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Language: en

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Did you know the ceiling fan is nearly as old as the electric light
bulb?

00:00:05.271 --> 00:00:09.042
Actually, did you know it's older than electricity itself?

00:00:09.609 --> 00:00:12.912
We humans really don't like the feeling of being hot,

00:00:12.912 --> 00:00:15.682
and we figured out more than a thousand years ago

00:00:15.749 --> 00:00:18.418
that forcing the air around us to move

00:00:18.451 --> 00:00:21.187
a la the wind can help us cool down.

00:00:21.688 --> 00:00:26.860
Hand fans like this worked great for millennia, but they really did a number on the wrists.

00:00:26.860 --> 00:00:31.874
And while the solution to that for a distressingly long period of time was to

00:00:31.874 --> 00:00:34.885
outsource that problem to other humans,

00:00:34.885 --> 00:00:40.740
once industrialization started giving us access to powered machinery, we had a much better solution.

00:00:40.907 --> 00:00:44.044
It didn't take that much imagination to use that machinery

00:00:44.044 --> 00:00:47.147
to spin some angled paddles hanging from the ceiling

00:00:47.180 --> 00:00:49.182
to create artificial wind.

00:00:49.649 --> 00:00:52.886
Early fans were driven by simple gearing or belts

00:00:52.952 --> 00:00:55.789
powered by waterwheels or even steam engines,

00:00:55.789 --> 00:01:02.128
and the... nicer factory owners out there would spend the money to install ceiling fans

00:01:02.128 --> 00:01:04.831
to help their workers beat the heat in the summertime.

00:01:05.298 --> 00:01:12.672
And since we figured out how to build electric motors which spin things very early into this whole electricity business,

00:01:12.806 --> 00:01:15.975
electric ceiling fans were an obvious invention.

00:01:16.209 --> 00:01:18.978
Just attach some of those fan blades to a motor,

00:01:18.978 --> 00:01:21.981
hang the thing from the ceiling and you've got a ceiling fan

00:01:22.015 --> 00:01:24.350
powered by electromagnetism.

00:01:24.984 --> 00:01:30.390
Philip Diehl is credited for inventing the electric ceiling fan in 1882,

00:01:30.490 --> 00:01:34.327
the same year Schuyler Wheeler is credited for inventing the electric...

00:01:34.828 --> 00:01:36.096
regular fan.

00:01:36.963 --> 00:01:38.565
Electric fans were pretty obvious,

00:01:38.565 --> 00:01:42.535
and arguably the first mass market application for the electric motor.

00:01:42.569 --> 00:01:45.672
In fact, many pioneering motor manufacturers

00:01:45.672 --> 00:01:48.541
went into business to sell cooling fans.

00:01:48.775 --> 00:01:52.011
Much of the United States gets pretty hot in the summer, so

00:01:52.045 --> 00:01:55.515
electric fans became a very intriguing item.

00:01:55.782 --> 00:01:58.852
If you were convinced to subscribe for Electric Light,

00:01:58.885 --> 00:02:03.022
you'd have to do a lot of work running wires around the place to light up each room,

00:02:03.056 --> 00:02:05.792
and maybe you could use 'em to keep cool, too.

00:02:06.092 --> 00:02:08.761
The idea of an artificial wind machine

00:02:08.761 --> 00:02:12.866
that you could just switch on must have been incredibly compelling.

00:02:12.866 --> 00:02:17.070
I imagine to many folks at the time,
it felt like controlling the weather.

00:02:17.203 --> 00:02:20.940
But we had barely figured any of this stuff out yet.

00:02:20.974 --> 00:02:27.080
We still hadn't settled on AC or DC power when Diehl patented his fan, and even once we did,

00:02:27.147 --> 00:02:30.917
electric motors were incredibly expensive to make.

00:02:30.950 --> 00:02:33.786
But over time, we'd learn how to mass produce them.

00:02:33.786 --> 00:02:36.823
And since all it takes to make a fan from a motor

00:02:36.823 --> 00:02:40.026
is the fan part, before long

00:02:40.059 --> 00:02:42.662
they started to become a fixture of our lives.

00:02:42.962 --> 00:02:45.098
Around the turn of the 20th century,

00:02:45.131 --> 00:02:49.169
ceiling fans were a common sight, especially in public spaces.

00:02:49.769 --> 00:02:51.638
But by the middle of the century,

00:02:51.638 --> 00:02:53.873
they rapidly began to disappear.

00:02:54.440 --> 00:02:56.309
The advent of air conditioning

00:02:56.376 --> 00:03:01.414
turned a once revolutionary cooling technology into old news,

00:03:01.414 --> 00:03:04.250
and for many years, those of us in the US

00:03:04.551 --> 00:03:07.587
pretty much forgot about ceiling fans.

00:03:07.987 --> 00:03:10.523
Which might be surprising, because today

00:03:10.557 --> 00:03:14.160
ceiling fans are once again a very common sight.

00:03:14.594 --> 00:03:17.730
Though I hear tell much of Europe hasn't discovered them yet.

00:03:18.198 --> 00:03:20.667
Maybe by the end I'll convince you to give ‘em a try.

00:03:20.833 --> 00:03:25.505
But the reason ceiling fans 
managed to stage a comeback over here

00:03:25.638 --> 00:03:28.841
is not quite as straightforward as you would think.

00:03:29.475 --> 00:03:34.614
If you're wondering how on Earth a video 
about such a simple thing could possibly be this long,

00:03:34.614 --> 00:03:36.349
well, hello, welcome to the channel.

00:03:36.349 --> 00:03:37.750
You must be new here!

00:03:37.750 --> 00:03:40.720
But I've been spending so much time on this script

00:03:40.720 --> 00:03:45.525
because the humble ceiling fan can explain so much about us.

00:03:45.892 --> 00:03:50.863
It's resurgence in the United States
 is a fascinatingly human story

00:03:50.863 --> 00:03:55.368
where nostalgia for the past amplified a cultural moment of reckoning.

00:03:55.635 --> 00:03:58.504
But that nostalgia, while useful

00:03:58.504 --> 00:04:01.241
for reminding us of a good idea we had abandoned,

00:04:01.608 --> 00:04:04.143
also opened the door for a market

00:04:04.143 --> 00:04:06.312
which quickly turned to crap.

00:04:06.746 --> 00:04:08.715
Ceiling fans began to be sold

00:04:08.715 --> 00:04:11.150
not so much for their functional purpose,

00:04:11.150 --> 00:04:14.153
but instead for their fashionable looks.

00:04:14.153 --> 00:04:16.789
And when fashion comes first,

00:04:16.990 --> 00:04:20.994
weird things happen which we're still dealing with to this day.

00:04:21.527 --> 00:04:24.163
To understand what I mean, we have to start

00:04:24.163 --> 00:04:26.633
with what ceiling fans used to look like.

00:04:26.899 --> 00:04:30.470
This vintage ceiling fan made by the Hunter fan company

00:04:30.503 --> 00:04:33.706
might look like the most generic and traditional

00:04:33.706 --> 00:04:36.509
ceiling fan design you could possibly imagine,

00:04:36.909 --> 00:04:40.213
but that's because when this design was first made,

00:04:40.246 --> 00:04:44.017
fans were the only cooling technology we had.

00:04:44.017 --> 00:04:47.954
And the whole point of hanging one from the ceiling like this

00:04:47.954 --> 00:04:51.824
was to produce a lot of air movement so the cooling effect

00:04:51.824 --> 00:04:54.027
could be felt throughout a large area.

00:04:54.494 --> 00:04:57.897
That required big, aggressively pitched paddles

00:04:57.897 --> 00:05:03.269
which pushed on lots of air,
and spinning them required a powerful motor.

00:05:03.770 --> 00:05:06.572
However, when at operating speed,

00:05:06.606 --> 00:05:09.575
the paddles don't actually move very fast at all.

00:05:10.043 --> 00:05:14.047
At full speed, this fan only rotates at 200 rpm,

00:05:14.047 --> 00:05:17.417
and with the technology of the time, a strong motor

00:05:17.417 --> 00:05:21.220
designed to run that slowly needed to be quite large.

00:05:21.387 --> 00:05:25.525
Which is why the motor itself is what you're looking at.

00:05:25.591 --> 00:05:28.561
That's not a decorative cover with a motor inside.

00:05:28.561 --> 00:05:32.832
It's a 40 pound lump of cast iron and copper windings.

00:05:33.132 --> 00:05:38.004
This is function over form and even the details are functional.

00:05:38.271 --> 00:05:40.573
That pattern of holes may look pretty,

00:05:40.573 --> 00:05:44.043
but it's there for ventilation to keep the windings cool.

00:05:44.877 --> 00:05:48.626
And because those great big motors needed lots of raw materials

00:05:48.626 --> 00:05:52.685
and skilled labor to produce, they were pretty expensive.

00:05:52.985 --> 00:05:56.089
Even into the 1920s when we had figured out

00:05:56.089 --> 00:06:03.196
how to make motors pretty well, a ceiling fan like this cost the 2026 equivalent of about a thousand bucks,

00:06:03.196 --> 00:06:07.200
and pricing would remain similarly high for decades to come.

00:06:08.034 --> 00:06:10.336
The high cost of a ceiling fan meant

00:06:10.336 --> 00:06:13.806
it was mainly businesses and institutions that would spend the cash

00:06:13.806 --> 00:06:15.808
and go through the effort to install them.

00:06:16.209 --> 00:06:17.977
They had plenty of incentive

00:06:17.977 --> 00:06:20.613
to keep their employees happy and their guests cool

00:06:20.613 --> 00:06:23.850
so they could justify the cost, especially since one

00:06:23.883 --> 00:06:25.985
fan could handle a whole room.

00:06:26.452 --> 00:06:29.175
Also, thanks to the advent of light kits,

00:06:29.175 --> 00:06:32.567
which attached light fixtures to the bottom of a ceiling fan,

00:06:32.567 --> 00:06:35.661
installing one could add room lighting at the same time,

00:06:35.928 --> 00:06:40.000
making them a compelling purchase  in the early days of electrification,

00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:43.503
even in parts of the country where it's only hot part of the year.

00:06:44.036 --> 00:06:48.908
Over time, as electrification spread and awareness of ceiling fans did too,

00:06:48.941 --> 00:06:52.311
they'd slowly gain some popularity in the home,

00:06:52.311 --> 00:06:54.347
but mainly among the wealthier set

00:06:54.380 --> 00:06:57.950
and mainly in parts of the country which were chronically hot.

00:06:58.351 --> 00:07:02.855
Once we had standardized on plugs and sockets... and voltage,

00:07:02.855 --> 00:07:06.826
it was a lot easier to just plug in a portable fan like this.

00:07:07.193 --> 00:07:11.731
These fans, with their much smaller blades designed to rotate very quickly

00:07:11.798 --> 00:07:16.135
could use much more compact motors, and that made them a lot more affordable.

00:07:16.636 --> 00:07:18.738
Plus, they don't need permanent installation

00:07:18.738 --> 00:07:21.107
and they can be moved around the house as you do.

00:07:21.140 --> 00:07:25.411
So these were a much better value in the eyes of most ordinary people.

00:07:26.012 --> 00:07:31.384
Still, ceiling fans were a very common sight around town wherever people congregated,

00:07:31.384 --> 00:07:33.986
like their favorite restaurants or maybe the barbershop,

00:07:33.986 --> 00:07:36.889
or the old soda fountains and the bank and whatnot.

00:07:37.123 --> 00:07:41.804
They were a staple of the community, which everyone would see as they went about their day

00:07:41.804 --> 00:07:44.597
and in the summer, which everyone enjoyed.

00:07:45.198 --> 00:07:50.903
That is, of course, until my hero Willis Carrier invented air conditioning.

00:07:51.404 --> 00:07:54.841
Fans can't actually lower the temperature in a room,

00:07:54.841 --> 00:07:57.376
but air conditioning can.

00:07:57.376 --> 00:08:00.646
And, air conditioning could also lower ambient humidity, too

00:08:00.646 --> 00:08:03.449
providing a whole new kind of comfort.

00:08:03.983 --> 00:08:06.686
Air conditioning was this marvelous new invention

00:08:06.686 --> 00:08:10.823
getting installed in movie theaters to boost ticket sales, and before long

00:08:10.823 --> 00:08:14.827
everywhere else a blast of arctic air could draw in some customers.

00:08:15.328 --> 00:08:21.133
As you may imagine, this caused demand for new ceiling fans to rapidly dry up.

00:08:21.467 --> 00:08:24.337
The public spaces they were most likely to be seen

00:08:24.370 --> 00:08:27.752
were also the first to install air conditioning.

00:08:27.752 --> 00:08:33.646
And before too long, air conditioning systems became affordable enough for average folks to buy one.

