Slow down 60w ceiling fan

imstuee123 said:

Hi. I have a ceiling fan in a small room and it's like a jet engine. Is there a way to slow it down so slow is like very slow rotation and fast would be like it is on slow.
It is a 3 speed controller.
60w
240v

Cheers

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You would normally just get a speed controller made for use with fans.

MrAl said:

You would normally just get a speed controller made for use with fans.

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I will just repeat a quote from my post just in case you missed it which I think you did!

"It is a 3 speed controller."

I have used a non-polarized (film type) capacitor in series with a small fan motor power to slow it down, which may work for you.
The value was about 4µF, but you'd likely have to experiment with your fan to find the proper value.

You could buy several 1µF caps and add them in parallel until you get the desired speed.
Note that the capacitor voltage rating needs to be higher than the peak main's voltage of 336V.
Here's one source for such capacitors.

Is the present fan motor shaded pole or capacitor start/run winding

MaxHeadRoom78 said:

Is the present fan motor shaded pole or capacitor start/run winding

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How does that affect methods to slow it down?

crutschow said:

I have used a non-polarized (film type) capacitor in series with a small fan motor power to slow it down, which may work for you.

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I tried that some years ago. It worked for me, but the motor had an unexpectedly short life. A post-mortem disclosed scorching and arcing artefacts. I guess some coil/cap resonance at a mains frequency harmonic had occurred.

imstuee123 said:

I will just repeat a quote from my post just in case you missed it which I think you did!

"It is a 3 speed controller."

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Hi,

Yes but it apparently is not working the way you need it to, so you could look into a different type. The type I am talking about allows you to adjust it to almost any speed because it would have a rotating knob that you can set to whatever speed you need. They are available in various places.

Yes it works fine 3 speed but they are too fast in the small room it is in. Hence hoping to slow it down! As my original post states.
I do havmve a spare controller could I perhaps put it through to speed reducers?

imstuee123 said:

Yes it works fine 3 speed but they are too fast in the small room it is in. Hence hoping to slow it down! As my original post states.
I do havmve a spare controller could I perhaps put it through to speed reducers?

Clipsal 30 Series 3 Speed Fan Speed Controller | 30CSFM-WE

Clipsal 30 Series 3 Speed Fan Speed Controller Mechanism - Clipsal

www.mjselectricalsupplies.com.au

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All I was really saying was if you have a controller and it does not work as well as you need it to, then just get another controller. If you already have a new one, so much the better

I have tried 3 and all the same speeds. I just want it to go slow so it moves the air a little bit and not life a jet engine.

imstuee123 said:

I have tried 3 and all the same speeds. I just want it to go slow so it moves the air a little bit and not life a jet engine.

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Yes I understood that from the beginning.

Can you order a new speed controller with continuously variable speed or is that not an option?
That's the simplest. If you want to modify the old one that takes more work and time.

Sorry i forgot to mention, the fan controller that is already installed is this, a wifi remote controller.

So i have done some looking around and not sure if this would work by using both controllers.
Could someone tell me if this will work to slow it down?

imstuee123 said:

So i have done some looking around and not sure if this would work by using both controllers.
Could someone tell me if this will work to slow it down?

Click to expand...

A capacitor in series with a load like that will in fact decrease the power getting to the load, and in the case of a fan, that means it will turn more slowly.
However, choosing the value of the capacitor is not that easy because it depends highly on the load power (the resistance of the load really). Even knowing the power the load requires normally may not help that much because fan speed is a little tricky to get right with a constant impedance like a capacitor. This means you may have to try more than one capacitor value. You can of course place more than one in parallel to get a higher capacitance value (fan does not turn fast enough) or in series to get a lower capacitor value (fan turns too fast).

You have to be careful to use capacitors that are rated for power line applications though. That's important.

The impedance of a capacitor is:
Z=1/(j*w*C)
and if we ignore the imaginary operator for a minute we get:
X=1/(w*C)
with w=2*pi*f.

You can compare that with the approximate resistance of the fan to see how much of a voltage drop you get, but it may not help that much except to get a starting value for the capacitance value.