Please help me choose a ceiling fan replacement strategy

đź’¬ Lounge
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Of all the things… ceiling fan replacement has become the bane of my existence this week.

Below describes what I’m hoping to accomplish strategically. I want to understand the concept I should employ versus a specific make/model, but if you have specific make/model suggestions, that’s awesome too.

After scanning the compatibility list I realize the devices associated with ceiling fans are switches or controllers mostly make/model independent anyway.

I’m hoping to limit the cost of each fan/light unit to 200$ or less and keep the cost of any additional hardware to a minimum.

My preferences:

  • Light/Fan combo
  • Able to control fan on/off/speed/direction
  • Able to control light on/off independent of fan
  • Use Zwave or Zigbee
  • No flashing with Tasmota/ESPHome
  • No custom code/drivers
  • No soldering and/or rocket surgery
  • No reliance on cloud
  • No more hubs (like Bond, etc.)
  • I hope to set up my Lutron Pro so a Pico can control the light’s on/off
  • Then use something else to control the fan’s speed/direction

Most everything will be controlled from HomeKit integrated into my C-7 using Home app and voice. I’ll have to figure out wall switches and scene controllers for the physical controls.

EDIT: There’s only two wires, both black, coming out of the ceiling into the current fan hosing /canopy. It’s an old house with old electrical. There’s certainly not separate wiring for fan and light here yet.

How do I pick the right fan?

Should I buy a dumb fan with RF and be forced to add a Bond hub?

Can I buy a dumb fan that works with a Sonoff type device and still control the fan and light independently?

Should I buy a smart fan and hope it works with HE using some custom driver?

Should I buy a fan with a replaceable controller and swap it with some Sonoff type Z-controller.

The place I’m most flexible is in the wireless protocol. If I must compromise somewhere to get everything else, I’ll consider WiFi or RF.

I just don’t know what to look for to get started. I bought these stupid “smart” Carro fans only to figure out they don’t have RF capability nor is their controller chip able to be replaced with something better.

I really thought ceiling fans were going to be the easy part of this journey, so far the hardest.

2

Here is my $0.02.

I have never used a smart fan. But I do have many dumb fans controlled with other hardware. So everything forward is assuming a dumb fan.

In order to control the fan and light separately, they will need to be wired accordingly. This is typically with a black wire for the fan power, and a blue wire for the light power (in the US).

Here are where the multiple options come into play...

  1. If the fan and light are wired to only one wall switch, then that switch usually controls the power to both the fan and the light. Here, you could use a smart switch or a smart relay.. but you would only have on/off for the fan/light combo... not individually.

  2. If the fan and light are wired to separate wall switches, then there is already independent power at the switches. Here, again, you could use a smart switch or smart relay in each switch to control the on/off of the fan and the light separately.

  3. Alternatively, you could install the smart relays in the fan wiring housing; and have one for lights and one for fan power. However, if you only have one wall switch; flipping the switch might kill power to one of the relays.

Here is the ideal situation (IMHO):

  • The ceiling fan is already wired to two wall switches. One for lights, one for fan.
  • Use a relay or smart switch for each dumb switch at the wall.

NOTES:

  • With a dumb fan, the speed and direction are controlled manually. Speed is usually a click of a pull string; and direction is a little slider on the base of the fan. These will not be able to be controlled smartly, with this simple scenario.
3

Awesome input, thank you!

I should have noted in my OP (and I will go edit to add it) that there’s only two wires in total powering the current fan. There’s also not a visible ceiling box either. Looks like a hole cut through the plaster ceiling and two black wires fed down it with the fan mounting bracket secured directly into a joist. Gotta love old houses. :grimacing:

Sounds like my best bet is to install a “smart relay” that basically splits the incoming power into two: one for the fan and one for the light, and then make sure the wall switch is never used, right?

Do you know which relay is HE supported, either Zigbee or Zwave, and allows for a single power input that independently relays power to the fan and light?

