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How to Fix Ceiling Fan Wobble

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By 5 years ago 96990 Views 2 comments

If you have a ceiling fan that wobbles there are many reasons that can be causing the issue. Things from the manufacturer not weighing each blade in a set to match, to loose screws or improper support of the mounting bracket can all cause wobble. There are many other things as well that can cause a ceiling fan to wobble.

In this article I will point out some of the most common causes of ceiling fan wobble, and I will try to give some pointers to fix any such issue you may be having with a ceiling fan.

Reason 1:

Make Sure the Ball Socket Is Seated Properly Into the Hanging Bracket

If your ceiling fan has a downrod, you'll almost always have a ball socket at the top of the downrod. You'll notice a groove cut vertically on one side of the ball socket. If you look very closely where the ball socket sets into the fan's hanging bracket, you'll notice a little notch on one side of that hanging bracket. If the ball socket groove isn't seated into the notch of the hanging bracket a ceiling fan will almost always wobble. Many times the wobble will be present on all speeds and no matter how much you try to balance the fan nothing will work until these two parts are properly aligned and seated. Therefore, check this before you try any other steps in correcting your ceiling fan wobble issue.

Reason 2:

Make Sure All Screws Are Tight... ALL OF THEM!

Loose screws on the ceiling fan can also cause wobble issues. Screws holding the blades to the motor can be a cause, but less likely than a few other screws that are part of the fan installation. To start with, check all screws that hold the blades to the motor and make sure they are very tight.

After checking the blade to motor screws, and if your fan has a short or long downrod between the motor and the ceiling, you'll have one or two set screws on top of the motor that tighten against the downrod where it attaches to the motor. There is a safety pin that keeps the downrod from ever coming detached from the fan, but set screws are there to lock it in place securely. I find many cases where an installer got into a hurry and forgot to tighten the one or two set screws in this area. Check behind whoever installed your fan and make sure these are very, very tight.

You will also find a set screw at the top of the downrod where the half ball socket attaches to it. In order to make sure this set screw is tight, you will need to lower the canopy away from the ceiling. Hopefully you don't have a Hunter or newer Casablanca ceiling fan, as in many cases the canopy doubles as part of the hanging bracket. In which case it is holding the weight of their fans. High end brands such as Modern Forms, Minka Aire, Gulf Coast, TroposAir, and Fanimation all use a separate hanging bracket to support the weight of their ceiling fan, and the canopy is only a shell that covers the main part of the hanging bracket, and not actually holding the fan to the ceiling. This allows the canopy to be independently lowered from what is actually holding the fan so that you can easily get to the set screw securing the ball socket to the downrod. Once you find this screw, it is very important that it is tightened securely.

Any looseness, in any of the screws mentioned above, can be a major cause of ceiling fan wobble. This is especially true with the set screws securing the downrod to the fan. Therefore, checking all of these and tightening them may solve wobbling issues and help you to enjoy your ceiling fan even more.

Shop Ceiling Fans at ModernFanOutletReason 3:

Make Sure Blade Irons Are Not Bent

Traditionally ceiling fans used blade irons (or blade arms) to attach the blades to the motor. Many new contemporary designed fans have blades that connect directly to the motor and do not use blade irons. Yet, other modern fans will still use blade irons. Whether or not a fan uses blade irons has nothing to do with quality, but is only determined by the design the designer of the fan is trying to achieve.

That said, if your ceiling fan does use blade irons, the installation instructions will almost always state to install the motor to the ceiling first. Then attach the blades to the irons at floor level, and finally attach the irons to the fan motor after it has already been attached to the ceiling and wired. This is because each blade iron is pitched to an exact degree from the manufacturer, and if assembling the entire fan at the floor level and then trying to attach it to the ceiling there is a good chance a blade iron could become slightly bent, thus causing the fan to wobble.

