Ceiling Fans Recalled by Westinghouse Lighting Due to Shock and Fire Hazards
Hazard: The two 60-watt light bulbs included with the ceiling fans exceed the fan?s maximum wattage, which can cause the ceiling fans to overheat or fail. This poses fire and shock hazards to consumers.
Remedy: Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled ceiling fans and contact Westinghouse Lighting for two free replacement 40-watt light bulbs.
60 watts instead of 40 watts is a 50% increase over the design value. That's substantial. The extra heat could also trip a built-in thermal cut-out or push the motor toward failure mode. In any case, it would invalidate the UL or CSA listing since the product was not tested with 60 watt bulbs if the specification was for 40 watt.
in my opinion, it does not suggest that the product is "total garbage".
Any general purpose ceiling fan light fixture that can't handle a couple 60 watt bulbs is a piece of shit. Hell, Westinghouse should have cheapened it up even more and forced the use of 5 watt night light bulbs.
FWIW, the lamp holders in my Casablanca are porcelain and the fixture is UL Listed at 300 watts total.
Ceiling fans and their light kits are regulated appliances in California and elsewhere so manufacturers are doing everything that they can to reduce their energy use. Federal regs. for some kits require current limiters so that no more than 190 watts total can be drawn. Three 60 watt bulbs which are used in many fan light kits are therefore OK and Westinghouse makes those too. Sounds to me like somebody put the wrong bulbs in the box. Maybe it's my generous nature, but I don't see why it makes sense to trash a whole manufacturer's product line when we don't know anything more than what was in the CSPC statement.
I agree with you, but the fact is, Westinghouse is just a name these days. Like many other once good companies, the name had value and was sold to the highest bidder. Frigidaire, Philco, Hotpoint, Singer, and many others no longer exist other that a label put on products made by some mysterious vendor. Some good, some less so. Often the products is identical but sold under various names at different price points.
Absolutely true. Unfortunately brand is something a lot of folks look at and consider but it almost always means next to nothing.
In the case of this thread what was once Westinghouse sold off their consumer appliance/electrical division well over twenty years ago and someone is still quoting their "you can be sure if it is Westinghouse" marketing.
Even a once reputable brand that is still in business is often meaningless because someone without a moral compass is at the helm..
I don't know about the others, but Frigidaire is owned by Electolux, and still produces dependable products. I have installed several of their window shakers over the years, and they are well-built units with solid warranties.
But Frigidaire air conditioners was really Edison Electric when it was still in NJ. They changed the name to White-Westinghouse when it was sold, then a few years later was sold to Husquevarna and the name changed to Frigidaire after a research team showed that people associated the brand with quality. It used to be when Frigidaire was a part of GM many years ago. It was later sold to Electrolux and AFAIK, it is still part of them now.
My company made parts for some of those window shakers and I've been in that plant many times. The same exact unit went down the assembly line but got a different front panel and label. Hotpoint, Crosly, White Westinghouse, Sears, and a couple of others. They had them all on display in the lobby too.
I don't know how the quality is today. They sourced the compressors from China and eventually moved the entire AC plant to Mexico. They had a lot of price pressure from the competition. All the suppliers were called to a meeting and were asked to reduce prices in order to complete with the imports. We did, and that worked for a couple of years. One day we got a letter thanking us for a great season, but next years, we want a 25% decrease in price. We declined and sent the tooling to a competitor. They did it for 25% less and filed chapter
11 and closed that plant.
Other Frigidaire appliances are made in other locations in the US and Canada.
Yes. Westinghouse was a fine manufacturer of both lamps and outdoor luminaires. They invented the so-called "cobra head" luminaires from what I remember. George Westinghouse, along with Nikola Tesla, beat out Thomas Edison for the light bulbs used for the lighting of the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893 and that was the first large scale use of inandescent bulbs -- some 100,000 of them.
Interesting. That fan has the ETL label too which says that it was tested with the 60 watt bulbs -- and passed. I hope Westinghouse and ETL are having a serious discussion. One of them messed up.
A friend of mine has an ancient Frigidaire oven/range, and it does indeed have both Frigidaire and GM on the nameplate. The thing is literally built like a tank.
That makes sense. When I was doing comparison shopping, the exact same features and specs were available on the Frigidaire units and the Kenmore units, down to the remote controls.
That's too bad, but consumers being conditioned (NPI) to buying crap more often, it doesn't surprise me too much. I do know that the Frigidaire units are more highly rated than, for instance, Haier units, both of which are available from Walmart (which is where I ended up ordering both of the ones I installed). Walmart stocks the Haier units, but the Frigidaire units require a special order (free delivery to the store).
Agree. 120W of incandescent light is not sufficient for general lighting in a large room, and typically ceiling fans are installed in medium to large sized rooms. Now you may posit that CFLs are the solution, and they do work well, but they also heat up so it may not be a matter of "oh well I'll just use a pair of 40W CFLs..."
In short, it to me is a sign of excessive cost cutting and compromise to use a socket/fixture that can only handle 40W bulbs. So if I were aware of this, I'd probably wonder what else they cut corners on, and spend a few bucks more for a product that didn't have such obvious signs of compromise.
Agree. 120W of incandescent light is not sufficient for general lighting in a large room, and typically ceiling fans are installed in medium to large sized rooms. Now you may posit that CFLs are the solution, and they do work well, but they also heat up so it may not be a matter of "oh well I'll just use a pair of 40W CFLs..."
In short, it to me is a sign of excessive cost cutting and compromise to use a socket/fixture that can only handle 40W bulbs. So if I were aware of this, I'd probably wonder what else they cut corners on, and spend a few bucks more for a product that didn't have such obvious signs of compromise.
nate
No, it's a case of energy regulations limiting what the manufacturers can do and trying to force the use of CFL and LED bulbs in ceiling fan lights rather than the usual incandescent. No more light kits rated for 300 watts. They are limited to 190.
Westinghouse was all over Pittsburgh. They just got out out of everything. I don't even consider them a company, even if they are. I even considered working for Westinghouse nuclear power plant instrumentation once.
Aside from the kitchen and my shop, no room in the house uses more than 100W at a given time. Family room has two 75's, but only one is ever used at a time for normal lighting, maybe the second if extra light is needed. Bathrooms are 100W, bedrooms 75. Office desk lamp is 60W.
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