[PLUG-TALK] Fans

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Thu Jun 18 04:05:37 UTC 2015


On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 10:14:32PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> When I was a kid you could buy a fan that would last for decades. Short
> of buying an industrial grade fan (which are all larger than I want
> anyway), does anyone know of a household fan that will last?

On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com>
wrote:

> All of us have stories about old fans that lasted for years.
> That was bad for sales.  Of course, all they sell now is crap
> requiring frequent replacment.  The American shell corporations
> make money, the Chinese render us helpless and dependent, and
> the consumer gets another credit card to borrow money to pay off
> the other six credit cards.  Most people are worth more dead.
>
> If you want something that lasts, you probably must buy a small
> industrial grade fan - they come in all sizes.  Small ones for
> industrial work benches.  I haven't looked, because I still have
> a bunch of the old still-working fans from the last century.
>
> Granger?  Lab supply stores?  "Industrial" category on Amazon?
> Industrial surplus auctions?

On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 02:18:57PM -0700, Larry Brigman wrote:
> There is another option.  Start shopping around for a electric motor
> rebuild shop.  I had to do this when I had a pool pump go out and there
> were no replacement parts since the vendor was out of business.
> 
> This process will probably cost you double the cost of the replacement but
> it will probably out last the replacement too.

If you go the "motor rebuild" route, Conrey Electric is about
four blocks west-south of Free Geek and has motors and motor
parts and presumably does repairs.  I've fixed a few house
structure fans with their parts.

My guess is that the cheap consumer fans from the usual stores
are made of cheap everything - the bearing may be first to fail,
but plastic parts will get brittle and fail next, or the
switch, or the cord ...

Lastly, rather than a cheap box fan or an industrial fan, an 
ll-metal attic fan from Home Despot or Lowsy might make a good
indoor fan, with some wire mesh added to keep fingers and cats
out of the spinning metal blades.  Those fans survive decades
in hot attics.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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