00:08:34.447 --> 00:08:40.052
Now, air conditioning was extremely energy intensive compared to ceiling fans.

00:08:40.052 --> 00:08:43.789
But during the post-war boom, where we were building power plants left and right,

00:08:43.789 --> 00:08:46.792
and we barely had to work to get coal and oil out of the ground,

00:08:47.226 --> 00:08:49.996
we weren't thinking very much about that.

00:08:50.129 --> 00:08:54.767
We were thinking about the tremendous work needed to upgrade the power grid

00:08:54.800 --> 00:09:00.172
such that all those new suburban homes could have an energy hungry air conditioner of their own, and later

00:09:00.172 --> 00:09:03.276
central air conditioners which cooled the whole house.

00:09:03.809 --> 00:09:05.011
But you know what?

00:09:05.177 --> 00:09:09.749
We did that work because we're humans who know how to do very hard things

00:09:09.749 --> 00:09:13.486
like run wires and upgrade power grids when we want to.

00:09:14.453 --> 00:09:16.122
If only we could remember that.

00:09:16.289 --> 00:09:21.394
Anyway, the point is air conditioning was expensive and very difficult to deploy,

00:09:21.427 --> 00:09:24.830
but energy was cheap and it was a sign of progress

00:09:24.830 --> 00:09:28.668
which was extremely desirable to a wealthy, growing nation.

00:09:29.235 --> 00:09:33.739
Meanwhile, ceiling fans were literally old technology.

00:09:33.739 --> 00:09:36.342
So as air conditioning became widespread,

00:09:36.409 --> 00:09:39.745
ceiling fans started to disappear from our lives.

00:09:39.845 --> 00:09:44.684
By the 1960s, there were few companies bothering to make them in the US.

00:09:45.251 --> 00:09:49.121
Robbins and Myers, the iron foundry turned motor manufacturer

00:09:49.121 --> 00:09:53.326
who made this desk fan and had acquired Hunter in 1949,

00:09:53.392 --> 00:09:55.995
kept the Hunter ceiling fan line in production

00:09:55.995 --> 00:10:00.266
as there was still reasonable demand for ceiling fans in outdoor spaces,

00:10:00.633 --> 00:10:02.969
but for indoor spaces

00:10:03.202 --> 00:10:07.607
ceiling fans became quite esoteric and the mark of a cheapskate.

00:10:08.074 --> 00:10:12.578
There were, however, plenty of situations where air conditioning was impractical,

00:10:12.612 --> 00:10:15.047
like large factories and warehouses.

00:10:15.047 --> 00:10:19.418
So there was still decent industrial demand for ceiling fans.

00:10:19.418 --> 00:10:22.722
But those buyers wanted cheap, reliable fans

00:10:22.722 --> 00:10:24.423
which did the job without a fuss.

00:10:24.423 --> 00:10:27.259
And that's how this came to be.

00:10:27.693 --> 00:10:30.429
This is an Emerson Heat Fan.

00:10:30.429 --> 00:10:34.867
And yes, it’s called a heat fan despite the fact that it's just a ceiling fan.

00:10:34.900 --> 00:10:37.003
That's important for what comes later.

00:10:37.003 --> 00:10:41.440
But those in the ceiling fan collector community often call this the blenderfan

00:10:41.507 --> 00:10:44.644
thanks to the motors resemblance to the base of a kitchen blender.

00:10:45.044 --> 00:10:49.048
And yes, there's a ceiling fan collector community because of course there is!

00:10:49.048 --> 00:10:50.449
Humans are awesome.

00:10:50.483 --> 00:10:52.418
Get yourself a proper fixation.

00:10:52.418 --> 00:10:53.119
It's fun!

00:10:53.119 --> 00:10:56.455
I know way too much about ceiling fans now.

00:10:56.956 --> 00:10:59.158
Anyway, much like Robbins and Myers,

00:10:59.191 --> 00:11:02.328
Emerson was a pioneering electric motor manufacturer

00:11:02.328 --> 00:11:04.730
who got started selling cooling fans

00:11:05.131 --> 00:11:08.634
because, again, it's the simplest thing to do with a motor.

00:11:08.834 --> 00:11:11.370
Stick some fan blades on it and job done.

00:11:11.370 --> 00:11:16.709
But over the years, Emerson grew into a major industrial supplier of electric motors

00:11:16.709 --> 00:11:20.613
which got used by all sorts of industries for all sorts of things.

00:11:20.880 --> 00:11:24.016
For decades they had been making ceiling fans

00:11:24.050 --> 00:11:28.421
very similar to this Hunter model, but as ceiling fans went from

00:11:28.421 --> 00:11:31.390
 “desirable thing to keep your patrons comfortable” to

00:11:31.390 --> 00:11:34.460
“the solution for when air conditioning is too expensive,”

00:11:34.894 --> 00:11:37.930
Emerson got a little crafty with their production lines.

00:11:38.397 --> 00:11:41.133
They decided to take one of the washing machine motors

00:11:41.133 --> 00:11:43.402
they pumped out like some kind of motor factory,

00:11:43.402 --> 00:11:47.707
and stuck some fan blades onto it so they could sell it as a ceiling fan.

00:11:47.707 --> 00:11:50.376
And that's why this looks the way that it does.

00:11:50.843 --> 00:11:52.845
This is just a washing machine motor.

00:11:53.713 --> 00:11:55.314
That's a little oversimplified,

00:11:55.314 --> 00:11:58.551
because the technical details of this motor are quite different

00:11:58.551 --> 00:12:00.986
from what would go in an actual washing machine.

00:12:01.020 --> 00:12:03.756
Plus, they had to design a flywheel to attach the blades to

00:12:03.789 --> 00:12:06.892
and add a switch housing so you could actually turn it on and off

00:12:06.892 --> 00:12:08.594
and select between its speed settings.

00:12:08.594 --> 00:12:14.033
But this right here is the same case K63 motor housing which Emerson was using

00:12:14.033 --> 00:12:16.702
for all sorts of applications.

00:12:17.103 --> 00:12:20.973
They likely started using it so they could shut down the production line

00:12:20.973 --> 00:12:26.712
of pancake motors, which were only useful for the rapidly declining ceiling fan market.

00:12:27.313 --> 00:12:30.216
So as we approach the 1970s,

00:12:30.282 --> 00:12:32.752
you had essentially two options:

00:12:32.752 --> 00:12:36.088
 an extremely traditional ceiling fan from Hunter

00:12:36.088 --> 00:12:37.990
or this... thing.

00:12:38.557 --> 00:12:42.361
However, the situation was very different in other parts of the world,

00:12:42.394 --> 00:12:45.197
particularly the warm climates of Asia.

00:12:45.598 --> 00:12:47.967
Buildings were rapidly getting electrified,

00:12:47.967 --> 00:12:51.504
but energy resources weren't abundant enough for air conditioning

00:12:51.570 --> 00:12:53.806
to become widespread for quite some time.

00:12:54.440 --> 00:13:00.212
So while we had basically stopped caring and arguably even trying,

00:13:00.513 --> 00:13:05.050
ceiling fan manufacturing was experiencing a huge boom overseas.

00:13:05.117 --> 00:13:08.120
For example, the Shell Manufacturing Company

00:13:08.120 --> 00:13:12.558
in Hong Kong built upon an idea
which appears to have originated in Italy.

00:13:13.092 --> 00:13:15.294
Turning the motor inside out

00:13:15.327 --> 00:13:19.064
allowed for a sleeker looking fan, which was also a lot cheaper

00:13:19.064 --> 00:13:21.267
to build from a materials perspective.

00:13:21.767 --> 00:13:24.203
Here's an example of such a ceiling fan motor.

00:13:24.470 --> 00:13:29.898
Unlike the traditional American design where the stator windings surround the spinning rotor,

00:13:29.898 --> 00:13:33.312
in this design the stator windings are inside the rotor,

00:13:33.312 --> 00:13:37.483
and the outside surface of the whole thing is what spins,

00:13:37.516 --> 00:13:40.486
giving them their common name “spinner motors.”

00:13:40.853 --> 00:13:44.156
This greatly simplified the design of a ceiling fan

00:13:44.156 --> 00:13:49.595
and lowered materials cost substantially since you didn't really need a motor housing.

00:13:49.962 --> 00:13:52.765
Just attach the fan blades directly to the motor.

00:13:53.632 --> 00:13:57.970
Early designs had some glitches to work out, like bearings which failed prematurely,

00:13:57.970 --> 00:14:00.039
but eventually those issues were solved

00:14:00.039 --> 00:14:04.076
and this became a much more refined and cost effective design

00:14:04.076 --> 00:14:06.679
than anything we were making here in the States.

00:14:07.413 --> 00:14:10.349
On occasion, fans like this ended up getting imported

00:14:10.349 --> 00:14:14.720
to the US and sold as a cheap alternative to the fans from Emerson and Hunter,

00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:20.092
but it was a pretty rare occasion since nobody really wanted a ceiling fan.

00:14:20.526 --> 00:14:22.628
But that was about to change.

00:14:22.962 --> 00:14:25.631
Remember how this is called the heat fan?

00:14:25.965 --> 00:14:29.568
Emerson started making these things in the 1960s,

00:14:29.568 --> 00:14:33.439
but in 1973 we would go through a bit of an oil crisis

00:14:33.472 --> 00:14:38.010
which we clearly learned lots of very good lessons from.

00:14:38.010 --> 00:14:42.381
In response to the oil embargo causing energy to get much more expensive,

00:14:42.381 --> 00:14:47.052
including heating oil which was still quite commonly used back then,

00:14:47.453 --> 00:14:51.490
Emerson started to market their ceiling fans as heat recovery fans

00:14:51.490 --> 00:14:53.692
which could save on heating costs.

00:14:54.426 --> 00:14:56.562
See, in a space with high ceilings

00:14:56.562 --> 00:15:00.065
like a factory, warehouse, or even a church sanctuary,

00:15:00.132 --> 00:15:04.069
a temperature gradient forms in the winter due to warm air

00:15:04.103 --> 00:15:06.372
rising above denser, cooler air.

00:15:06.672 --> 00:15:11.252
And this means a lot of the heat energy coming from a building’s heating system

00:15:11.252 --> 00:15:14.515
simply ends up stuck at the ceiling where nobody can feel it.

00:15:14.515 --> 00:15:16.148
A pretty significant waste.

00:15:16.548 --> 00:15:19.218
If you could use some sort of mechanical device

00:15:19.218 --> 00:15:22.021
to push that warm air back down to the floor,

00:15:22.054 --> 00:15:25.224
then you could recover that wasted heat energy.

00:15:25.291 --> 00:15:29.061
Thus heat recovery, also known as heat reclamation.

00:15:29.395 --> 00:15:32.498
Getting the warm air back down to the floor where the people are

00:15:32.665 --> 00:15:35.067
would not only make the heat more useful, but

00:15:35.100 --> 00:15:39.638
since the thermostat is down there, too, the heating system won't need to run as often

00:15:39.638 --> 00:15:43.475
and it will burn less if it's suddenly much more expensive fuel.

00:15:44.877 --> 00:15:47.346
Emerson just so happened to make ceiling fans

00:15:47.346 --> 00:15:49.648
which would be perfect for heat reclamation,

00:15:49.648 --> 00:15:53.319
so they began to market them specifically for that purpose.

00:15:53.319 --> 00:15:59.124
And that's why their very utilitarian ceiling fan, which is the same ceiling fan it was before

00:15:59.325 --> 00:16:01.160
became the Heat Fan.k

00:16:01.660 --> 00:16:05.164
Industry and large institutions were slowly discovering

00:16:05.164 --> 00:16:08.734
that ceiling fans could be useful for saving energy.

00:16:08.734 --> 00:16:11.070
And the good word was starting to spread.

00:16:11.537 --> 00:16:14.773
And you know what else got really expensive very suddenly?

00:16:15.374 --> 00:16:16.575
Air conditioning.

00:16:17.009 --> 00:16:21.647
We still burned quite a lot of oil 
for generating electricity back in 1973,

00:16:21.647 --> 00:16:24.450
which meant the oil embargo made pretty much

00:16:24.450 --> 00:16:27.653
everything we did using energy much more expensive.

00:16:27.653 --> 00:16:30.689
And out of necessity, people began to realize

00:16:30.689 --> 00:16:33.292
that they could save some money on their electricity bills

00:16:33.292 --> 00:16:35.761
by turning up the temperature on their thermostats

00:16:35.761 --> 00:16:38.697
and using electric fans to keep cool.

00:16:39.198 --> 00:16:41.834
Basic portable fans were still widely available,

00:16:41.834 --> 00:16:43.769
now with less finger chopping!

00:16:44.336 --> 00:16:47.006
But while fans were all the rage,

00:16:47.373 --> 00:16:52.611
ceiling fans were still expensive and ugly industrial items,

00:16:52.611 --> 00:16:56.415
which relatively few people would consider appropriate
for a living room.