PS. Yes, there are plans for future electrical work to fix some of the crap that’s been done here. Fairly certain there used to be wall switches on either side of the room allowing the fan/light to be 3 way and I thought even where the wasn’t a neutral at the wall switch, there was still one in the ceiling fan??? But here I am with only two wires in the ceiling, one wall switch without wires connected to it (just capped together behind it for an always on connection, and a possible second wall switch that’s been drywalled over, presumably again with its wires capped together for always on. :triumph:

4

Mine's just 14-2 from fan box to switch box, since it was originally a can light there. I installed my fan a decade ago (no smart fans then), and it's just a basic 3-speed with integrated light and it uses an RF remote.

I've happily used Bond with it for many years, and I was thrilled when Bond integration came to HE (first as a community app, then also as native integration).

At the wall switch, I hard-wired the fan's power thru and I use a Zen32 there just to manage Bond-- main button toggles the light, and the 4 smaller buttons are speeds L-M-H and off/rev. Works perfectly, and it's all local.

5

Something like this? But this requires a neutral wire… I guess one of my two wires is a neutral wire though :tipping_hand_man:t2:

Zooz 700 Series Z-Wave Long Range Double Relay ZEN52 | Control 2 Lights Individually, Signal Repeater | Works with SmartThings, Hubitat, and Home Assistant (JS) | Z-Wave Hub Required (Sold Separately) https://a.co/d/5TXJfYL

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By 14-2 are you saying two 14-gauge wires ran to the ceiling box from the wall switch? So I’ve is the line and one is a neutral?

And you can control the fan’s power and light’s power independently using Bond?

You can turn on the light and leave fan off or turn on the fan and leave the light off?

7

Yes to all.

Bond is just a different form of the fan's remote -- so basically anything the remote can do, Bond can do.

When I initially installed the fan (and before Bond was a thing), I just had the remote taped up on a blank-face wall plate I had over the hard-wired switch box. The Z32 simply replaces that -- it looks much nicer, and it's conveniently line-powered.

8

First question: Do you have a partner you need to consult on the fan style?

If the answer is yes, then get the fan they like and worry about how to control it second. There’s an option for just about any fan out there.

In our case, we bought a nice looking fan off Wayfair. My wife picked it out. Has a built-in light and you can control the dim level, speed, direction etc. all from an RF remote. I use an RM4 Pro connected to Hubitat to control it. Any button controller will work if Hubitat can control it.

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Are you willing and able to run additional wires from the fixture to the switch box? If you are, then you could install dedicated switches for fan and light. If not, then Bond is probably your best bet.

Controlling fan speed will require a dedicated switch with speed controls for the fan. Or a Bond hub.

I believe the only way you could control a fan with reversible directions is with Bond (though I’m not 100% sure of that).

10

Probably not? If it’s just those two wires, it sounds like you have a switch loop that can break power to the fan.

Like this diagram perhaps (which shows a light bulb instead of fan, but same idea):

qc5cr

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Or, it might be this design.

image

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The secrets contained in the wall switch box will reveal all!

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Interesting. I would bet the two black wires are always hot, one to the hot for the fan and one to the hot for the lights. You can test by using a cheap voltage tester from home depot. Check each black wire independently; and see if you have voltage.

If you follow those two black wires back up into the ceiling, and to whatever junction box they are coming from; I'm betting there you'll also find the white neutral wire.

That depends. Do you have a partner, kids, others who might want to interact with the fan from a switch? If so, I would highly discourage making things "smart" only. This has proven to be troublesome for many folks here who are in loving relationships. If it is just you, and you don't care, than by all means.

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Maybe I'm misinterpreting your meaning here, but you certainly can make a dumb fan smart by using a fan control switch and leaving the pull chain in the high position.

15

Absolutely you can.
Thank you for the clarification.

However, it seems the OP is slightly against wall switches; and
Also, all the fan control switches I've seen require a neutral wire; which I'm thinking the OP is missing in the wall switch panel.

