Large Ceiling Fans

[scottybaccus]

I didn't find much with a search, so I'll throw it out here...

Aside from a $5k Big *** Fan, what have you found and used to move air in your shop?
I have a 2000 sq/ft building, with 1600 sq/ft of open shop, under a high (14'-18') ceiling. I'm looking at fans 96"+ and wondering where the hidden gem is at. I keep thinking an 8' fan should be good for 800 sq/ft, but I see conflicting info in manufacturers' specs, with almost no real world experience from users.

Anyone have a good experience?

 

[Bigblockyeti]

I have old furnace blowers, cheap, quiet, efficient. They don't have the same air volume movement as a 24' ceiling fan and I have them on the floor where and when needed. You do have to build some kind of frame for them as the sheet metal isn't well suited to be regularly handled but if you mounted it to the ceiling or high on a wall that wouldn't be an issue.

 

[matt_i]

I would triple or quadruple on smaller onces. I put in a Fenceham 84" from Home Depot into a 1000sf shop and while cool looking my review is the blades have minimal pitch. You do get some air on max rpm but its underwhelming on lower speeds (albeit quiet). I am planning to put in some more smaller versions to supplement it.

If someone wanted to engineer a little donkey fan that cost about $1k and still moved a lot of air I think you'd have a lot of buyers

 

[glentre]

Fan selection depends on what you want it to do. If you have no ac in a hot climate, you probably want to have a lot of air moving large volumes in order to feel cool. If you have heating and cooling all you might want is a fan that will slowly circulate the air and especially get the warn air down off the ceiling in the winter. My 1100 sq ft garage has full HVAC and a single Home Depot 7 ft alum industrial fan is all I need. With no HVAC, I would have needed at lease three of them.

Glen

 

[Whasat]

I put these in mine, the blades have a steep pitch near the motor and they move quite a bit of air. The included wall speed control is nice as well.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Hampton...Ceiling-Fan-with-Wall-Control-26829/205791277

 

[Bluearmflames]

We just installed 6 humongous fans. (Brand name). They are heavy built and look cool above all they move a ton of air

 

[garage guy1of38]

Baf!

 

[Dragfluid]

Keep in mind that you don't want a fan so large in diameter that the blades pass thru the beam of your light fixtures. The resulting "strobe" would be very annoying.
Without retyping everything again, look at my build thread for an idea.

 

[raspy]

These Westinghouse industrial ceiling fans are incredibly good, they will run almost forever and are very efficient and quiet. They are not built to be fancy, but they are placed in big buildings and just turned on forever. They come in white or brushed nickel.

I paid $49. for mine and I can't believe they are so cheap. The price seems to be up a bit, but still a VERY good deal.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001B1C8Q6/?tag=atomicindus08-20

 

[MrBreeze]

These Westinghouse industrial ceiling fans are incredibly good, they will run almost forever and are very efficient and quiet. They are not built to be fancy, but they are placed in big buildings and just turned on forever. They come in white or brushed nickel.

I paid $49. for mine and I can't believe they are so cheap. The price seems to be up a bit, but still a VERY good deal.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001B1C8Q6/?tag=atomicindus08-20

Hey Raspy,
When you say they are very quiet, are you talking about the motor noise or the wind noise? The reason I ask, is typically, these 3 bladed tend to make more wind noise in order to move the same volume of air as fans with more blades (that then can be run at a lower speed)

 

[coljar]

I put these in mine, the blades have a steep pitch near the motor and they move quite a bit of air. The included wall speed control is nice as well.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Hampton...Ceiling-Fan-with-Wall-Control-26829/205791277

I have two of these in my garage and they work great.

 

[raspy]

Hey Raspy,
When you say they are very quiet, are you talking about the motor noise or the wind noise? The reason I ask, is typically, these 3 bladed tend to make more wind noise in order to move the same volume of air as fans with more blades (that then can be run at a lower speed)

Mine is set at about 15' high in the garage. There is no motor noise. If I run it on the lowest setting I can barely detect a breeze from it, but it's enough to send the stratified hot air down to the floor. It's slow enough that I can watch the blades go around and is the speed I run it. High it is ridiculous with a big downdraft and some wind noise. No motor noise.

I replaced the old fashioned speed controller that comes with it to a modern three speed slide switch electronic one from Lowes. Excellent.