00:16:56.949 --> 00:17:02.254
[Scott Joplin’s Easy Winners plays in background]
However, in 1973, we were also going through a very intense

00:17:02.254 --> 00:17:05.624
wave of nostalgia for the turn of the 20th century.

00:17:05.991 --> 00:17:09.395
Films like The Sting repopularized the ragtime music

00:17:09.395 --> 00:17:13.065
of Scott Joplin, and earlier films like Hello, Dolly!

00:17:13.098 --> 00:17:16.335
brought the Gay Nineties back into our collective attention,

00:17:16.435 --> 00:17:19.571
as did the restaurant chain TGI Fridays.

00:17:20.105 --> 00:17:22.341
Walt Disney World had just opened in Florida

00:17:22.341 --> 00:17:27.913
with a duplication of Disneyland's Main Street, U.S.A., bringing an idealized recreation

00:17:27.913 --> 00:17:31.183
of turn of the century America to a national audience.

00:17:31.617 --> 00:17:35.354
It was a whole thing, which lasted a surprising while.

00:17:35.454 --> 00:17:39.691
Cheers, the TV show wouldn't hit the airwaves until 1982,

00:17:39.691 --> 00:17:45.798
and yet the Tiffany lamp, stained glass and ornate woodwork aesthetic was still going strong.

00:17:46.598 --> 00:17:50.002
While we were enamored with that old timey aesthetic,

00:17:50.135 --> 00:17:54.373
well, we started getting obsessed with antiques and curios of the time.

00:17:55.107 --> 00:17:57.709
And, you know what was a quaint, old timey curio

00:17:57.743 --> 00:18:01.280
you could find in antique shops which hailed from the turn of the century?

00:18:02.281 --> 00:18:03.816
Ceiling fans.

00:18:04.383 --> 00:18:09.054
Yep, ceiling fans started to become a fashionable item

00:18:09.088 --> 00:18:12.057
thanks to our sudden obsession with the past.

00:18:12.491 --> 00:18:15.294
But it's even weirder than it sounds on the surface.

00:18:15.294 --> 00:18:18.997
I'm skipping details for time, but in 1974

00:18:19.064 --> 00:18:23.902
an antiques dealer named Burton Burton founded the Casablanca Fan Company

00:18:23.902 --> 00:18:27.940
to sell reproductions of antique ceiling fans.

00:18:27.973 --> 00:18:30.976
But when I say reproductions,

00:18:30.976 --> 00:18:34.880
I don't mean “ceiling fans that look like antiques.”

00:18:34.947 --> 00:18:42.054
I mean “objects which appear to be antique ceiling fans” because his earliest designs were,

00:18:42.054 --> 00:18:45.624
I kid you not, purely decorative.

00:18:45.891 --> 00:18:52.097
Initially, they started making reproductions 
of the old belt-driven ceiling fan systems you'd find in a factory,

00:18:52.097 --> 00:18:55.100
and those made their way into lots of themed restaurants,

00:18:55.100 --> 00:18:58.570
including at least one Portillo's I have myself been to.

00:18:59.004 --> 00:19:05.677
They were rigged to rotate, but nowhere near fast enough to actually function as effective ceiling fans.

00:19:05.978 --> 00:19:11.116
Yet diners were so captivated by the visual of old timey

00:19:11.116 --> 00:19:15.587
spinning things that it became a shockingly huge fad.

00:19:15.988 --> 00:19:18.857
And the visual really was the point.

00:19:19.124 --> 00:19:21.260
For those who may not know the connection,

00:19:21.293 --> 00:19:24.429
the name Casablanca Fan Company was chosen

00:19:24.429 --> 00:19:29.168
because of how prominently ceiling fans are featured 
in the film Casablanca.

00:19:29.668 --> 00:19:30.936
You know, Humphrey Bogart.

00:19:30.969 --> 00:19:32.337
Here's looking at you, kid.

00:19:32.871 --> 00:19:36.275
In the film, the ceiling fans shown on screen

00:19:36.308 --> 00:19:38.644
were props meant to convey to the audience

00:19:38.644 --> 00:19:43.582
that it's hot in Casablanca, and because they were movie props,

00:19:43.582 --> 00:19:46.251
they were rigged up to spin much more slowly

00:19:46.251 --> 00:19:48.921
than an actual ceiling fan would.

00:19:48.921 --> 00:19:51.390
A real ceiling fan in operation

00:19:51.423 --> 00:19:54.893
doesn't look very interesting or even recognizable on film

00:19:54.893 --> 00:19:57.429
because its blades will just blur together.

00:19:57.896 --> 00:20:03.435
And the look from the film is what Burton Burton was trying to replicate.

00:20:03.502 --> 00:20:06.572
He wasn't trying to sell actual ceiling fans.

00:20:06.572 --> 00:20:10.542
He was trying to sell a kind of dynamic decoration,

00:20:10.542 --> 00:20:15.314
which just so happened to be copies of antique ceiling fan designs.

00:20:15.981 --> 00:20:20.552
Quick side note, Emerson, who we already know was great at selling the same thing

00:20:20.552 --> 00:20:23.689
they had always been making for different reasons, also started

00:20:23.689 --> 00:20:27.025
selling their ceiling fans using the name Casablanca.

00:20:27.426 --> 00:20:30.362
I'm guessing the film must have been on TV a lot at the time.

00:20:30.462 --> 00:20:34.433
In fact, Emerson trademarked the name Casablanca

00:20:34.466 --> 00:20:37.903
before Burton Burton started his company,
which turned into a whole mess

00:20:37.903 --> 00:20:39.271
which we don't need to get into.

00:20:39.404 --> 00:20:42.341
Emerson was just trying to sell more of their fans,

00:20:42.341 --> 00:20:47.779
but the Casablanca fan company was trying to serve the weirdly huge demand

00:20:47.779 --> 00:20:51.195
for purely decorative turn of the century ceiling fans,

00:20:51.195 --> 00:20:55.420
which were suddenly all the rage in your favorite themed restaurant chains.

00:20:56.188 --> 00:21:00.325
This sounds nuts, but I mean, it sure was flair.

00:21:00.792 --> 00:21:05.931
And as the general public became exposed to ceiling fans in formal settings again,

00:21:05.964 --> 00:21:11.270
their reputation as quaint, oddball things to have in the home started to fade.

00:21:11.770 --> 00:21:14.439
After all, quaint was in!

00:21:14.473 --> 00:21:17.576
And the timing could not have been more perfect.

00:21:17.809 --> 00:21:22.748
People were being reexported to ceiling fans right at the start of an energy crisis,

00:21:22.748 --> 00:21:25.951
which renewed interest in their functional purpose, too.

00:21:26.652 --> 00:21:33.926
For a brief while, the options for actually functional ceiling 
fans remained quite limited and mostly industrial.

00:21:34.393 --> 00:21:40.532
But all it really takes to make a ceiling fan 
look old timey and fashionable is decoration.

00:21:40.565 --> 00:21:43.769
So many companies, including Casablanca,

00:21:43.802 --> 00:21:47.739
started purchasing real ceiling fan motors from suppliers like Emerson

00:21:47.739 --> 00:21:50.409
and concealing them in decorative shrouds

00:21:50.409 --> 00:21:54.079
which replicated the appearance of old timey fans.

00:21:54.513 --> 00:21:59.151
Give the blades some details, like perhaps a stencil or a woven inlay,

00:21:59.217 --> 00:22:03.588
and now you have a decorative fan, 
which is both in fashion and —

00:22:03.588 --> 00:22:06.325
get this, actually works!

00:22:06.892 --> 00:22:10.729
Ceiling fans were now being sold as a premium item

00:22:10.729 --> 00:22:14.700
which was both an energy saving appliance and furniture,

00:22:15.167 --> 00:22:17.002
and this was only the beginning.

00:22:17.636 --> 00:22:23.241
You see, there would be a sequel to the 1973 oil crisis in 1979.

00:22:23.275 --> 00:22:27.379
And so ceiling fans, already experiencing renewed interest

00:22:27.379 --> 00:22:30.549
as a premium item for the nostalgic middle class,

00:22:30.549 --> 00:22:32.918
started flying off the shelves.

00:22:33.452 --> 00:22:36.221
We finally realized we had made a mistake

00:22:36.221 --> 00:22:38.390
in getting rid of all those ceiling fans.

00:22:38.523 --> 00:22:42.272
They made us comfortable before air conditioning, after all,

00:22:42.272 --> 00:22:46.731
and our collective decision to view air conditioning as a replacement for them

00:22:46.965 --> 00:22:49.601
turned out to be a false choice.

00:22:50.001 --> 00:22:52.437
As energy policy started to become a thing

00:22:52.437 --> 00:22:56.007
and we began looking at ways to increase energy efficiency,

00:22:56.174 --> 00:22:59.378
new homes started getting constructed with electrical boxes

00:22:59.378 --> 00:23:03.081
on the ceiling meant specifically for ceiling fans.

00:23:03.415 --> 00:23:05.817
Home builders were happy to go along with it, too,

00:23:05.851 --> 00:23:11.656
since a fan with a light kit could fulfill code requirements for lighting in bedrooms and living rooms.

00:23:11.990 --> 00:23:15.761
This massively increased the market for new ceiling fans,

00:23:15.761 --> 00:23:19.097
and with a new market came a flurry of innovation.

00:23:19.331 --> 00:23:21.400
For the first time in decades,

00:23:21.433 --> 00:23:26.169
new motor designs meant specifically for ceiling fans were being developed

00:23:26.169 --> 00:23:29.207
to make them even more energy efficient than they already were.

00:23:30.008 --> 00:23:35.781
Some were flops, but others were significant 
improvements both to performance and noise.

00:23:36.214 --> 00:23:38.717
New controls for those motors appeared,

00:23:38.750 --> 00:23:42.587
offering more speed settings than the 2 or 3 you'd typically find.

00:23:42.821 --> 00:23:46.825
And if you wanted to get fancy, you could put in an in wall speed control

00:23:46.825 --> 00:23:49.795
so you didn't even have to pull on a chain to switch it on.

00:23:50.262 --> 00:23:55.133
And of course, with renewed interest, 
many more designs started to appear.

00:23:55.133 --> 00:24:00.238
And now ceiling fans weren't just 
the industrial machines you'd find in a factory,

00:24:00.238 --> 00:24:03.575
but could actually be a centerpiece of your living room

00:24:03.575 --> 00:24:06.878
to express your taste and brag to your friends about.

00:24:07.145 --> 00:24:10.549
Now I'm going to take a little bit of a break from the history here

00:24:10.549 --> 00:24:15.187
to explain what makes ceiling fans so different from a portable fan,

00:24:15.187 --> 00:24:18.657
and thus why they suddenly became desirable in the home.

00:24:19.424 --> 00:24:22.260
For one thing, mounting a fan on the ceiling

00:24:22.260 --> 00:24:26.631
means it's out of the way, yet always there which is convenient.

00:24:26.631 --> 00:24:33.939
But putting a fan on the ceiling produces 
a very different cooling effect than a directional fan.

00:24:34.406 --> 00:24:36.708
Ceiling fans are still directional, of course,

00:24:36.708 --> 00:24:40.045
and you'll feel their breeze most when you're directly underneath them.

00:24:40.178 --> 00:24:46.852
But their large diameter means they produce a large column of air moving downward,

00:24:46.852 --> 00:24:50.055
which will bounce off the floor and spread out sideways,

00:24:50.088 --> 00:24:53.258
producing noticeable air movement throughout a room.

00:24:53.625 --> 00:24:55.894
As a matter of fact, this is the principle behind

00:24:55.894 --> 00:25:00.332
those high volume, low speed ceiling fans which have been popping up lately.

00:25:00.732 --> 00:25:04.936
Put a giant ceiling fan at the top of a warehouse or shopping center,

00:25:04.936 --> 00:25:11.076
and it will send strong lateral currents of air through the aisles and over a really large area.

00:25:11.576 --> 00:25:16.515
Ceiling fans are essentially trying to replicate a natural breeze.

00:25:16.882 --> 00:25:20.318
If you can imagine the sort of relief you feel on a warm day

00:25:20.318 --> 00:25:23.655
when the wind picks up enough to make the tree leaves rustle...

00:25:23.655 --> 00:25:26.157
well, that's pretty much the point of a ceiling fan.

00:25:26.191 --> 00:25:29.461
And you feel relief for two reasons.

00:25:29.628 --> 00:25:37.468
First, in still air, your warm body heats up the air next to 
your skin, and if you yourself aren't moving,

00:25:37.569 --> 00:25:42.207
you end up surrounded by a bubble of air 
which is warmer than the rest of the room.

