Help: LED lights & ceiling fan issue

[77thor]

I've got a Harbor Breeze (from Lowes) ceiling fan and I replaced all (3) 40w light bulbs in it with 5.5w LED's
and now when I turn ON the fan & lights, they both come on but the lights go out about
a minute or so later... And the fan continues running. There is no remote control.
When I flip the wall switch OFF then back ON the fan & lights will go on,
but then the lights go out again and the fan continues running...

I tried removing 2 of the 3 bulbs and the same thing happens?!?
Unfortunately, I don't have any old incandescent bulbs left to replace the LED's.
I'm at a loss here... and need some help...

 

[PugetDude]

You might try fully dimmable LED'S if you can't find incandescent ceiling fan bulbs.

 

[77thor]

I don't understand why dimmable LED's would make any difference?!?
I'm not using a dimming wall switch.
???

 

[tarbellb]

why did you replace the bulbs?

 

[fitter30]

Bulbs using before Led, incondesent? Older fan 20 years old? Older remotes use a control doesn't vary the voltage it cycles the power even on full brite. If you still have one old bulb screw It in leave the leds and they will all turn on. Need a new remote for led compatibility.

 

[PugetDude]

I don't understand why dimmable LED's would make any difference?!?
I'm not using a dimming wall switch.
???

Worked for me when I had the same problem. Easy enough to try.

 

[BurtEggley]

Most fans have a switch for the lights, a switch for the fan, and a switch to control the fan direction. Those switches are on - off switches. But if the fan was made originally with electronics to control it remotely, then the electronics may rely on a minimum current draw. I'd try one of the lights in a known good receptacle to see how it behaves. Or find an incandescent bulb to test it. Ebay and Facebook Marketplace are full of them.

 

[captaindiode]

There could be an internal wattage limiter in the fan that is not compatible with LED bulbs. I had to remove them in my fans when I switched to LED bulbs. Requires some re-wiring, so proceed with caution if you choose to remove it. The government forced the fan manufacturer to install them to limit energy use before incandescents were banned.

 

[rawen2]

There could be an internal wattage limiter in the fan that is not compatible with LED bulbs. I had to remove them in my fans when I switched to LED bulbs. Requires some re-wiring, so proceed with caution if you choose to remove it. The government forced the fan manufacturer to install them to limit energy use before incandescents were banned.

Good information captain! How would one identify the wattage limiter?
I was considering re-wiring to bypass the remote for the lights only. Maybe I don't need to do that.

 

[CJ7VFR]

There could be an internal wattage limiter in the fan that is not compatible with LED bulbs. I had to remove them in my fans when I switched to LED bulbs. Requires some re-wiring, so proceed with caution if you choose to remove it. The government forced the fan manufacturer to install them to limit energy use before incandescents were banned.

Same here. I have several ceiling fans that I bought in 2010 that I had to take the wattage limiters out of so that I could get new LED bulbs to work without constantly flashing/blinking. I even tried dimmable LED's before I removed the wattage limiters and that did not work, at least for the ceiling fans I have.

The wattage limiters they put into the older ceiling fans limited the total wattage of all the bulbs installed into the light fixture to be either 160 or 180 watts. This was supposed to help keep the energy usage down as well as keep the amount of heat buildup in the light fixture down so things would not burn up. People would put in 100 watt incandescent bulbs into their ceiling fans that were made to only have 40 or 60 watt incandescent bulbs in them and it caused all kinds of issues.

The other thing about the wattage limiters is that they required a certain minimum amount of draw from the bulbs in order to work. Now, with LED bulbs only being 5 or 6 watts that put out the equivalent amount of light that the old 40 or 60 watt incandescent bulbs put out, there is not enough wattage being used so some ceiling fan light fixtures will either make the LED's flash constantly or not work at all.

You can see if this is the case with a ceiling fan light fixture if you remove just one LED bulb and replace it with one incandescent bulb that is at least 40 watts. Most of the time this is enough wattage being used so that the remaining LED's in the fixture will no longer flash or shut off.

You can Google wattage limiters to see what they look like so that you can remove it from your ceiling fan and use any LED bulbs you want to.

Jim

 

[cybrdyke]

I don't understand why dimmable LED's would make any difference?!?
I'm not using a dimming wall switch.
???

Dimmable LED lamps are sensitive to lots of things like electrical noise, harmonics, spikes, etc, as well as electronic interference. Your fan has both large electrical components and electronics in it which could easily be messing with the LED's, making them incompatible with the fan.

As stated before, the quickest easiest troubleshooting hack is to put incandescent lamps in it, in all the sockets, with no LED's, and see if the fan behaves. If it does, you can try non-dimming LED lamps to see if they'll work.
CD

 

[captaindiode]

This is a generic picture I found. Your wiring may differ, but this is the idea.