My new home has a screened porch overlooking my back yard. The porch is around 150 square feet and has a ten foot ceiling. Because summer in the South can be hot, I decided to have a ceiling fan installed to help cool the porch on summer evenings. Although the porch has screens, it is not completely protected from the elements. The roof area that contains the ceiling fan has adequate protection from rain even though the walls are made of screen. I checked Lowe’s and Home Depot in search of an adequate ceiling fan for this area. Based on price and features, I settled on the Hampton Bay 52 inch Rustic Finish ceiling fan which was priced at just over one hundred dollars at Home Depot. It has proven to be a good choice.
Home Depot was advertising an installation deal at the time I purchased my ceiling fan. The advertised rate was $99 for installation, which I took advantage of. I set up the installation through the Home Depot Customer Service Desk through a private contractor. The contractor contacted me a few days later to set up a date for installation. I inquired if there was an additional charge for a ten foot ceiling and was advised that there is no additional charge unless the ceiling is higher than ten feet…so no hidden charge surfaced right away. However, during installation, it was discovered that my remote control required a special faceplate for installation as part of the regular light switch. That resulted in an additional charge of forty dollars. I had called around prior to taking advantage of the Home Depot installation and found that the going rate in my area for a ceiling fan install was between $150 and $200. So even with the additional charge for the light switch, I felt that the installation was still a deal.
As mentioned, this unit comes with a remote control device. It is not required to be wired to a remote control, if you prefer to operate it like a traditional ceiling fan. Due to the height of my ceiling, the remote control was one of the features that sold me on this model. My house has ten foot ceilings throughout, which means that all of my interior ceiling fans were installed with remote controls as well. The other remote control units are maintained in a holster which is affixed to the wall. These remote controls can be removed from the holster and carried on your person, in case you want to control the fan (or light) without getting up. This can be convenient in terms of lighting, when watching television in the evening. The remote control that came with the Hampton Bay Rustic Finish ceiling fan is located within the light switch plate and is a small rectangular device with very simple buttons. My other remotes have on/off switches for the lights, which make them easy to use. This remote control has a dimmer switch-type lighting button, which continually makes the lighting brighter, resetting to off once the maximum brightness has been reached. It is one area where the remote could be improved. It is nice to have adjustable lighting, especially on the back porch. However, this feature makes controlling the lighting a bit touchy. The buttons are also very small, which makes them a bit harder to operate for someone with large fingers. The fan has three settings which are clearly marked, making the fan speed much more user friendly. There is also a small on/off switch that completely shuts the remote control unit off as well as turning off the fan and light if they are operating.
Read More About This Hampton Bay Ceiling Fan
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