00:25:42.741 --> 00:25:49.314
A ceiling fan, even if it's running at a low speed, is able to constantly push that air away from you,

00:25:49.314 --> 00:25:52.951
which has the effect of making the room seem cooler than it is.

00:25:53.385 --> 00:25:57.674
This is perfect for amplifying 
the effectiveness of an air conditioner,

00:25:57.674 --> 00:26:03.762
and since most ceiling fans only draw 20 or 30W of power when running at their medium speed setting,

00:26:03.828 --> 00:26:07.832
that amplifying effect comes with virtually no cost.

00:26:08.466 --> 00:26:11.136
But it doesn't just amplify what your air conditioner does,

00:26:11.169 --> 00:26:14.706
it also amplifies what your body naturally does.

00:26:15.173 --> 00:26:20.278
We cool ourselves through perspiration, 
and as sweat evaporates from our skin,

00:26:20.345 --> 00:26:22.781
heat energy is pulled out of our bodies

00:26:22.814 --> 00:26:26.051
thanks to the same mechanism which makes air conditioning possible:

00:26:26.084 --> 00:26:28.453
The latent heat of vaporization.

00:26:28.887 --> 00:26:32.157
A ceiling fan churning up the air in a room

00:26:32.157 --> 00:26:34.826
will help your sweat to evaporate faster,

00:26:34.926 --> 00:26:37.262
which not only cools your body faster,

00:26:37.262 --> 00:26:40.065
but can also keep your sweat from building up on your skin

00:26:40.065 --> 00:26:42.167
and making you feel all gross.

00:26:42.801 --> 00:26:47.706
Best of all, a ceiling fan can do this without making much noise.

00:26:48.006 --> 00:26:52.307
Running at high speed, most ceiling fans 
sound very similar to natural wind

00:26:52.307 --> 00:26:56.881
and running at lower speeds, many are effectively silent.

00:26:57.515 --> 00:27:00.986
That's the logic which caused them to get popular again.

00:27:01.086 --> 00:27:04.990
Everyone already knew they could save energy using fans,

00:27:04.990 --> 00:27:08.793
but every other style of fan is not only loud,

00:27:08.793 --> 00:27:12.030
but also only really works for one person at a time.

00:27:12.163 --> 00:27:14.866
And while oscillating mechanisms existed

00:27:14.866 --> 00:27:17.869
to make portable fans like this sweep across the room...

00:27:18.536 --> 00:27:20.538
well, that's its own kind of annoying.

00:27:21.139 --> 00:27:25.444
Ceiling fans allow for a constant, 
mild breeze with none of the fuss,

00:27:25.444 --> 00:27:30.949
and if that breeze makes you feel comfortable enough to raise your thermostat set point by a few degrees,

00:27:31.116 --> 00:27:36.554
a ceiling fan will save energy 
and money without sacrificing comfort.

00:27:36.688 --> 00:27:43.762
So for the millions of Americans who already have ceiling fans but might have gotten out of the habit of using them,

00:27:43.762 --> 00:27:46.965
switch those suckers on and see how they make you feel.

00:27:47.265 --> 00:27:50.335
It's a subtle effect, so it may take a while to notice,

00:27:50.335 --> 00:27:53.038
but their subtlety is the point.

00:27:53.772 --> 00:27:56.541
And ceiling fans have other benefits beyond cooling.

00:27:56.808 --> 00:27:59.678
Most ceiling fans offer a reversing function

00:27:59.678 --> 00:28:03.715
because by drawing air from below
and throwing it up against the ceiling,

00:28:03.782 --> 00:28:08.153
they can churn up the air in 
a room without creating much of a draft.

00:28:08.219 --> 00:28:14.525
In fact, many fans set to their lowest speed 
aren't even noticeable when running in reverse,

00:28:14.559 --> 00:28:19.698
but they'll still be moving enough air to keep the room at a uniform temperature,

00:28:19.698 --> 00:28:22.367
which can be very useful in the winter.

00:28:23.168 --> 00:28:25.694
Thermal gradients aren't as much of an issue in a home with typical ceiling heights,

00:28:25.694 --> 00:28:33.511
but keeping the air mixed up just enough can reduce the effect of drafty windows and doors, 

00:28:33.511 --> 00:28:37.122
and can even help an HVAC system operate more efficiently,

00:28:37.122 --> 00:28:42.354
particularly when your system has distribution issues like poorly placed vents and returns.

00:28:42.987 --> 00:28:45.356
But let's get back to the story from the past,

00:28:45.356 --> 00:28:50.962
because their sudden popularity would soon lead to some inevitable consequences.

00:28:51.563 --> 00:28:56.101
Domestic manufacturing, 
which had all but abandoned ceiling fans, 

00:28:56.101 --> 00:28:59.804
couldn't possibly keep up with this very sudden demand.

00:29:00.138 --> 00:29:04.542
Not only were new homes getting constructed with several fans each,

00:29:04.542 --> 00:29:09.047
but folks looking to add fans to their existing home wanted options, too.

00:29:09.748 --> 00:29:16.529
In yet another example of fortuitous timing, the rather new concept of the big box home improvement store

00:29:16.529 --> 00:29:22.293
was starting to sweep the nation, and ceiling fans were some of their best selling items.

00:29:22.894 --> 00:29:25.296
Accordingly, the purchasing departments of stores

00:29:25.296 --> 00:29:28.800
like Builders Square, Home Depot, Lowe's and Menards

00:29:28.867 --> 00:29:34.339
started contracting with overseas suppliers 
to meet the seemingly insatiable demand.

00:29:35.006 --> 00:29:39.044
Remember how Hong Kong was making 
tons of ceiling fans for Asian markets?

00:29:39.477 --> 00:29:42.547
Well, suddenly they were making them for us, too.

00:29:43.314 --> 00:29:45.216
But even that wouldn't be enough.

00:29:45.316 --> 00:29:50.988
The ceiling fan market in the US continued to grow 
through the reforming and opening up of mainland China.

00:29:51.055 --> 00:29:56.661
So tons of ceiling fan factories started 
popping up there just for our market.

00:29:57.095 --> 00:30:02.934
They were apparently puzzled by our desire 
to have antiquated looking ceiling fans and not modern ones,

00:30:02.934 --> 00:30:06.271
but they were still fundamentally motors on sticks,

00:30:06.271 --> 00:30:10.074
and thus they were pretty cheap to make and to customize.

00:30:10.475 --> 00:30:14.813
Just as Casablanca was putting motors 
from Emerson inside decorative shells,

00:30:14.879 --> 00:30:18.049
Chinese factories would do the same with their own motors.

00:30:18.583 --> 00:30:23.822
There's even some evidence that the, uh, unauthorized copying

00:30:23.855 --> 00:30:30.328
of intellectual property common in Chinese manufacturing started thanks to, of all things,

00:30:30.361 --> 00:30:34.566
the sudden and explosive growth in ceiling fans.

00:30:35.099 --> 00:30:38.970
Saying that it started thanks to ceiling fans is obviously speculation.

00:30:38.970 --> 00:30:44.409
But this was all happening right as manufacturing in mainland China was getting serious

00:30:44.409 --> 00:30:48.719
and factories were constantly copying design details from one another

00:30:48.925 --> 00:30:53.893
as deals brokered for American firms were made and, uh,

00:30:54.719 --> 00:30:55.920
broken.

00:30:56.621 --> 00:30:59.824
We're not necessarily the good guys in those stories.

00:30:59.824 --> 00:31:03.670
My friend Dan, who served as 
script consultant and fact checker

00:31:03.670 --> 00:31:07.799
and who supplied many of the fans I've shown you, 
has a video explaining this

00:31:07.832 --> 00:31:10.869
if you'd like to know the specifics of certain situations,

00:31:10.869 --> 00:31:15.473
but the early to mid 80s were a wild time!

00:31:15.707 --> 00:31:23.615
Nostalgia, the growth of big box stores, the shift to overseas 
manufacturing, and hard learned lessons from an energy crisis

00:31:23.715 --> 00:31:29.119
all lined up to make ceiling fans 
a shockingly lucrative business for a hot minute,

00:31:29.153 --> 00:31:31.089
which everyone wanted to be a part of.

00:31:31.155 --> 00:31:35.760
Because if you could manage to import 
ceiling fans, you would sell them.

00:31:36.394 --> 00:31:39.397
But, if you didn't already see this coming,

00:31:39.597 --> 00:31:41.966
here's where we get to the bad news.

00:31:42.233 --> 00:31:46.437
Or, more fairly, the complicated news.

00:31:46.804 --> 00:31:51.409
As ceiling fans became popular and manufacturing got cheaper,

00:31:51.609 --> 00:31:56.014
the market changed in many ways which made ceiling fans abundant

00:31:56.014 --> 00:31:59.951
but ultimately much worse at their job.

00:32:00.318 --> 00:32:03.054
Initially, imported fans were pretty good.

00:32:03.187 --> 00:32:07.325
Yes, the motors were made cheaply, but they were still powerful.

00:32:07.725 --> 00:32:12.041
Remember, Hong Kong was making ceiling fans because it's hot over there too,

00:32:12.041 --> 00:32:18.603
and the compact size of the spinner motor
 made them perfect for hiding in all sorts of different designs.

00:32:18.670 --> 00:32:20.972
It was really a match made in heaven.

00:32:21.406 --> 00:32:25.677
But the ceiling fan would become a victim of its inherent simplicity.

00:32:25.677 --> 00:32:29.447
And before long, things would go off the rails.

00:32:29.881 --> 00:32:32.917
Now that ceiling fans had become a commodity,

00:32:32.951 --> 00:32:36.120
most were being sold for one of two reasons:

00:32:36.187 --> 00:32:38.523
style or price.

00:32:38.756 --> 00:32:43.761
And both of those things began 
to distort the function of a ceiling fan.

00:32:44.262 --> 00:32:49.000
Big box stores had already started 
a race to the bottom by competing on price,

00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:53.104
and were encouraging their 
suppliers to cut costs wherever possible.

00:32:53.705 --> 00:32:57.208
The motor is the most expensive component in a ceiling fan.

00:32:57.308 --> 00:33:00.845
And to make it cheaper, it's got to get smaller and weaker.

00:33:01.446 --> 00:33:03.348
So they did.

00:33:03.348 --> 00:33:06.451
And ceiling fans became rather weak sauce.

00:33:06.484 --> 00:33:11.723
And this didn't get any better because 
the other thing which sells fans - style

00:33:11.990 --> 00:33:13.891
didn't matter to the motor

00:33:14.325 --> 00:33:19.564
manufacturers quickly realized they could 
just put the same cheap motor into many,

00:33:19.564 --> 00:33:24.102
many different styles of fan and create a huge product line

00:33:24.168 --> 00:33:27.705
all based around the same pretty crappy components.

00:33:28.239 --> 00:33:35.046
But style is also what sells many premium fans, so even the quality options on the market

00:33:35.146 --> 00:33:38.016
would start to suffer as vanity took hold.

00:33:38.516 --> 00:33:43.024
For example, while the turn of the century fad would eventually end,

00:33:43.057 --> 00:33:50.528
a new fan fad started in the 90s, where plain ceiling fan blades were replaced with giant leaf looking things.

00:33:50.595 --> 00:33:53.498
And you can still by fans that look like that today.

00:33:54.265 --> 00:33:56.401
That design is charming,

00:33:56.501 --> 00:33:57.802
at least to some folks,

00:33:57.969 --> 00:34:02.140
but it simply doesn't work as well as a traditional fan.

00:34:02.173 --> 00:34:05.810
That design is far more decorative than it is functional,

00:34:06.544 --> 00:34:10.915
which is poetic given that's what put 
Casablanca on the map in the first place.

00:34:11.382 --> 00:34:16.878
The resurgent ceiling fans of the late 70s were never sold purely on their merits,

00:34:16.878 --> 00:34:22.022
and once it became obvious that style was the main thing which sold ceiling fans,

00:34:22.022 --> 00:34:27.465
manufacturers looked at the race to the bottom they were already in and floored it.

00:34:27.799 --> 00:34:32.737
Before long, the mass market ceiling fan 
pretty much turned to low effort,

00:34:32.870 --> 00:34:34.906
barely passable slop.

00:34:35.473 --> 00:34:37.742
And we are still dealing with that.

00:34:37.975 --> 00:34:40.812
There are countless options on the market today,

00:34:40.812 --> 00:34:43.581
but having played around with some vintage fans,

00:34:43.714 --> 00:34:47.618
it's become quite clear to me that we've pretty much lost the plot.

00:34:47.985 --> 00:34:52.309
The high speed setting of almost every ceiling fan I've ever lived with

00:34:52.309 --> 00:34:56.661
is nowhere near as powerful as this old Emerson fan.

