Ceiling fans with low ceilings?

[Tim+]

As my wife and I suffer from the menopause and ?manopause? respectively, we?re ?hot? sleepers and have found that keeping a fan running in the bedroom makes for a much more comfortable night?s sleep.

At present we use a 12-14? diameter oscillating fan but it?s a bit noisy and I?d rather have a slower turning ceiling fan. The thing is, our house is relatively modern and the ceiling height is only 7?7?.

Does anyone his render the idea a non-starter? Would it look totally naff over a bed? If doable, what features should I look out for to get the quietest fan?

Tim

[newshound]

I think you would be struggling with a "traditional" one like ours which is at least 18 inches from the bottom of the rod to the bottom of the light. But ours is in a "barn conversion" type room with insulated plasterboard on the rafters, and no ceiling. They do work well, though.

Offices sometimes have fairly shallow ventilation fittings containing cylindrical (fan-heater) type fans that are not too noisy on slow speed and still shift quite a lot of air.

Do you have access above? You could put in a few office / bar type ventilation points to give air downdraft fed via ducting from a fan some distance away, to reduce noise?

I suppose the true DIY solution would be a mechanical Punkah Wallah (see Google Images).

[Animal]

I forget the min height requirement, it's not always followed. Some ceiling fans are very slow and may be judged touch safe. Some have a very short rod for low ceilings. Large slow homemade fans are not impossible.

[Jeff Layman]

If money is no object, have a look at the DC fans here:

Some claim to be only 20cm from top to bottom - one even clams to be only 16cm (but it is £399.99!). If you want a quiet fan DC is the way to go. Note that some of these fans are enclosed, so will be a lot safer.

We've got a DC fan in the conservatory. It's remote controlled, 6-speed, and reversible, and has been working well for over 7 years.

[Tim+]

Many thanks. Some of those aren?t too hideous. My wife might even like one or two. ;-)

Tim

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I have the issue that my top bit is hot but my feet get cold. this often means a fan and a hot water bottle. I've noted some ceiling fans very close to a ceiling, not sure how effective they might be if there is only 6 inches clearance. I don't like turning the oscillating bit on as the change in air flow has you almost counting the seconds between blasts, Better off with a couple of static fans. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Most ceiling fans are designed to either fold or collapse if the blades hit something. I remember a myth busters where they wanted to see if a fan of the ceiling variety would have enough inertia to do serious damage to human tissue. It did not, they had to invent their own to achieve it, with the remains of a dead pig as I recall. Brian

[alan_m]

a DIY array of large PC power supply fans would only be around 2 inches deep and could be run at speeds to almost eliminate noise.

[Andrew]

Why is getting so hot anyway ?. Better to identify and solve the problem and not attempt to hide the symptoms.

[newshound]

I did once rig up a couple of ordinary PC case fans, powered by a wall-wart, to provide "forced cooling" of a radiator that was giving insufficient output. It worked quite well although I eventually solved the problem by locating the restriction in the 10mm small-bore, and replacing it all with "proper" 15mm.

[Tricky Dicky]

We have several of these including in the bedroom, they are only 40cm down from the ceiling with the actual fan blades approx. 15cm nearer the ceiling. We have 8 foot high ceilings but I think you will be OK with your ceiling height. We also included the remote control which gives three fan speeds and also dims and switches the light which can be a dimmable LED.

Cannot see it being a problem over the bed as you will not be walking under it anyway but then again it depends on what sort of bedroom olympics your are into.

Richard

[David]

We have one similar to

which we find excellent. That one projects 42cm down from the ceiling. It is totally silent on its lower speed, and provides more then enough airflow on that setting.

I wouldn't fancy putting any part of my body in its way while it's spinning though, so I don't do that.