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At the last apartment I lived in, I thought the people in the unit below me were constantly running an unbalanced washing machine, as I would frequently hear this loud, rhythmic THUNKA THUNKA THUNKA THUNKA coming from underneath my floor, usually for hours at a time. At least, I assumed it was a washing machine, since nobody has that much stamina for it to have been anything else, I thought.
After a few weeks, I put in a noise complaint because it was starting to get irritating. When the management followed up a few days later, they told me that the tenant below me just had their ceiling fan at full speed and two of the bolts unthreaded themselves, causing it to knock around wildly. And the tenant was deaf, so she had no clue her ceiling fan was only a few days from loosening itself completely and falling apart.
It's honestly a little insane that after over a hundred years, we haven't come up with a better way to move air around a room without dangling 50 pounds of spinning death above your head.
Ceiling fans are actually quite secure if they're mounted and balanced properly. Problem is that a lot of people don't know that:
A.) You can't just bolt a fan onto a junction box designed to hold a light. Well, you can but it'll eventually fall out of the ceiling.
B.) You can balance the fan by adding weights that stick on the back of the blades.
How do you determine where to place the weights?
There are tutorials online explaining how to do it but you have to know to look them up.
Very basically you run the fan at its lowest speed and watch to see where it wobbles and you put the weight on the opposite side of the pointer which it wobbles. Usually about 25% of the way along the length but you have to do a bit of trial and error to work out exactly how far along it needs to be.
But it's better to watch the videos because they're clearer and it's easier to understand when you have a visual reference
I think you probably saved her life
There are other ways to move air effectively, but it takes a lot more complexity. Those Dyson fans are an example, they move a lot of air with a much smaller fan.
There are better ways of moving air around, but since they involve high voltage plasma they are probably even less safe.
Although at least it be quiet.
Get a Vornado standing fan, and aim it at the opposing wall. You’ll feel a breeze everywhere in the room.
Is standing fan not good enough?
Opens up some floor space & may lead guests to assume you can afford ceiling fans