00:34:56.994 --> 00:35:01.266
So if you've ever felt that ceiling fans don't seem to really do anything,

00:35:01.899 --> 00:35:06.104
there's actually some truth to that beyond their inherent subtlety.

00:35:06.537 --> 00:35:12.310
They genuinely became much worse when form took precedence to function.

00:35:12.734 --> 00:35:17.615
And there's what I would call a truly remarkable piece of evidence for this.

00:35:18.216 --> 00:35:21.552
Remember that ceiling fan from Hunter I showed you earlier?

00:35:22.053 --> 00:35:25.790
This particular example was made in the late 1970s,

00:35:25.790 --> 00:35:30.795
but this design traces all the way back to 1906.

00:35:31.362 --> 00:35:35.800
when Robbins and Myers 
purchased the Hunter Fan Company in 1949,

00:35:35.900 --> 00:35:41.973
they just sort of let those guys in Memphis keep on making the same ceiling fan motors they had always been making.

00:35:42.540 --> 00:35:44.876
If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

00:35:45.042 --> 00:35:49.780
And you bet the folks at Hunter 
smelled opportunity with that turn of the century fad.

00:35:49.914 --> 00:35:55.453
Here's the installation instructions for 
The Original Hunter Old Tyme Ceiling Fans.

00:35:55.887 --> 00:36:02.126
And if you think it's remarkable that a fan from 1906 
kept getting made into the 1970s,

00:36:02.493 --> 00:36:05.062
wait’ll I tell ya they still haven't stopped!

00:36:05.530 --> 00:36:08.099
This is the Hunter Original,

00:36:08.466 --> 00:36:15.506
a 120 year old ceiling fan design which is somehow still in production.

00:36:16.040 --> 00:36:21.402
There's a bit of a Ship of Theseus situation going on here 
since the new Hunter original in this box

00:36:21.402 --> 00:36:25.126
doesn't have quite the same motor design due to technical revisions over the years,

00:36:25.126 --> 00:36:27.751
and plenty of smaller details have changed, too.

00:36:28.419 --> 00:36:30.922
Plus, it's now made in China because of course it is.

00:36:30.922 --> 00:36:35.226
But Hunter is still using the same cast iron housing,

00:36:35.226 --> 00:36:39.063
and they are still using an oil bath bearing.

00:36:40.064 --> 00:36:42.967
Yes, that means this thing needs oil.

00:36:44.202 --> 00:36:47.638
There are so many reasons that's wild in 2026,

00:36:47.638 --> 00:36:50.107
but as the box is proud to boast,

00:36:50.141 --> 00:36:54.879
this is a proven design which stands 
a very good chance of outliving you.

00:36:55.413 --> 00:36:58.516
You can probably already tell I am extremely fond of this.

00:36:58.583 --> 00:37:01.018
It's such a unicorn of a thing.

00:37:01.285 --> 00:37:07.291
What other machine has been in 
continuous production for 120 years?

00:37:07.725 --> 00:37:09.894
But before I fawn over it too much,

00:37:09.927 --> 00:37:15.032
I want to make sure you know that it takes a certain kind of crazy to buy one of these things.

00:37:15.299 --> 00:37:19.637
A Hunter Original currently retails for $750,

00:37:19.637 --> 00:37:26.143
which is quite a lot of money for such a basic fan 
which weighs enough to be slightly terrifying and needs oiling.

00:37:26.877 --> 00:37:29.180
But I am that kind of crazy.

00:37:29.180 --> 00:37:34.085
And this is a fascinating case study of what has happened to ceiling fans over the years.

00:37:34.185 --> 00:37:39.757
This is a machine which is stuck in time 
because it respects its purpose.

00:37:40.057 --> 00:37:43.261
It's not trying to look cool or chase trends.

00:37:43.261 --> 00:37:45.963
It's not trying to be a cheap option, that's for sure.

00:37:45.997 --> 00:37:49.537
It's simply trying to be an excellent ceiling fan,

00:37:49.537 --> 00:37:54.771
and its continued existence proves that at least some people are still willing to pay for that.

00:37:55.072 --> 00:37:57.341
Let's do an unboxing, shall we?

00:37:57.642 --> 00:38:00.344
The first thing we're greeted by is the instruction manual,

00:38:00.344 --> 00:38:05.950
which lets you know right away 
that you have the option to install either 4 or 5 blades.

00:38:06.217 --> 00:38:08.662
I really appreciate that Hunter does this,

00:38:08.662 --> 00:38:14.058
especially since so many actually antique 
fans with four blades are still in service.

00:38:14.258 --> 00:38:16.227
These things last forever.

00:38:16.427 --> 00:38:20.631
And before you ask, it's going to perform 
the same no matter what you choose.

00:38:20.698 --> 00:38:23.200
The motor produces a constant power output,

00:38:23.200 --> 00:38:27.738
so adding the fifth blade will just 
slow it down a little bit as it increases drag,

00:38:27.738 --> 00:38:29.940
but it's still going to move the same amount of air.

00:38:30.141 --> 00:38:33.177
though the five blade configuration is a little bit quieter.

00:38:33.678 --> 00:38:36.206
As we keep going, we have the blades, of course,

00:38:36.206 --> 00:38:40.418
and like many fans, they're reversible 
with two different finishes on each side.

00:38:40.618 --> 00:38:45.189
Then we have the included bottle of oil
because remember this thing needs oiling

00:38:45.189 --> 00:38:47.391
just like its 1906.

00:38:47.858 --> 00:38:51.228
You will likely never really need to add oil again once installed,

00:38:51.228 --> 00:38:53.831
but it comes with a pipe cleaner to check the oil level,

00:38:53.831 --> 00:38:56.200
which they recommend doing every five years.

00:38:56.467 --> 00:39:01.305
Then there's the included very tiny 
downrod and hardware to hang the fan.

00:39:01.339 --> 00:39:04.041
This would be appropriate for standard eight foot ceilings,

00:39:04.041 --> 00:39:08.279
but if you've got taller ceilings, 
you should consider ordering a longer down rod.

00:39:08.846 --> 00:39:12.283
Two of the cast iron fan blade brackets are here, too.

00:39:12.283 --> 00:39:14.752
And then there it is.

00:39:14.952 --> 00:39:20.558
The 37 pound cast iron motor
which makes this the Hunter Original.

00:39:21.225 --> 00:39:25.796
This is the same exact fan as the vintage one from earlier.

00:39:25.830 --> 00:39:31.702
The only major differences are that this one is painted brown rather than polished into an antique brass finish,

00:39:31.702 --> 00:39:34.638
and the blades are attached very differently.

00:39:34.972 --> 00:39:41.045
The vintage fan has a shaded pole motor which is not reversible, so to provide a reversing option,

00:39:41.078 --> 00:39:45.816
Hunter created the Adaptair 
mounting system, which does... this.

00:39:46.550 --> 00:39:50.054
Bet you didn't think there were ceiling fans out there with collectives.

00:39:50.488 --> 00:39:54.725
The current Hunter Original has a much more efficient permanent split capacitor motor,

00:39:54.725 --> 00:39:57.528
and since this kind of motor is trivial to reverse,

00:39:57.528 --> 00:39:59.764
it now has a reversing switch.

00:40:00.030 --> 00:40:02.933
Much less cool, but also much more practical.

00:40:03.401 --> 00:40:05.936
One quick note I want to make sure I include

00:40:05.936 --> 00:40:08.773
is that while this fan doesn't come with a light kit,

00:40:08.773 --> 00:40:13.511
it does come with an adapter ring 
to fit one on its switch housing if you so desire.

00:40:13.978 --> 00:40:17.047
This is actually how ceiling fans were traditionally sold.

00:40:17.081 --> 00:40:19.450
They'd be pre-wired for a light kit

00:40:19.450 --> 00:40:22.409
(that's why there's a blue wire coming out the top of this thing)

00:40:22.409 --> 00:40:26.536
but you'd get to choose which 
light kit you wanted from various options

00:40:26.536 --> 00:40:29.727
Or to not get one if you didn't need it.

00:40:29.760 --> 00:40:33.998
In fact, way back in the day, 
the motor and blades were sold separately,

00:40:33.998 --> 00:40:37.835
so you were basically building your own fan from a series of options.

00:40:38.169 --> 00:40:40.237
Too bad the world doesn't work like that anymore.

00:40:41.238 --> 00:40:44.141
And this motor, while identical in appearance...

00:40:44.642 --> 00:40:49.346
Well, it's now a little harder to say 
that what you're looking at is the motor itself.

00:40:49.780 --> 00:40:53.617
The current design actually is an inside out spinner motor.

00:40:53.717 --> 00:40:56.220
The windings are now close to the center of the fan

00:40:56.220 --> 00:40:58.022
and the rotor surrounds them.

00:40:58.489 --> 00:41:02.626
It's still a cast iron rotor and it still has that old bath bearing.

00:41:02.626 --> 00:41:06.897
So this is very much an old fashioned way to build a ceiling fan.

00:41:06.897 --> 00:41:14.371
But now it is more like a modern motor
which happens to be contained in an antique cast iron housing.

00:41:14.638 --> 00:41:19.677
This is really apparent from the top, where you can see 
the stamped steel assembly for the windings.

00:41:20.277 --> 00:41:26.250
Obviously the smaller guts mean the cast iron 
body could be much smaller than it actually is,

00:41:26.250 --> 00:41:33.424
but I for one, think it's extremely cool that Hunter has chosen to keep making it exactly like they always have.

00:41:35.426 --> 00:41:37.261
Except for that vent hole.

00:41:37.361 --> 00:41:39.663
Why is that hole a circle?

00:41:39.663 --> 00:41:41.332
That's very irritating.

00:41:41.599 --> 00:41:42.666
But I'll deal with that,

00:41:42.666 --> 00:41:47.137
because installing one of these 
brand new ancient fans in my bedroom

00:41:47.338 --> 00:41:49.106
(yes, that does mean I did buy two of them)

00:41:49.139 --> 00:41:53.777
has proven to be somewhat revelatory
when it comes to the modern ceiling fan market.

00:41:54.178 --> 00:42:00.350
This thing is simply a much better ceiling 
fan than anything else I've ever experienced in my life.

00:42:00.584 --> 00:42:03.220
Well, except for the vintage one of these.

00:42:03.420 --> 00:42:06.394
For one, this motor is nearly silent.

00:42:06.394 --> 00:42:10.661
At high speed I can detect the faintest bit of 60 cycle hum,

00:42:10.661 --> 00:42:14.875
but it's completely overwhelmed by the wind 
noise once the blades are moving.

00:42:14.875 --> 00:42:19.603
and running at full speed, despite the fact 
that it makes a whirlwind in the room,

00:42:19.770 --> 00:42:22.506
the noise it makes is remarkably tame.

00:42:22.506 --> 00:42:28.712
It might be a touch louder than the extremely ordinary 
fan it replaced, but certainly not by much.

00:42:28.946 --> 00:42:35.386
Even more notable to me is that on its medium speed,
 the fan produces nearly no noise at all.

00:42:35.386 --> 00:42:38.355
It's just a very faint rustling on medium,

00:42:38.355 --> 00:42:44.595
and yet it feels like the 
fastest speed offered by the fan it replaced.

00:42:44.929 --> 00:42:48.399
Now "feels like" is an important thing to call out.

00:42:48.399 --> 00:42:50.826
I'm going to discuss this more later on

00:42:50.826 --> 00:42:55.372
because there's a lot more to a ceiling fan’s 
performance than how much air it can move.

00:42:55.506 --> 00:42:59.543
But I did buy an anemometer so I could measure wind speed

00:42:59.577 --> 00:43:03.280
to provide the closest thing to an objective comparison I can.

00:43:03.881 --> 00:43:09.118
The Kichler fan I took down, 
which I'd very much describe as builder grade,

00:43:09.152 --> 00:43:14.158
was registering about 2.2m/s 
when running at its highest speed setting.

00:43:14.458 --> 00:43:20.698
This reading was taken at arm's length directly below the fan, and I moved around to find the sweet spot.

00:43:20.998 --> 00:43:26.671
And whaddya know, the Hunter Original 
also produced about 2.2m/s of wind speed

00:43:26.737 --> 00:43:29.740
while only running on its medium setting.

00:43:30.040 --> 00:43:33.811
So not only does it feel like the same thing to me,

00:43:33.944 --> 00:43:35.779
but the numbers seem to agree.

00:43:36.313 --> 00:43:38.415
This is especially interesting to me

00:43:38.415 --> 00:43:43.814
because the Kichler fan drew about 55W from the wall to produce that wind speed,

00:43:43.848 --> 00:43:48.192
while the Hunter fan was 
only pulling about 37W to do the same.

00:43:48.792 --> 00:43:55.132
This ancient design would appear to be more energy efficient 
when providing equivalent performance.

00:43:55.366 --> 00:43:58.402
Now it will draw much more power on high.