To check to see if this is the culprit of your shaking fan issue, you will need to do what is known as blade tracking. To track the blades, simply pick one spot of the ceiling to measure down to a blade. Leave the tape measure at same spot and then slowly and carefully spin each blade towards the tape measure. Measure the high side and the low side of each blade’s pitch, or tilt. If you find a few blades measure different from the others, it is most likely because those blade irons were bent during installation. You can attempt to apply pressure to bend them back in line with the others, but it is very hard to get them exact. Also, if bent severely they could break. Your best bet to fix a wobbling ceiling fan that is caused by bent blade arms is to order a matched replacement set of irons.

Also, along with Reason 3 is a warped bladed. With a high-end ceiling fan this usually will not be an issue. However, with cheaper fans, that use pressboard blades, a wrapped blade could be the root of the problem.

Reason 4:

Ceiling Fan Support May Not Be Adequate

There are times where you can install a fan from an excellent name brand, such as TroposAir or Fanimation, yet still have some fan wobble. Brands like these will usually usually never wobble. In many cases the wobble is caused before the fan was ever installed by not providing adequate bracing for high performance fans that have a lot of torque within the fan motors.

You'll want to make sure you do not use anything other than a metal ceiling fan rated electrical box. Even though some of the carbon composite electrical boxes may claim to be rated for ceiling fans, they are still not as sturdy as the metal ones. The metal ones are not much more expensive. Therefore, you'll want to spend a couple extra dollars to ensure you won't run into a problem with the type electrical box being used as the root of a wobble problem.

One sure way to know this is the issue is if you've installed multiple fans in your home, used the same type of electrical boxes, all from are from a good name brand, and you find the less powerful fans run smooth, yet the more expensive, more powerful fans do not. It will be a pain in the butt, but you may have to take the fans down and change over to the metal boxes to fix the issue. Therefore, do it right before you even begin to hang your fan or fans. It will definitely be worth it in the long run.

(Be sure to properly support the electrical box)

Even when using the proper metal fan rated electrical box you'll need to make sure the box is secured very tightly to a great support in the ceiling. For best results, use two 2x4's on their side, just like when framing a house. Screw them to each other, this way your electrical box will have plenty of stability above it, so then once it is tightened down there will be no give (or play) in it. This will also ensure there is no side to side movement with the 2x4 brace you are using above the box.

A ceiling fan bracing kit usually works well also, but I am a firm believer that the 2x4 method mentioned above will be your best bet. I usually only suggest the bracing kits when trying to support a ceiling fan when there is no attic space above to go into and do the 2x4 bracing method.

Following these suggestions before attaching any fan to the ceiling will ensure that a wobbly ceiling fan isn't being caused by inadequate support.

Reason 5:

Position of the Electrical Box in the Ceiling

Before installing a ceiling fan, you'll want to make sure the bottom of the electrical box is completely flush with the ceiling on all sides. This way the fan's hanging bracket tightens securely to the electrical box, not the ceiling material, thus providing the proper support needed.

Many times an electrician may have supported the box the proper way, but may fail to get it perfectly flush with the ceiling. If one side of the box is flush, yet the other side is recessed behind the ceiling 1/8" of an inch or so, this will cause the bracket to tighten against a ceiling surface that is usually sheetrock, and not to the solid foundation of the electrical outlet box. If the screws, that holds the hanging bracket to the electrical box are tightened all the way, they will pull the bracket through the sheetrock causing damage to the ceiling. For this reason, the installer may only snug that screw and not really torque it down tightly like it really should be. The bracket may seem secure at the time, but once the torque from a ceiling fan motor on high speed kicks in, it is not enough to secure the fan and keep it from wobbling. The fan may never fall from the ceiling, but it may never run smoothly either. The sheetrock may eventually crumble away, causing then the hanging bracket to become much looser and the wobble will become much worse.

That said, you can try to balance the fan (outlined in Reason 6) but it may only provide a temporary fix and several months, or a year or two later you may be right back to the same issue of your ceiling fan not running smoothly again.

