Ceiling Fan Switch

I have now burned up my second ceiling fan switch. The trailer is in Texas with the wife so I am not able to go out and look at the wiring, but I do recall when I installed the new switch there were 2 pos, and 2 neg wires going to the switch and then the wires going from the switch to the fan. The switch the dealer provided as a replacement says it is 12V. I know the fan can be wired for 12 or 24 volt, and I am wondering if they wired the fan for 24V but used a 12V switch and this is why they keep burning out. Any ideas?

Rick,

If the fan can be wired either way and it is wired for 24VDC, powered at 12VDC it would run at half speed on all settings. But, I'm not sure that the fan is incorrectly wired. It may be that the motor is rated for 24VDC and can be wired to a 24VDC circuit, just as it can be wired to a 12VDC circuit. However, when 24VDC is applied to a motor that is only rated for 12VDC, it will overheat and ultimately burn out. Same/same for the switch. 12VDC through a 24VDC rated switch will be OK while 24VDC through a 12VDC switch will burn it out.

Since our Cats all operate on 12VDC from the factory, I think that if they put 24VDC components in the fan system it would operate cooler, due to less resistance.

I'm wondering if you have a dead short in the line someplace. Heat in a circuit is caused by resistance, i.e., too small a gauge wire for the amperage used; a dead short across the wires; a loose ground wire; loose connections.

I'd run an amperage check across the circuit to see what it is drawing. Have you ever blown a fuse on that circuit?

Hope this helps some.

I have gone through 3 switches. I finally pulled the fan down and found 3 bare spots on the wires. I taped them up and tried a new switch. This one still gets hot like the others and I assume that there are some more bare spots that I can't get to. I just don't use the fan anymore. We really liked having it, but I don't want the risk of a fire, that switch sure does get hot, it melts the case.

It would indicate to me that the motor or motor bearings are bad. The motor is drawing more amps than than the switch is designed to carry, yet not enough to blow the fuse. Long distance diagnosis is almost impossible, but I'll give it a shot.

AVid

Thanks for the input. The fan has never blown the fuse. The switch just burns out. It gets hot enough that the back of the switch melts the case. I guess the next step is the next time I am down in Texas where the trailer is, I will have to pull the fan off the ceiling and check everything and check the amps on that circuit. My initial guess is it is just a cheap fan. So far eveything else seems to be holding well with the wife and 3 kids living fulltime in the trailer for 6 months.

If you figure it out, let us know. I would like to fix mine also.

Rick,

My rig was 2 years old this month. I've run the fan since the day that I got it, mostly on low speed. I've used it mostly in the winter to circulate the warm air that stacks up at the ceiling. The switch has never gotten even warm during all that time.

One thing that I've noticed with mine is that when it runs in the original "forward" setting it is pulling air up to the ceiling. In reverse it pushes air down. I don't know what difference it would make, but I thought that ceiling fans were supposed to push air down, not up when going forward. Being that its a DC circuit, I could reverse the polarity to the motor and it would push the air in forward.

Hope you figure it out.

Rick,

I did a little experiment with the fan switch in my 29RLBS. It was a little warm today, so I ran the fan at high speed for almost two hours. As I indicated in a previous post on this stream, I mostly run it on the lowest speed. I found the switch to be very hot to the touch. I then reset it to the lowest speed setting and it had cooled off within 30 minutes.

Tomorrow, I'm going to put my multimeter on the thing and find out what amperage its drawing on each of the speed settings. I'll let you know how I make out.

Come to think of it, I have always used the high setting on ours.

Sounds like the switch is under-rated, just like the slide breakers.

Scott,

You could be right.

When I was messing around with the switch, I blew the 15A fuse for the circuit. I found that the whole bathroom complex (ceiling fan, WC light, light bar above sink and the double light fixture between the sink and the WD) is on the same circuit.

I still haven't put the multimeter on the circuit. I plan to do that this week.

I also have this iuuse with my cat i put a call into f/r waiting for a responce will let you know whae I get one

rdranger68 wrote:I also have this iuuse with my cat i put a call into f/r waiting for a responce will let you know whae I get one

Thank you and please let us know. It seems to work ok if you use it on low.