00:43:58.535 --> 00:44:04.375
Here it was drawing 85W, though I've seen it get 
as high as 90, probably just due to voltage fluctuations.

00:44:04.508 --> 00:44:09.413
But of course when it does that 
you also get way more air moving!

00:44:09.647 --> 00:44:12.349
The sweet spot on high seemed to bounce back and forth

00:44:12.349 --> 00:44:15.452
between 3.3 and 3.4 meters per second.

00:44:15.552 --> 00:44:19.790
That's 50% faster wind speed than the Kichler fan could produce.

00:44:19.790 --> 00:44:23.694
And best of all, it doesn't seem to be any louder when it does so.

00:44:24.361 --> 00:44:28.098
Look closely at the fan blades, 
and you'll get a clue as to why this is.

00:44:28.298 --> 00:44:31.001
It may not come across super well on camera,

00:44:31.001 --> 00:44:36.641
but the blades of the Original are pitched 
much more aggressively than most ceiling fans.

00:44:36.907 --> 00:44:42.279
This means they don't need to be moving nearly as fast 
to push on the same amount of air.

00:44:43.080 --> 00:44:44.882
As has always been the case,

00:44:44.882 --> 00:44:48.585
this motor is only designed to rotate at about 200 rpm,

00:44:48.585 --> 00:44:53.991
but with these sharply angled blades 
that results in plenty of air movement.

00:44:54.458 --> 00:45:00.749
The ceiling fan it replaced also got up to nearly the same rotational speed, but with shallower blades

00:45:01.416 --> 00:45:06.236
that just meant it made a similar amount of noise while not being nearly as effective.

00:45:06.737 --> 00:45:11.275
Another very traditional thing about this fan is how it mounts to the ceiling.

00:45:11.375 --> 00:45:15.145
While most fans now incorporate some kind of ball and socket joint

00:45:15.145 --> 00:45:17.981
which allows them to be suspended from angled ceilings,

00:45:17.981 --> 00:45:22.119
this is using an old fashioned hook and rubber bushing.

00:45:22.786 --> 00:45:23.987
That's it.

00:45:24.154 --> 00:45:26.924
Because this fan is so dang heavy,

00:45:26.957 --> 00:45:30.461
they really want you to attach this directly to the building structure.

00:45:30.461 --> 00:45:36.733
But if you know you've got a true ceiling fan 
box rated to support at least this much weight, that's fine too.

00:45:37.868 --> 00:45:40.670
Except despite knowing I had a ceiling fan box,

00:45:40.704 --> 00:45:43.540
these mounting holes in the bracket didn't line up in my case,

00:45:43.540 --> 00:45:47.077
so I had to drill an extra one and use a big washer for peace of mind.

00:45:47.511 --> 00:45:49.580
That was annoying, but I got there.

00:45:50.013 --> 00:45:55.927
The decorative canopy which conceals its mount and wiring attaches directly to the downrod itself

00:45:55.927 --> 00:45:58.356
and leaves a small gap against the ceiling.

00:45:58.756 --> 00:46:00.257
This looks a little weird,

00:46:00.257 --> 00:46:06.864
but it means if the fan is rocking somewhat 
while it runs, it all moves as one piece,

00:46:06.864 --> 00:46:10.801
and you don't have any irritating clicking or ticking noises to worry about.

00:46:11.668 --> 00:46:13.403
This is old fashioned,

00:46:13.403 --> 00:46:19.176
but it is truly an excellent fan and I would say 
it's genuinely worth its high price.

00:46:19.710 --> 00:46:24.515
That is, if what you want out of a ceiling fan is extremely good performance.

00:46:25.382 --> 00:46:31.455
But here's where we get to the very frustrating reality at the bottom of all this.

00:46:31.889 --> 00:46:32.890
Everything -

00:46:32.890 --> 00:46:39.063
Every single thing about a ceiling 
fan is not only extremely situational,

00:46:39.096 --> 00:46:41.698
but also deeply subjective.

00:46:42.065 --> 00:46:43.967
We all have different priorities,

00:46:43.967 --> 00:46:48.930
and perhaps you would rather trade performance for something a little more modern.

00:46:48.930 --> 00:46:53.977
But we probably also don't even agree on what performance means.

00:46:54.411 --> 00:46:58.615
Every human is going to have a different reaction
to a given ceiling fan.

00:46:58.749 --> 00:47:00.851
Our bodies perspire at different rates,

00:47:00.851 --> 00:47:04.087
which means the literal cooling power of an identical breeze

00:47:04.154 --> 00:47:08.258
is different from person to person,
and the perceived effect even more so.

00:47:08.959 --> 00:47:12.429
I can't really tell you what makes a good ceiling fan,

00:47:12.462 --> 00:47:14.731
because that depends on so many things,

00:47:14.731 --> 00:47:19.670
and that's a huge part of why ceiling 
fans have largely gone to crap.

00:47:19.870 --> 00:47:23.807
It's difficult to be objective, so nobody really tries.

00:47:24.341 --> 00:47:29.780
Now we have come up with ways to make objective comparisons between ceiling fan models.

00:47:30.380 --> 00:47:33.817
But I am now pretty thoroughly convinced,

00:47:33.851 --> 00:47:36.720
mostly due to my experience with this fan,

00:47:36.987 --> 00:47:40.057
that those methods don't actually work.

00:47:40.891 --> 00:47:42.092
Let me explain.

00:47:42.292 --> 00:47:44.928
If you shop for a ceiling fan, you're going to find

00:47:44.928 --> 00:47:49.666
that they're given an airflow rating 
in CFM, that's cubic feet per minute.

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:52.536
The EPA, through its Energy Star program,

00:47:52.536 --> 00:47:55.005
developed a pretty scientific test procedure,

00:47:55.005 --> 00:47:57.908
along with quite the testing rig for doing this.

00:47:58.175 --> 00:47:59.943
Now, I'm not actually sure

00:47:59.943 --> 00:48:02.980
whether this is the test procedure done to all ceiling fans,

00:48:02.980 --> 00:48:05.649
since it's the Federal Trade Commission which is responsible

00:48:05.649 --> 00:48:08.452
for these energy guide labels and not the EPA.

00:48:08.785 --> 00:48:13.357
Plus, this test is meant for 
Energy Star certification, which is optional.

00:48:13.624 --> 00:48:17.294
Regardless, that's not important to the argument I'm about to make.

00:48:18.228 --> 00:48:20.864
Well, it might be, but more on that later.

00:48:21.365 --> 00:48:25.569
CFM is something we can measure objectively, and on the surface,

00:48:25.602 --> 00:48:30.040
it feels like the most apples to apples 
number you could give to a ceiling fan.

00:48:30.474 --> 00:48:33.210
This thing is, after all, a fan.

00:48:33.210 --> 00:48:36.780
And moving air is how fans make you feel cool.

00:48:37.481 --> 00:48:45.388
But a ceiling fan is not a blower fan with a cowl 
to suck air in from one side and blow it out another.

00:48:45.489 --> 00:48:48.692
Nor is it a squirrel cage fan feeding a duct.

00:48:48.725 --> 00:48:55.699
It's just a great big fan hanging in the open air, and its purpose isn't to move volumes of air,

00:48:55.933 --> 00:48:59.002
but to create artificial wind you can feel.

00:48:59.269 --> 00:49:06.844
Therefore, the velocity of the air once it gets to where you are is what matters to perceived performance.

00:49:06.910 --> 00:49:12.149
And because we're talking about ceiling fans, you're probably not going to be that close to it all the time.

00:49:12.749 --> 00:49:17.287
Sure, that testing rig can measure the volume of air flowing through that cylinder.

00:49:17.287 --> 00:49:21.824
But that's not actually very relevant 
to what a ceiling fan is trying to do.

00:49:22.559 --> 00:49:26.964
To be clear,
I'm not saying that CFM information isn't potentially useful.

00:49:26.964 --> 00:49:31.568
And if we look back at those old instructions 
from Hunter, it's listed there too.

00:49:31.802 --> 00:49:36.807
So this isn't a new thing, but I am saying that CFM on its own

00:49:36.840 --> 00:49:38.775
describes less than you'd think.

00:49:39.242 --> 00:49:41.578
Take a look at this reading from the anemometer.

00:49:41.678 --> 00:49:45.015
I've placed it a couple of paces back from the ceiling fan,

00:49:45.048 --> 00:49:49.987
so it's measuring the lateral currents produced 
after the air bounces off the floor.

00:49:50.654 --> 00:49:54.257
The reading is hovering around 0.8m/s.

00:49:54.558 --> 00:49:58.695
This is what matters to the subjective experience of a ceiling fan,

00:49:58.729 --> 00:50:02.966
because that wind speed determines what you're feeling on the ground.

00:50:03.800 --> 00:50:08.739
And the thing is, if all I do is 
elevate the anemometer very slightly,

00:50:08.772 --> 00:50:13.844
the reading is cut in half and occasionally the airflow nearly stops.

00:50:14.378 --> 00:50:19.649
Turbulence is going to affect how quickly 
the air is moving in any particular location,

00:50:19.649 --> 00:50:25.089
and you can see from the fact that the reading is bouncing around that it's anything but consistent.

00:50:25.288 --> 00:50:29.092
The effect is even more pronounced
when the fan is running at high speed.

00:50:29.449 --> 00:50:32.262
Ah, but what about the stand?

00:50:32.295 --> 00:50:35.265
Could that be influencing the reading of the anemometer?

00:50:36.266 --> 00:50:39.536
Perhaps, but that's kind of my point.

00:50:39.803 --> 00:50:47.511
Obstructions in a room like the furniture are going to change the path air takes after a ceiling fan throws it to the floor,

00:50:47.577 --> 00:50:50.781
and especially since air currents collide with each other,

00:50:50.814 --> 00:50:55.051
that could increase or decrease the wind speed on its way to you,

00:50:55.051 --> 00:50:58.422
and thus how effective the ceiling fan seems to be.

00:50:58.922 --> 00:51:02.359
CFM is irrelevant to those factors.

00:51:02.759 --> 00:51:05.162
It's not just the stuff in the room either.

00:51:05.462 --> 00:51:07.998
The shape of the room, the size of the room,

00:51:07.998 --> 00:51:11.601
and even where the ceiling fan was installed in that room

00:51:11.635 --> 00:51:15.305
all make significant differences to how it performs.

00:51:15.605 --> 00:51:19.843
Another huge factor is how close the ceiling fan is to the ceiling.

00:51:20.177 --> 00:51:22.946
As the sweeping blades push air downward,

00:51:22.946 --> 00:51:26.016
it has to be replaced by new air from above,

00:51:26.016 --> 00:51:28.852
and when the blades are right up against the ceiling,

00:51:28.885 --> 00:51:33.760
the fan can only grab new air through a relatively narrow slot at the edges,

00:51:33.760 --> 00:51:38.762
and that creates pressure gradients above the fan, which screw up its air distribution.

00:51:39.062 --> 00:51:45.402
This is why so-called hugger fans, designed for rooms 
with low ceilings often don't work that well.

00:51:45.569 --> 00:51:49.706
In general, the lower the fan can be from the ceiling, the better.

00:51:50.207 --> 00:51:54.932
Safety standards in the US require the fan blades to be seven feet off the floor,

00:51:54.932 --> 00:51:58.448
and with standard eight foot ceilings, 
there's not much room to play with.

00:51:58.448 --> 00:52:01.318
So I get why hugger fans exist,

00:52:01.418 --> 00:52:07.324
but the test procedure the EPA uses hangs 
the fan over three feet from the ceiling,

00:52:07.324 --> 00:52:12.129
so the results from that test are not representative of almost anyone's reality.

00:52:12.762 --> 00:52:18.168
Setting aside all those real world variables, 
two fans with the same CFM rating

00:52:18.168 --> 00:52:21.538
can themselves deliver air extremely differently.

00:52:21.938 --> 00:52:25.142
For instance, these fans with their simple paddles

00:52:25.142 --> 00:52:29.146
are really just producing a column of downward air movement.

00:52:29.146 --> 00:52:32.849
And that means the fan’s diameter is going to affect

00:52:32.849 --> 00:52:35.552
how tall the lateral currents of air are

00:52:35.552 --> 00:52:38.722
once it hits the floor and spreads out sideways.

00:52:39.322 --> 00:52:48.298
A small fan with an identical CFM rating to a large one may not produce a noticeable air current except right down by the floor,

00:52:48.632 --> 00:52:54.304
which is not very useful if you're looking to install a ceiling fan 
so you feel a breeze when lying in bed.

00:52:54.905 --> 00:53:00.911
This is, incidentally, why I think these newfangled 
fandalier things are extremely silly.

00:53:01.044 --> 00:53:06.650
The whole point of a ceiling fan is 
to be big so you feel it everywhere in a room.