Another quick fix, that may be more permanent, but still not as ideal as making sure the electrical box is installed properly in the beginning, is to take the fan and it's hanging bracket down from the ceiling. Install washers between the electrical box and the hanging bracket, filling up the of the gap between the bottom of the ceiling and the electrical box, so that the ceiling fan hanging bracket can tighten up solidly without pulling through the sheetrock. Try reinstalling the ceiling fan and see if that helped.

NOTE: Before removing the fan from the ceiling to fix any issue, make sure you detach the blades from the motor. Taking a fan down completely assembled risk bending a blade holder. If a blade holder becomes bent your wobble issue will not go away until you fix that as well.

Bottom line for Reason 5, when installing a new ceiling fan, make sure your electrical box is installed flush to the ceiling and tightly secured before hanging the fan. Don’t be in a rush, as this is one of the most important steps to prevent ceiling fan wobble.

Reason 6:

Ceiling Fan May Be Poor Quality - Blades Not Matched

If a poor quality fan is the root of the issue, there is not a whole lot you can do except for try to manually balance the fan blades yourself. The better manufacturers weigh each blade within a set to weigh within 1/2 gram of each other. Unfortunately, this matching of blades to exact weight within a set is not usually the case with inexpensive ceiling fans. If one of the blades on a ceiling fan has any more than 2 or 3 grams weight difference, from one to another, this is enough to cause ceiling fan wobble.

If mismatched blades is causing your fan to wobble you can purchase a ceiling fan balancing kit to attempt to balance the blades. This may keep your fan from being so annoying while it's operating.

- HOW TO USE A CEILING FAN BALANCING KIT -

A balancing kit consist of a plastic clip that you'll attach to the edge of one fan blade, starting roughly in the middle from front to back of the blade. After attaching the clip, turn your ceiling fan on high speed and see if you got lucky on your first try, and the wobble is gone. If it isn't, make a mental note of whether or not the wobble got better or worse, and then move on to the next blade. Repeat this step on all of the blades of your fan, until you get to one that either stops the wobble or makes it better. If you have a five blade fan and the third blade you test makes it better, do not assume that blade is the problem. Go ahead and finish testing all five of them, and then go back to the third blade if that indeed is the best outcome of your test.

Once you find a blade that stops the wobble, simply stick one of the included weights in the balancing kit on top of the blade, in line with the clip. Remove the clip and your wobbling fan problem should be solved.

If you did not find a blade that stopped the wobble, but did make it somewhat better, move the clip inwards on that blade a little and see if it gets better. If not, try moving the clip out closer to the tip of the blade and see how that does. If one of those positions of the clip stops it you'll simply need to stick the weight onto the top of the blade, in line with the clip, remove the clip and you're done. However, if none of the positions fix the wobble, you will need to stick one of the balancing weights on top of the blade at the position that makes it the best, and then reposition the clip onto the center of one of the fan blades again and start the process from the beginning. Sometimes you'll need two or three weights before the fan is completely balanced, and the weights may have to be positioned on different fan blades.

In my experience, if needing more than one weight to correct a wobble problem, after installing the first weight to a blade, I start with the clip on the same blade I put the weight on. Many times one blade may just need two weights, and sometimes you may find your fan may need two weights on one blade and another weight on different blade before ceiling fan runs smoothly.

Balancing a fan this way is a trial and error process and takes patience. I personally hate dealing with it, and that's why I never purchase cheaper quality fans that I know may have issues like this. At Modern Fan Outlet, we also try to stay clear of selling fans of lower quality for this very reason.

In Closing:

These are the main causes I find leading to ceiling fan wobble issues, but not all. Try these steps to fix your unbalanced ceiling fan. If they work I’m happy this article helped. If none of these are the reason behind your fan wobble, and you find your issue was caused by something not mentioned here, please feel free to comment. Your comment may help someone else save time in solving the same issue they may be having.



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Steven Wright 3 years ago at 11:16 PM
I really enjoyed reading this article. Thank you so much for sharing! This was very useful!
amit sharan 2 years ago at 5:37 AM
wobble of my ceiling fan was not working properly. now I can solve this issue..