Keeping the house cool, part 2. Ceiling Fans.

 I had 4 ceiling fans in the house when I bought it. 

Initially I thought I'd be able to use a Lutron Smart Fan controller and bridge, at least on some fans as they were in the section of the house that had been re-wired. Nope! All of them were on the wiring circuits that are not up to modern spec... as in there is no Neutral wire.

I'm a believer in Ceiling Fans. For a certain temperature range they do a very good job of keeping you cool, which comes from my experience of living in Sydney, Australia.

Similarly to living in Sydney, there is only a few weeks a year that it gets so disgustingly hot that you wish you had air conditioning. Indeed, Sydney is worse because it's quite humid compared to the South Bay Area of California.

However, to make the ceiling fans smart.....I had to replace all my fans with Hunter SimpleConnect Ceiling Fans. This was not going to be cheap..... or, as it turned out, simple!

The first ceiling fan I bought was the Hunter Symphony for the Master Bedroom. After all it is sleeping where hot weather becomes a problem. It was not a problem to install at all. 

first piece of advice, look around and especially sign up for Home Depot daily bargains. I have never paid full price for a fan and, on 2 occasions, I have got them at less than ½ price.

The fan comes with a remote control, so it meant I could get ride of the original blocky looking thing that was set in the wall and powered by a 9v battery. It can also be run from the Hunter App, as well as HomeKit. The HomeKit code is actually inside the remote control and you can access it via sliding off the battery cover.

One thing I do find a bit bizarre is that you have to set up the ability to do dimmer lighting after you have installed. Also, it's shame that Hunter use their own specific lighting. This means, on some models, you can't, for example, change it for Philips Hue.

Also, another thing to understand is that not all of the capabilities of all of the fans are the same. Some have the ability to go faster/slower by 33% - so 3 speed. Some by 25% - so 4 speed.

The fan does come with a. short downrod which is fine unless you have high ceilings... in which case you need to buy a long downrod separately. 

Also, I'd say a smallish room (up to 14m²/150ft²) is fine with 3 blades at 55". A Larger room requires 5 blades.

When you install with long downrods you'll probably have to balance the fan. It is possible, and Hunter provide the tools to do it with the fan. However, I found there was quite a bit of going up and down a ladder to get it done properly. Still, when all done you get an interface in HomeKit that looks like:

From here I can control the fan speed, the light brightness and the direction of the fan. If I'd gone with the Lutron Caseta solution, I would not have support for direction or the fan light. Having said that, you change fan direction twice a year, and you can always put in a smart bulb for the light itself. Still, I prefer to have it all in a single control.

The Siri commands are easy too. If you only have one fan in the room then you can just say "Hey Siri turn on the fan in the master bedroom to 25%"

In operation, the fans are incredibly quiet! There is some seriously good quality bearings in there!

I'd also say that their customer service is excellent for the fans. I had one that had a faulty WiFi module, which is what contains the Apple HomeKit chip, and they sent me another complete fan with virtually no delay.

Where it gets complicated.

When you add the 2nd fan, and add it to the Hunter SimpleConnect app, you really do have to follow the instructions. This is because you pair teh remote with the fan, and if the first fan is powered on, the fans can get confused. I ignored this to start with and it meant I had to reconfigure my older fan again. Now, this isn't so bad when you have only 2 fans.... but I have 4. It was, to put it mildly, a pain in the arse.

To make it even worse, I have subsequently found that the app keeps telling me that the fans are out of sync with home App (It doesn't tell you how) and instead of giving you the opportunity to resolve that by choosing if you want Hunter to override HomeKit, or vice versa, the only option you get is to blow everything away and start again! You do have the option of ignoring it and going to a less functional version of the app, which is only that you now do not have the ability to download firmware.... which is very infrequent.

However, this is where Hunter fall down. They seem to think it is acceptable to blow away a config and start again. Bad enough if you've configured 4 fans, but even worse if you've put them into some kind of automation. Try as I might, I just can't seem to get it across to Hunter that this is not an acceptable solution.

They re not alone in this. It seems to be common with companies that are not smart home from scratch and that this is something new. I'll cover my other, worse, instance of this in another blog post.

Overall

I'd give the fan a 5/5, especially if you get one at a significant discount like I did.

The app, though, gets a 3/5. Getting the reconfiguration message is ridiculous... although it still works with the cut down functionality.

Automation

After all that, remember that the whole point of this is to try and keep the house cool whilst minimising the amount of electricity used.

The automation on the fans is much more simplistic than the blinds.

The rule is

IF <room> temperature is 25C/77F

THEN turn on <room> Fan to 25%

ENDIF

and

IF <room> temperature is LT or EQ to 21C/70F

THEN turn off <room> fan

ENDIF

Now the percentage depends on the fan. As noted earlier, some are 3 speed and some are 4 speed.

It does also mean a rule pair for each room and it also means a temperature sensor in each room.

Still it works quite nicely.