I just brought a Hunter Fan model 21871 at Home Depot. I'm new to ceiling fans, but I do have a moderate amount of residential electric and electronic install knowledge. I picked this fan after looking online and at Lowes and Home Depot because it was the only one that I liked the look of for a large room and with flush mount only 11.5" from ceiling to bottom of light.

Then I find out that the fan controls are "integrated" using an RF receiver for all functions. I read about people who had problems with the RF controls with the light coming on and off by itself and the fan changing speeds by itself. And Hunter told me you can't be turning the power on and off all the time at the light switch because it can damage the RF receiver.

I ordered a switch assembly from a similar Hunter Fan with pull chains and a hard wired reversing switch. As I suspected, the wire colors are the same for both the Hunter RF receiver and the basic switch they just sent me. Red, Pink, Gray, and Yellow to the fan motor. The basic switch has two capacitor assemblies, I think one of the two black boxes is a dual cap, a reversing switch, and a speed switch. It makes some sense to me. Someone wrote that one cap is for a startup winding to start the fan turning, and the other cap that has four wires on it is something to do with speed control?

I'm concerned about a few things. One: Am I right that I can use this basic switch instead of the RF receiver to convert this fan to hardwired? Two: Is there a in-wall fan control that is basically not "solid state" but more basic capacitor control? and Three: I wish someone could tell me for sure if the caps have to do with the speed control, or if the caps are just starting the fan turning, then the resistance in the three speed pull chain switch is what actually controls the speed? Is there two windings in most fans, the startup winding and the run winding? And then the run winding has different speeds *somehow*?

Ultimately, what I think I want is to be able to use a Leviton Decora X-10 remote switch to turn the fan on and off and some kind of wall mounted control to change speeds (non-remote control) and mount the reversing switch in the fan canopy. I want to use a Leviton X-10 Decora Dimmer to control incandescent loads/lamps in the fan. Unless anyone is up on CFL lamp dimming and knows a way to dim them with a Leviton Dimmer. I was looking at dimmable GU24 CFL's, but they don't seem to be perfected and widely available yet?

Thank you for any info.. I've been reading for days and I'm still quite confused about these issues. I really like this fan, except for the integrated controls...

L.

KeepItSimpleStupid

Agreed, but reversing a winding will change the direction too. It might not be the native way, but it will work.

KeepItSimpleStupid

Here is some guy rambing about speeds and capacitors: Ceiling Fan Capacitor Solutions Conscious Junkyard.

KeepItSimpleStupid

Here is a nice little paper describing lots of things related toPSC motors. http://www.ece.wisc.edu/~lipo/2000pub/00-04.PDF

Namely how capacitors are selected and that the AUX winding has a higher resistance than the main winding. Now, I'll bet that you don't have the ability to do 4-terminal ohms measurements on your motor. I have a few meters that can. 100 micro ohms (0.0001 ohms resolution for resistances below 200 ohms using a 4-wire method.

That real-word example shows 8.69 ohms and 9.91 ohms for the windings in the article. Without a 4-wire technique, your barking up the wrong tree. In that example it differs by about 12%.

The motor theory says that the aux winding has to be higher because the LC circuit of the capacitor/inductor circuit raises the voltage potential required to get the same current in the main winding.

Furthermore, it makes a reference to pulsation if you don't tget the capacitance right and you generally have a small range to work with. So, too much and it's going to pulse noticeably. To little, it may not be able to start.

And yes, changing the winding that gets the capacitor can work to change the directions when the windings have similar characteristics. Reversing either winding will also reverse the direction when the windings are identical.