But yes, if you have neutral at the wall switch; you can absolutely control fan speed by leaving the housing on high, and using the switch at the wall.

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It’s not that I’m against them. I’ve gone to great lengths to kludge together modern solutions in this house that seems each room has wiring a digging decade than the next :sweat_smile: as there’s no ground at the outlets (gfci in the panel), some wiring is paper wrapped, some wall switches have neutral and some don’t, etc. I need to win the lottery and spend 20k to modernize run all new electrical thought the entire house… ah dreams.

But that does mean that the four rooms I want to install new fans in all have different electrical factors to consider so I’m shooting for the lowest common denominator: use Lutron Picos and the Lutron Pro Bridge allowing a “wall switch” to control the light’s power on/off. Then use something else to control all the fan functions, likely a combo of voice and some complicated scene controllers.

Two of the four rooms already have Lutron wall switches and a Pico for the far side of the room. Unfortunately these will give me on/off for the entire fan/light combo. I’d prefer the wall switches/Picos only control the light on/off and leave the fan power to a separate scene controller and voice, but that’s probably only possible if I find a (I think it’s called) “dual relay” where I can put it in the ceiling box, have a single power come in that gets divided and relayed with one going to a fans power input and the other to the light’s power input, idk.

The other two rooms are the same but not physically wired as 3 ways, so again… Picos and scene controllers, right?

I definitely want wall switches and I want them to not turn off the entire power to the ceiling either.

I’m learning a bunch in this effort!!!

17

I would pay a lot for a smart version of the Lutron Maestro fan/lite control single gang device. Tap for on/off (separate switches for fan and light). Dimmer for LED lights. 4 speed fan control. No canopy module.

There are a lot of similar dumb switches, i.e., a single device that controls fan on/off/speed and light on/off/dimming. I don't understand why there aren't any functionally equivalent smart devices from the well known manufacturers.

18

That's what this was. They supposedly were going to come out with a Zigbee version, but nothing yet.

I have two of these Z-Wave versions. I have it configured as a button controller and it send the commands to my RM4 Pro, which then controls our RF fan. However, it you have Pico, you can just mount a Pico Fan controller and a Pico Light controller in a gang plate and essentially have the same thing, just not in a single gang box.

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I saw those a while back, but they had already been discontinued. It was exactly what I was looking for, except that it required a canopy module.

It looks like their intended replacement solution is a new scene controller in conjuction with a fan canopy module. It's interesting that in the project description for the new scene controller, it states that the LGW36 fan/liight combo switch "...was one of our most popular light switches".

It seems like there should be enough homes with separate hots for the fan and light to warrant a single gang smart device for dumb fan/lite units that doesn't need a canopy module.

20

I didn’t even consider Lutron’s offerings that aren’t smart.

Here’s my fun in one of my four rooms. It’s the main living room with a doorway at either end. It has an RF fan/light combo on the ceiling with only two black wires entering the canopy. Fan mounted directly to the joist with plaster ceiling in between that has a hole covered by the canopy where the two black wires run into the fan.

On the wall next to one of the doorways there’s a spot in the plaster that’s been drywalled over. My guess is one of the two black wires in the ceiling is from this covered up area, and likely just capped off (or taped) behind the drywall.

On the wall next to the other doorway there’s a single gang with a dumb of/off light switch, but the switch never worked and I couldn’t turn off the ceiling fan. The fan spun, the light was always off, and I had no control of anything.

When I removed the switch from the gang, I found that the wires behind it were just tied together and not even connected to the light switch. That’s when I searched and found an RF remote!

I think the elderly lady that lived here needed a remote because of mobility problems so someone took both wall switches out of play leaving them constantly hot, and then gave her the remote for controlling the fan/light.

I don’t know of the light and fan had their own wall switches on opposite sides of the room (weird) or it they both controlled all the power in a normal 3-way setup with a traveler.

Anyone have any insights?!

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