan. However, the blades wouldn't spin very quickly, and wouldn't spin at all on high speed. So, he decides we need to look at the wires again and make sure the connections are good and everything. Cue round two of my holding up the entire fan. And for naught, because it still wouldn't spin. So, Darrell consulted the Internet, and discovered that when the fan works at low speeds but can't get up to high speeds it means that the capacitor is shot (how this is possible on a new fan is beyond me, but whatever). Darrell gave the company an earful on the phone, and they sent us a new one free of charge. But of course, we then at to install it. And it didn't come with any directions. So off came the fan--again (round three of my holding it up). When we got it back up--still no dice. Darrell is pretty much at his wits end with this fan, but thankfully the fans in our two bedrooms went up much easier and without any issues. So he didn't feel like a total DIY-failure.

I'm not entirely sure what we are going to end up doing with the one in our living room, though. We really like the fan, and I really really really don't want to take it down again (it's so heavy and hard to hold above my head!), but it's just not effective right now. I imagine that once things slow down at the office for Darrell he'll be back on the phone with the company, and let's just say I wouldn't want to be the person at the other end of that phone call!