00:53:07.284 --> 00:53:11.621
That's also why I find sizing guidance based on square footage to be silly.

00:53:11.621 --> 00:53:16.301
It seems mostly based on 
perceived visual appropriateness, and little else.

00:53:16.301 --> 00:53:17.961
Go as big as you want.

00:53:17.994 --> 00:53:19.529
It'll probably work better.

00:53:19.896 --> 00:53:26.302
But even ceiling fans with identical diameters can distribute 
air differently because of their blade design.

00:53:26.603 --> 00:53:34.378
Fans with curved blades or fancy airfoil shapes are like that 
so they don't just create a column of air below them.

00:53:34.778 --> 00:53:37.581
Those fans will throw some air out to the sides,

00:53:37.581 --> 00:53:42.819
so that their output can be felt directly 
over a wider area than the fan’s diameter.

00:53:42.886 --> 00:53:47.491
And that can avoid the issue of obstructions changing the direction of air currents,

00:53:47.491 --> 00:53:51.895
which may or may not be better 
depending on your preferences and your situation.

00:53:52.329 --> 00:53:57.134
This CFM rating does absolutely nothing to explain any of this.

00:53:57.200 --> 00:54:02.439
Therefore, I am simply not at all convinced 
that it's enough information to be useful.

00:54:03.607 --> 00:54:05.408
And even if it were,

00:54:06.009 --> 00:54:12.249
I am now very convinced that the 
CFM number on these labels is wrong.

00:54:12.816 --> 00:54:17.287
Again, all of this is subjective 
and situational, which I need to acknowledge.

00:54:17.387 --> 00:54:27.497
But in my previous home, I installed two outdoor ceiling fans from Menards, which the Energy Guide label rated 3,911 CFM.

00:54:28.331 --> 00:54:35.472
Since the Hunter Original is also an outdoor rated fan 
and its diameter is within two inches of those fans,

00:54:35.538 --> 00:54:38.275
the CFM numbers should be apples to apples,

00:54:38.275 --> 00:54:42.379
and since the original is rated 4,620,

00:54:42.445 --> 00:54:46.483
those Menards fans should have been 
within spitting distance of this thing.

00:54:46.483 --> 00:54:49.753
But they were definitely not.

00:54:50.020 --> 00:54:53.690
I can't go back in time to make a true side by side comparison,

00:54:53.690 --> 00:54:59.362
but I would estimate that the Hunter is at 
least twice as powerful as those fans were.

00:54:59.429 --> 00:55:05.669
So not only do I have plenty of logical reasons 
to doubt that a CFM rating can actually tell you very much,

00:55:05.869 --> 00:55:09.673
but I also have firsthand 
experience which contradicts these labels.

00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:11.708
And it gets worse.

00:55:12.108 --> 00:55:17.814
The credibility of these labels 
is also put into question by several basic facts.

00:55:18.348 --> 00:55:21.184
If you look at the Hunter original on the Lowe's website,

00:55:21.217 --> 00:55:26.217
you'll see that they are claiming it moves 6,716 CFM.

00:55:26.627 --> 00:55:30.259
Awfully close to the 7000 Hunter was claiming back in the 70s.

00:55:30.327 --> 00:55:33.096
It's almost like it's the same fan or something.

00:55:33.563 --> 00:55:38.668
So where does this 4,620 number actually come from?

00:55:38.868 --> 00:55:43.239
Could it be there listing the airflow 
on the medium speed without telling us?

00:55:43.440 --> 00:55:47.577
That would, after all, line up with typical use, I suppose.

00:55:48.411 --> 00:55:49.979
Well, perhaps.

00:55:50.046 --> 00:55:52.749
But that 53 watt figure there?

00:55:52.816 --> 00:55:54.084
That's awfully strange.

00:55:54.084 --> 00:55:58.188
And not just because the FTC doesn't seem to know watts aren't energy.

00:55:58.521 --> 00:56:06.202
My testing, which says this fan runs at between 85 and 90 watts on high and at less than 40 watts on medium

00:56:06.269 --> 00:56:11.534
would seem to imply this fan was tested at a speed which doesn't actually exist.

00:56:11.601 --> 00:56:18.742
So how on Earth am I supposed to trust that CFM number means anything relevant to the fan's real world performance?

00:56:19.309 --> 00:56:23.447
But now we've got to talk about 
why those labels are there in the first place.

00:56:23.480 --> 00:56:27.150
Because even if I had no reason to doubt their accuracy,

00:56:27.150 --> 00:56:29.652
I think there's a very good case to be made

00:56:29.652 --> 00:56:32.789
that the motivation behind them is backfiring

00:56:32.789 --> 00:56:35.959
and defeating the very point of a ceiling fan.

00:56:36.693 --> 00:56:40.897
Much like the energy guide labels on things
like refrigerators and water heaters,

00:56:40.930 --> 00:56:44.934
this is there to encourage you 
to pick an energy efficient ceiling fan.

00:56:45.402 --> 00:56:48.638
Ceiling fans are an energy consuming appliance, after all,

00:56:48.638 --> 00:56:52.041
and that's why it shows you an estimated cost figure.

00:56:52.375 --> 00:56:56.346
And look, there are certainly gains to be made there.

00:56:56.579 --> 00:56:59.315
We've gotten much better at making motors over the years,

00:56:59.315 --> 00:57:03.716
and that's how the Hunter Original of today 
only needs 90W of power

00:57:03.716 --> 00:57:08.859
to do what the fan of 1970 something needed 155 watts to do.

00:57:09.559 --> 00:57:16.632
But we're not actually evaluating the efficiency of ceiling fans based on how efficient their motors are at performing work.

00:57:16.866 --> 00:57:19.769
We're doing it based on CFM per watt.

00:57:20.203 --> 00:57:22.405
Now, I understand the logic there.

00:57:22.405 --> 00:57:25.775
You can put the same motor into all sorts of fan designs,

00:57:25.775 --> 00:57:28.812
so the finished product matters more than its guts.

00:57:29.412 --> 00:57:36.102
But since I'm not convinced the CFM number from a test 
rig describes ceiling fan performance in a useful way,

00:57:36.102 --> 00:57:42.925
we could very well be making ceiling fans worse at their job by chasing a metric which is effectively meaningless.

00:57:43.960 --> 00:57:45.628
I think we need to remember

00:57:45.628 --> 00:57:48.064
we're talking about ceiling fans, folks.

00:57:48.064 --> 00:57:50.967
They are themselves an efficiency play,

00:57:50.967 --> 00:57:56.239
and the whole point of their resurgence 
was to offset the energy use of air conditioning.

00:57:56.239 --> 00:57:59.162
And in order to actually be successful at that,

00:57:59.162 --> 00:58:05.515
first and foremost, the ceiling fan needs to be 
effective in the eyes of the person using it.

00:58:05.548 --> 00:58:11.248
A fan could have a miraculous CFM per watt 
figure if it's only drawing ten watts,

00:58:11.248 --> 00:58:14.991
but then it might not be powerful enough to actually do anything.

00:58:15.859 --> 00:58:18.127
And that's the maddening thing here.

00:58:18.394 --> 00:58:23.633
We know that the relationship between CFM 
and input power isn't linear.

00:58:23.933 --> 00:58:28.338
CFM per watt numbers get higher at lower fan speeds,

00:58:28.338 --> 00:58:30.807
so the metric becomes more impressive

00:58:30.874 --> 00:58:33.309
the weaker the fan is.

00:58:33.910 --> 00:58:36.246
Now, Energy Star is aware of this,

00:58:36.246 --> 00:58:39.249
and that's why the number they give is a weighted average.

00:58:39.349 --> 00:58:45.989
For instance, this fan model is rated 220 CFM per watt, despite the fact that on its highest speed,

00:58:46.022 --> 00:58:51.094
which draws 29.5W while supposedly delivering 4,053 CFM,

00:58:51.427 --> 00:58:55.431
the number only works out to 137 CFM per watt.

00:58:56.065 --> 00:59:01.236
But I don't actually know that its 
top speed is equivalent to 4,053 CFM

00:59:01.236 --> 00:59:07.910
because Energy Star doesn't tell you CFM numbers, and the Energy Guide label hasn't specified which speed it's showing you.

00:59:07.944 --> 00:59:15.618
And the Energy Guide label says the fan only moves 
166 CFM per watt, and also that it only uses 24 watts.

00:59:15.618 --> 00:59:18.955
This whole situation is just royally forked up.

00:59:18.955 --> 00:59:20.456
But most importantly,

00:59:20.823 --> 00:59:24.025
performance is the thing which actually matters,

00:59:24.025 --> 00:59:30.633
and a fan which uses more energy can very well end up saving energy because it does a better job at being a fan.

00:59:31.000 --> 00:59:34.771
To illustrate this, let's go back to the Hunter versus the Kichler.

00:59:35.238 --> 00:59:38.141
The 85W this fan draws on high

00:59:38.207 --> 00:59:44.747
does mean the fan uses more energy than the Kichler, 
which maxes out at 55W ever will.

00:59:44.981 --> 00:59:49.419
And yeah, that means using the Hunter fan will cost more.

00:59:49.852 --> 00:59:57.425
But if the Hunter running at 85W cools 
you off more effectively than the Kichler at 55W,

00:59:57.425 --> 00:59:59.162
which it definitely will,

00:59:59.195 --> 01:00:02.966
then it can buy you a couple extra clicks on your thermostat,

01:00:02.966 --> 01:00:06.415
which will more than pay for those extra 30 watts.

01:00:06.415 --> 01:00:09.706
Even if you ran the fan 24/7.

01:00:10.206 --> 01:00:17.383
If spending an extra 30W means you can keep a tiny 1 kW air conditioner from running for just an hour a day,

01:00:17.383 --> 01:00:23.019
you'll have spent an extra 720 watt-hours 
using this, but you'll save 1,000.

01:00:23.386 --> 01:00:27.290
And don't forget, this has a medium speed, too. Even a low one!

01:00:27.290 --> 01:00:29.525
And you don't have to run it 24/7.

01:00:29.525 --> 01:00:33.062
So it's not always going to use 85 or 90W.

01:00:33.162 --> 01:00:40.041
You simply cannot possibly come up with a single CFM number 
or a single CFM per watt number for a ceiling fan,

01:00:40.041 --> 01:00:46.676
and our efforts to try are ignoring that an efficient 
but weak fan is not actually a useful fan.

01:00:47.076 --> 01:00:50.013
So are we possibly barking up the wrong tree here?

01:00:50.446 --> 01:00:52.715
I think there's pretty good evidence that we are.

01:00:53.178 --> 01:00:55.451
Now look, if you've been watching me for a while,

01:00:55.451 --> 01:00:58.821
you might already know that my feelings here are complicated.

01:00:58.855 --> 01:01:03.192
I understand the desire to reduce 
the amount of energy ceiling fans use,

01:01:03.259 --> 01:01:07.964
especially since your average Midwestern home 
probably has 4 or 5 of them these days.

01:01:08.031 --> 01:01:11.334
But they have to be good at the thing they're supposed to do

01:01:11.334 --> 01:01:14.737
if we have any hope of them offsetting air conditioning use.

01:01:14.937 --> 01:01:18.975
If we're creating efficiency targets based around CFM per watt,

01:01:19.042 --> 01:01:23.890
that may look good on paper, 
but if it hurts real world performance,

01:01:23.890 --> 01:01:28.551
then we're defeating the point of
 having a ceiling fan in the first place.

01:01:29.018 --> 01:01:34.090
To be clear, I'm not blaming energy policy 
alone for making ceiling fans worse.

01:01:34.090 --> 01:01:38.895
It may play a part, but there are plenty of other pressures 
pushing us that way too.

01:01:39.328 --> 01:01:41.998
The race to the bottom is still very much a thing.

01:01:42.331 --> 01:01:47.603
But I am saying policy may be too focused 
on the energy needs of the fan itself,

01:01:47.603 --> 01:01:50.973
and we should probably refine how we're evaluating them.

01:01:50.973 --> 01:01:54.410
Because as of now, it feels like we've lost the plot.

01:01:54.911 --> 01:01:59.082
And remember. We're talking about ceiling fans.

01:01:59.115 --> 01:02:03.553
They're not exactly power hungry
things and never were in the first place.

01:02:03.553 --> 01:02:07.023
And through our decision to chase diminishing returns,

01:02:07.023 --> 01:02:09.959
we're creating pressures I'm not super fond of.

01:02:10.293 --> 01:02:13.863
For example, the Energy Star certified fan we've been looking at

01:02:13.896 --> 01:02:18.185
has a DC motor, and many of them do these days.

01:02:18.185 --> 01:02:20.603
Those can be more energy efficient,

01:02:20.603 --> 01:02:26.075
but that adds a lot of complexity 
to an otherwise very simple product.

