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Can a Wobbly Ceiling Fan Fall Off?
A correctly installed ceiling fan will not fall however wobbly. Ceiling fans are by necessity secured to a stud via an electrical box. Without being attached to a stud, the weight of an average ceiling fan would be to much to stay up otherwise.
But that doesn’t mean all ceiling fans are attached correctly or the light fixture box that they are attached too is fastened to a stud correctly.
A good indicator on whether the installation was done right is how long the ceiling fan has been in place. If it’s been there for months and years, you can be sure it would have had much more of a problem than being wobbly by now.
if only other hand it’s a brand new ceiling fan, and or if you don’t trust the person who installed it, it’s well worth it too turn the fan off and make sure that it is fast and securely to a stud in the ceiling.
But that will usually not be the case.
A wobbly ceiling fan is most typically due to a bent blade holder or a blade holder that the screws have worked themselves loose on.
A wobbly ceiling fan is an unbalanced ceiling fan.
The easiest way a ceiling fan becomes unbalanced is that it has been hit and one of the fan blades has got out of sync because of a slight or even drastic bend in the fan holder.
I have seen ceiling fans begin to wobble after somebody decided to stop the ceiling fan with the broom. Even though the ceiling fan was off, it was still spinning, and trying to slow it down with the broom was enough to being one of the blades just enough that the fan begin to wobble.
All that to say, that it doesn’t take much to bend a fan blade on a ceiling fan.
How to Fix a Wobbly Ceiling Fan?
Fixing a wobbly ceiling fan is a lot of trial and error.
But it helps knowing the things that can cause it to start the wobble so that you can go through and make sure each part is working right.
1. Parts have work themselves loose.
Ceiling fans have many parts on them that can just work themselves loose or out of position overtime because of the centrifugal Force associated with them.
The easiest thing to do is just work your way down from the top. And every point along this list, if you have done anything to adjust it, turn the fan on and see if the problem is solved.
( Make sure that you let the fan come to a stop and don’t try to stop it otherwise. You could easily make the problem worse.)
A. At the point that the ceiling fan meets the ceiling, take the casing off and check make sure that the ball that the ceiling fan hangs on is sitting down and it’s bracket and is not worked itself out of place.
B. While the casing is off, you can make sure that the box that the ceiling fan hanging bracket is screwed into is secure.
C. Wipe all the ceiling fan blades off. Ceiling fan blades tend to get very dusty. Sometimes Dusty enough that the added weight from the dust can throw the fan out of balance.
D. Tighten all the screws. There is generally three screws on each fan holder attaching the blades to the main hub of the ceiling fan.
Go through and make sure all the screws are tight.
E. If you’ve gone through and made sure everything was secure and tightened, then the problem is more likely to be a fan blade that is slightly bent.
To find out if one of your blade holders is bent, take a tape measure and measure from the ceiling down to the end of each blade. One of the blades will most likely be a little further down from the ceiling than the other ones.
1. The easiest way to fix a bent ceiling fan blade is to purchase new fan blade holders. Then just replace each one.
Though buying new family holders and replacement may be easy, it’s not the cheapest way.
2. Purchase a ceiling fan balancing kit. ( You can find a free version of this below this section)
A balancing kit for a ceiling fan is a simple package of a weighted clip and a couple of small weights.
a. The first thing to do before you start applying the balancing kit is to number each ceiling fan blade by writing directly on them or putting a piece of tape on each one and writing on the tape.
This is an important step because you’re going to have to have a way to keep track of your progress as you go through each blade and check the balance.
b. Take the clip that comes in the package and put it on the first ceiling fan blade. (The one you marked with a 1). Turn the ceiling fan on and see if that took the wobble out. If it did not, go through the same process with each of the blades till you find the one that is out of balance.
c. Once you have found the ceiling fan blade that is out of balance, take the weights that came in the balancing package and tape one to the back of the fan blade that you found to be the culprit. (take the clip off). The second weight is included in case one weight is not quite enough to fix the problem.
How to Balance a Ceiling Fan with Coins?
Fixing a wobbly fan with pennies is the do it yourself version of a store-bought balancing kit.
Only it’s practically free except for the few pennies you’ll need to make it work.
To use this nifty ideal, you’ll have to have a few items that you can easily find around the house.
The first is pennies. You should probably find about 5 to start with. but you’re probably only going to end up using about three.
Some duct tape.
And a couple of potato chip bag clips if you really want to mimic the balancing kit.
Just like when you’re using a store-bought balancing kit, you want to clean and number each one of the ceiling fan blades before you start be able to keep up with which fan blade you tried in the process.
The ideal here is to take one of the potato chip bag clips and clip it on to the first ceiling fan blade. (The one you label number one)
Then turn the fan on and see if it made a difference in the wobbling. If it did, great.
You’re practically done.
But if it didn’t, you’re going to want to repeat the process blade by blade to you find the one that is giving you the wobbling trouble.
Finally after you have decided which blade is the problem maker, you’ll take the chip clip off and put the pennies on the back side of the blade and tape them down with duct tape.
How many pennies? This is also up to trial and error. It may take two, it may take five. However many it takes, the ideal is to add enough weight to the one ceiling fan blade that is causing your fan to wobble so that it is balanced and working well again.
Also if you find the duct tape does not hold the pennies on, you might have to switch to some super glue and fasten them a lot better.