I can't stress enough how good these fans are for industrial spaces and garages. They are the real deal. Simple, long lived, quiet, efficient with metal blades. Not made for show, but made to run for a long time. And the nickel ones are beautiful.

 

[raspy]

I put these in mine, the blades have a steep pitch near the motor and they move quite a bit of air. The included wall speed control is nice as well.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Hampton...Ceiling-Fan-with-Wall-Control-26829/205791277

These are a similar to the Westinghouse industrial design I recommended. Simple design with metal blades.

 

[raspy]

Here is the one I have in my living room. Set at 12' high and 7'wide, it is a thing of beauty, but it's probably better for the house than the garage because you could have 30 Westinghouse fans for the price of one of these. Runs at 44 RPM and stirs the air thoroughly, but gently. No wind noise, easy to watch the blades, but emits a slight hum.

It has very efficient foil shaped blades, made of aluminum, like an airplane propeller.


https://www.build.com/haiku-luxe-outdoor/s1336677?uid=3179989

 

[danb35]

I'm kind of curious about these myself--I'll be building a shop in the next few months, and a HVLS fan seems like a good way to circulate air and reduce HVAC costs. But they're shockingly expensive (the Hunter ECO, the least-expensive model I've seen any pricing for, is still over $3k for an 8' unit), and I'm having trouble understanding why. It's a 3-phase AC motor, a VFD, and extruded Al blades. Sure, it isn't a mass-market product, and that's going to raise prices--I could see hundreds of dollars (even several hundred) for that reason. And they're certainly bigger than standard residential models, so materials costs are going to be higher. But I'm seeing prices 50x higher than a large residential fan. What am I missing?

 

[raspy]

danb35

I wanted a very large slow turning fan in my living room that has a high ceiling, but the cost is also very high. Probably because Big *** is a specialty company and has a reputation for being a cool product. The cost is hard to justify.

For a garage/shop the low cost Westinghouse fans make a lot more sense. BTW, the Westinghouse fan is actually quieter than the Big ***.

 

[danb35]

Probably because Big *** is a specialty company and has a reputation for being a cool product.

...which would make sense to me if they were the only ones in this market--but they aren't. There are at least a half-dozen other manufacturers of HVLS fans, so the market should be reasonably competitive. In that case, basic economics would suggest that the pricing would be close to cost of production + reasonable ROI, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm trying to figure out if (1) there's something that makes "cost of production" much higher than my gut is saying, (2) the market is due for a correction that just hasn't happened yet, or (3) there's some other economic principle in play that I just don't know yet. Any of these is possible, of course.

 

[Lonnies Performance]

I've been looking myself & am actually still undecided....

Big *** fans look well built, but very expensive. I could talk myself into one if I needed a 15' dia one, but for the typical 6-8' size there are a lot of choices.

Saw one at Home Depot, "Big Air" for a reasonable price, but a lot of reviews said they don't move enough air. 8' on amazon for $500 is interesting though.

 

[ForceFed70]

Spent a lot of time on this myself. At the end of the day, I decided multiple smaller fans was the best option. For a number of reasons:
- Cost. Way cheaper to buy a few quality built $200 48" fans.
- Mounting height. The larger the fan the lower it must be hung from the ceiling.
- Lighting strobe. Bag fans spin slowly with wider blades and can make for a strobe light effect.

 

[scottybaccus]

I settled on the Craftmade Colossal 8 foot fan. It's about $600, has a decent warranty, and it's from a Texas company. I ordered on Amazon and it arrived in two days. I'll come back with an update after I install it. Rated for 13k cfm, at well under 100 rpm, I think it's exactly what I need.

 

[bigb56]

These Westinghouse industrial ceiling fans are incredibly good, they will run almost forever and are very efficient and quiet. They are not built to be fancy, but they are placed in big buildings and just turned on forever. They come in white or brushed nickel.

I paid $49. for mine and I can't believe they are so cheap. The price seems to be up a bit, but still a VERY good deal.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001B1C8Q6/?tag=atomicindus08-20

I have two of those as well and they are great. One word of caution though, shut them down before pulling two by fours out of the overhead ceiling rack Even after straightening the blade back out it works good!

 

[raspy]

I have two of those as well and they are great. One word of caution though, shut them down before pulling two by fours out of the overhead ceiling rack Even after straightening the blade back out it works good!

Clang! Eeeek. Dangit!

 

[bigb56]

Clang! Eeeek. Dangit!

yes err..... similar language was used