01:02:26.342 --> 01:02:31.147
DC motors need DC power supplies 
and motor controllers just to function,

01:02:31.147 --> 01:02:35.051
which adds two electronic devices with potential points of failure.

01:02:35.118 --> 01:02:38.955
And I do think it's a bit ironic that this Energy Star certified fan

01:02:38.988 --> 01:02:43.659
has a standby power consumption of 0.3W,

01:02:43.693 --> 01:02:49.832
meaning it's going to use at least 2.6kWh 
of energy every year even if you don't use it.

01:02:49.899 --> 01:02:51.100
That's fun.

01:02:51.501 --> 01:02:56.839
There are advantages to a DC motor 
beyond efficiency, which some shoppers will appreciate.

01:02:56.906 --> 01:03:00.109
For instance, they don't hum like an AC motor can,

01:03:00.109 --> 01:03:07.183
and they can offer many more fan speeds without requiring a fancy and potentially persnickety motor controller

01:03:07.216 --> 01:03:09.185
like you do with an AC motor.

01:03:09.685 --> 01:03:13.790
Solid state variable speed fan 
controls for a fan like this do exist,

01:03:13.790 --> 01:03:15.758
but they're not easy to come by.

01:03:16.325 --> 01:03:18.895
Additionally, though it's not my cup of tea,

01:03:18.928 --> 01:03:23.513
it's easier to incorporate things like smart controls 
and built-in LED lighting

01:03:23.513 --> 01:03:26.870
when your ceiling fan has a DC power supply on board.

01:03:26.903 --> 01:03:31.741
So I get that market pressures 
are also pushing us in that direction.

01:03:32.074 --> 01:03:38.584
Regardless, the permanent split capacitor AC induction motors in a typical ceiling fan are still pretty energy efficient,

01:03:38.617 --> 01:03:43.152
and best of all, they simply get hooked right up to line voltage.

01:03:43.219 --> 01:03:47.256
They don't have any electronics controlling them other than a capacitor,

01:03:47.256 --> 01:03:51.961
and thus there are only two things 
which might go wrong with such a ceiling fan.

01:03:51.994 --> 01:03:56.132
Either the bearing can fail 
and the fan will start to get noisy as it spins,

01:03:56.132 --> 01:04:01.312
or the capacitor can fail which will cause the fan to spin slowly or perhaps not at all.

01:04:01.312 --> 01:04:04.941
Barring a catastrophic short in the motor windings,

01:04:04.974 --> 01:04:07.076
or I guess a failed power switch,

01:04:07.143 --> 01:04:11.871
That's really all that can go wrong with a traditional ceiling fan.

01:04:11.905 --> 01:04:14.984
And replacing a failed ceiling fan capacitor is really easy, too.

01:04:15.017 --> 01:04:17.520
In fact, hardware stores stock replacements.

01:04:17.920 --> 01:04:22.024
There's plenty of merit to the simplicity of an AC motor,

01:04:22.024 --> 01:04:26.529
and the Hunter Original proves 
you absolutely can make one which doesn't hum.

01:04:26.829 --> 01:04:29.932
You just have to, you know, try.

01:04:30.299 --> 01:04:35.104
This is why I've developed more than a bit 
of a fascination with the Hunter Original.

01:04:35.204 --> 01:04:43.012
It's an extremely old ceiling fan design, and yet it seems to be among the best performing ceiling fans out there,

01:04:43.145 --> 01:04:46.215
at least of the kind you typically find in a home.

01:04:46.449 --> 01:04:47.617
And I mean,

01:04:47.617 --> 01:04:49.785
while it feels very surprising

01:04:49.785 --> 01:04:54.824
given that we live in the age of computer aided 
design and advanced modeling of fluid dynamics,

01:04:54.891 --> 01:04:57.493
in other ways, it's really not.

01:04:57.860 --> 01:05:00.863
Yes, 1906 was 120 years ago,

01:05:00.863 --> 01:05:04.166
but it's not like we didn't know how to experiment back then.

01:05:04.166 --> 01:05:09.305
And we definitely wanted to 
get the most out of a very expensive motor.

01:05:10.006 --> 01:05:14.877
Four plain, rectangular paddles 
might seem like a very low effort design,

01:05:14.877 --> 01:05:21.684
but it clearly works and a lot 
better than every ordinary ceiling fan I've ever lived with.

01:05:21.961 --> 01:05:27.857
Ceiling fans essentially didn't change at all 
between when this thing was first designed

01:05:27.890 --> 01:05:30.493
and the resurgence of the 1970s.

01:05:31.060 --> 01:05:34.130
We just figured them out!

01:05:34.163 --> 01:05:37.266
That's how you make a ceiling fan which is good.

01:05:37.800 --> 01:05:42.505
Other than Emerson switching to a cheaper motor 
which allowed them to leverage economies of scale

01:05:42.505 --> 01:05:44.941
...and shut down a production line,

01:05:45.107 --> 01:05:50.579
the fundamentals remained exactly the same 
right up until manufacturing went overseas.

01:05:51.380 --> 01:05:54.250
And that's what's tricky about this story.

01:05:54.650 --> 01:05:59.255
The purpose of a ceiling fan 
changed when it came back into fashion.

01:05:59.689 --> 01:06:04.327
Performance didn't matter as much now that they were meant to help your air conditioner

01:06:04.327 --> 01:06:06.862
and not provide cooling on their own.

01:06:06.862 --> 01:06:12.068
And that created affordances for 
cost cutting without significant consequence.

01:06:12.635 --> 01:06:17.039
Cost cut ceiling fans, in turn, 
created competition based on retail price.

01:06:17.039 --> 01:06:21.277
And then once every big box store 
had their own line of cheap ceiling fans

01:06:21.310 --> 01:06:23.946
that created competition based on style.

01:06:23.946 --> 01:06:26.549
And then once everybody was copying each other,

01:06:26.582 --> 01:06:29.952
that created competition based on gimmicks like remote controls

01:06:29.952 --> 01:06:33.456
and these days, Alexa integration.

01:06:33.956 --> 01:06:40.395
After several rounds of this nonsense, we sort of forgot 
what makes a good ceiling fan in the first place.

01:06:40.429 --> 01:06:47.937
And all that complexity is before we get to the energy standards, 
which I would have no problem with at all if I were convinced

01:06:47.970 --> 01:06:51.107
we were measuring performance of a ceiling fan correctly.

01:06:51.507 --> 01:06:53.943
Which I'm not.

01:06:54.243 --> 01:07:01.083
And the fact that Hunter still produces 
this ancient thing in 2026 is the main reason I feel that way.

01:07:01.517 --> 01:07:05.321
Its existence is no means hard evidence of anything.

01:07:05.654 --> 01:07:08.724
A cast iron motor housing and an oil bath bearing

01:07:08.724 --> 01:07:12.495
are certainly not necessary for a well-performing ceiling fan.

01:07:12.695 --> 01:07:17.033
Anyone could copy this fan's performance for a much lower price.

01:07:17.133 --> 01:07:19.635
All you need is a motor which is equally strong,

01:07:19.635 --> 01:07:22.204
and fan blades with the same specification.

01:07:22.671 --> 01:07:24.173
And that's not hard to come by.

01:07:24.607 --> 01:07:27.977
But the enduring existence of this design proves

01:07:27.977 --> 01:07:34.850
there are enough people out there who believe function matters over form, and are still willing to pay for it.

01:07:35.351 --> 01:07:39.255
This thing's sales are helped, no doubt, by its timeless appearance,

01:07:39.288 --> 01:07:45.126
but asking someone to check the oil in their ceiling fan every five years with a pipe cleaner

01:07:45.126 --> 01:07:50.399
would certainly be a bridge too far for anyone who doesn't really care about ceiling fans.

01:07:50.699 --> 01:07:52.668
I suppose that's the rub, isn't it?

01:07:52.735 --> 01:07:54.870
Many people care enough to have one,

01:07:54.870 --> 01:07:57.339
and many people care what it looks like.

01:07:57.506 --> 01:08:01.610
But the ceiling fan as a concept is so simple

01:08:01.610 --> 01:08:04.346
that it's hard to believe there's more to it than that.

01:08:04.613 --> 01:08:08.217
I didn't until I met someone who collects these things, and now,

01:08:08.517 --> 01:08:12.621
unfortunately, I've been cursed with knowledge of what's been lost.

01:08:12.655 --> 01:08:15.224
I believe The Good Place has taught us that

01:08:15.224 --> 01:08:21.464
the Hunter original is the ice cream of ceiling fans, 
while the modern ceiling fan is much like frozen yogurt.

01:08:22.098 --> 01:08:23.331
As Michael said,

01:08:23.331 --> 01:08:29.872
"there's something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it."

01:08:30.906 --> 01:08:33.375
That's pretty much what happened with ceiling fans.

01:08:33.776 --> 01:08:35.744
It's not all bad news though.

01:08:36.212 --> 01:08:40.549
While most of the fans you can find in the home 
improvement store these days are pretty meh

01:08:41.383 --> 01:08:43.986
premium ceiling fan brands now exist,

01:08:44.019 --> 01:08:48.758
and I'm sure many of them made 
by the likes of Big Ass Fans are great.

01:08:49.058 --> 01:08:53.229
It's just kind of a shame what things look like today.

01:08:53.362 --> 01:08:55.931
Everyone who's got experience with ceiling fans

01:08:55.931 --> 01:08:57.933
probably has complaints about them too.

01:08:57.967 --> 01:08:59.902
I know I've had my fair share of them

01:08:59.902 --> 01:09:03.539
which rocked just enough to make some kind of a ticking noise which wouldn't go away,

01:09:03.539 --> 01:09:06.308
or which had a loud motor buzzing away all night,

01:09:06.542 --> 01:09:09.011
or which was weak and useless.

01:09:09.411 --> 01:09:15.784
But those complaints really come from 
how much we've lowered our standards in the name of more.

01:09:16.418 --> 01:09:20.856
Still, I'd rather have a landscape 
where average folks can afford a ceiling fan

01:09:20.856 --> 01:09:23.872
in every bedroom and living space they spend time in.

01:09:24.283 --> 01:09:26.996
And fans which don't need oiling.

01:09:27.463 --> 01:09:28.964
I know I'm repeating myself,

01:09:28.964 --> 01:09:33.969
but it's not like the Hunter original represents 
the only way to make a good ceiling fan.

01:09:34.036 --> 01:09:40.209
But its endurance makes a pretty airtight 
case that we've completely lost the plot.

01:09:40.643 --> 01:09:43.345
The formula has always been there,

01:09:43.345 --> 01:09:46.682
but first we need to stop ourselves from reinventing the wheel.

01:09:47.249 --> 01:09:50.559
I wouldn't have thought that 
something as simple as a ceiling fan

01:09:50.559 --> 01:09:54.139
would become subject to seemingly every human impulse

01:09:54.139 --> 01:09:57.960
and every Earth-changing event 
which has happened over the last century.

01:09:58.694 --> 01:10:01.063
But maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

01:10:01.530 --> 01:10:04.727
After all, that's capitalism.

01:10:05.599 --> 01:10:07.876
♫ tempestuously smooth jazz ♫

01:10:08.396 --> 01:10:09.905
Bonus thing!

01:10:09.905 --> 01:10:15.377
The builder grade fan I took down to replace 
with a Hunter Original is a very funny example

01:10:15.377 --> 01:10:20.382
of how we are still importing Asian fans 
and dressing them up to look 'murican.

01:10:20.983 --> 01:10:25.410
This motor housing mimics the size 
and shape of the traditional pancake motor

01:10:25.410 --> 01:10:28.257
which the Hunter Original actually is,

01:10:28.257 --> 01:10:33.361
but the flywheel the blades attach to 
is in fact a commodity spinner motor

01:10:33.395 --> 01:10:36.832
just hiding in a vast expanse of empty space.

01:10:37.333 --> 01:10:40.636
We just still expect ceiling fans to look like this.

01:10:40.803 --> 01:10:44.506
And I mean, in the days when we were cost cutting like crazy,

01:10:44.907 --> 01:10:46.909
there was a time

01:10:46.909 --> 01:10:50.045
when we were just dangling light kits below spinner motors.

01:10:50.045 --> 01:10:52.982
But this just looks weird.

01:10:55.545 --> 01:10:58.049
So, did this video... blow your mind?

01:10:58.049 --> 01:11:01.076
I hope you didn't think it was too long-winded.

01:11:01.076 --> 01:11:04.418
Though that runtime sure is fun. Can't get mad at that!

01:11:04.418 --> 01:11:07.527
And I swear that wasn't just an excuse to pad the script with hot air.

01:11:07.527 --> 01:11:08.994
It's just a...

01:11:08.994 --> 01:11:10.733
fantastic coincidence.