Replacing a ceiling fan
TLDR:
- Realise fan is broken
- Call electrician expecting big bill
- Get kitchen chair and put into shower cubicle
- Break plastic shroud of old fan trying to elegantly get it off
- Undo 3 screws.
- Catch old fan is it falls on head
- Reach into ceiling and unplug old fan
- Get down off chair
- Go to hardware store with old fan
- Get new fan (or two to be safe)
- Get back home somehow
- Open box of fan, disregard instructions
- Put chair back in shower cubicle
- Get back on chair
- Forget screw driver
- Go get screw driver
- Get ceiling dust in eyes
- Put new fan in roof, plug in
- Screw in the brackets
- Realise the vent was not put in
- Unscrew the brackets
- Put vent back in
- Do it all again, but better
I go to the gym every second day. After the gym, I come home, I make a protein shake, I consume it, and I then go to the shower.
In my ensuite, where my shower is (and like many other areas of my house) - I have a temperature and humidity sensor. Only the ensuite is different. Behind the switch that turns on the ceiling fan, there's a relay, that is a smart. Well, it is a dumb relay, but it allows the switch to be operated remotely, or to be triggered by certain conditions.
I also have motion sensors in other parts of the house that automatically turn on lights in dark rooms at different times of the day, using different colour temperatures, depending on the time and a bunch of other automations.
Anyway, it was Monday. I did my gym routine, and came home. I put the grocery shopping away, I went to have my shower. The fan wasn't running, which meant the humidity in the ensuite was lower than my set threshold. I had my shower, while listening to an audio book on a blue tooth speaker that is in the ensuite.
I stepped out of the shower and realised the mirror was foggy. It shouldn't have been, the fan has an automation. I flicked the switch. Nope. The fan was dead.
I called an electrician, thinking this was about to be an expensive exercise. He spent about ten minutes on the phone with me, educating me on how to change the fan myself, and so that he wouldn't charge me $200, plus the cost of the fan.
He also warned me that the ceiling cut out would be a different size, based on the age of the house, the location it was in, and other work he had done in the area.
The guy was a fucking legend.
Anyway, one short trek to the annoying, monopolistic green shed later, and I had not one, but two, (Actually three, because I took the old one with me to make sure the cut out in the ceiling was the same size) ceiling fans, incase one of them was defective.
He told me to call back if there was any real electrical work that I need to get done.
It was easy enough to put the new one in - and I didn't even use YouTube, the supplied instruction manual, or any other tutorial. I sort of just reverse engineered it from the one that I had removed earlier.
A really simple task, and one that saved me a few hundred dollars, and probably a whole lot of mess.
But I know that there's a better tidier way to install it, because instead of using my ladder, I used a kitchen chair and couldn't see in the ceiling space very well.
I have since installed it properly. The box gave me a papercut as I ripped it to shreds to put in the recycling bin. I will be keeping the receipt, and fully intend to claim on the warranty when it dies, not if it dies.
I am very glad that I didn't need to use the supplied "template" to a cut a new hole in the plasterboard, because the supplied template is more akin to a bookmark and using a primary school compass than it is a template.
The fun thing about installing this myself is that I got to see the ethernet cables that run through my ceiling first hand :)
That, and this cool photo of me being responsible with safety goggles.
The only upsetting thing is that I spent more time in the line at Bunnings than I did walking to the back corner of the store where these bloody things were stored, and back to the counter to buy them.
I didn't buy nuthin' else. I also spilled Tea in my best friend's car. To be fair, it was her tea, and I cleaned it up... and left her car cleaner than what it was before my butt sat in it.
There you have it! How to fix a ceiling fan!
That is the sign of a true legend. I mean a lot of them just crack the shits and make you uncomfortable. I do wonder why you didn't ask Chat GPT though. Maybe because human?
I really like the idea that we may well have been in Bunnings at the same time, and that today, Hive had two posts with the word 'Bunnings' in them.
That pic does my nut in. It's like a magic eye I can't solve. Where TF is Steven????
I was on a chair. The phone taking the picture was in the ceiling, looking back down on me.
I get strange thoughts about convergence y'know, not just those I wrote about in the Atomic Origins story.
Listening to the radio, in a car, for example. Knowing that someone in the car next to you might be on the same station, singing along to the same song.
Wondering how many other people have sat in their car, at the front of the lights, at the intersection of Main North and Grand Junction Road. At any of the entrances to that intersection.
How we've so often been at the front of that queue, waiting for the light to change, but... don't know the count. I wish I did.
I heard someone say the other day that they were watching a show on Netflix, and the neighbour also was, and it was synced to the exact second, as if they'd put it on the exact same time.
Remember when TV was like that? When there were like... 5 channels, and there was a 20% chance of that happening? :P
Vaguely. Were there also dinosaurs?
Did you know that holoz0r is pronounced holo-saur? Just like DINOSAUR
No, I didn't. But I've never said the name aloud so it's always just been a pattern of letters and a wierd 0 in my mind.
Keep it weird!
Omg could not see for looking 🦯