Who turned on the heat ? And are non regulation chinese items dangerous ?

[admin]

I cant believe how fast the temperature rose today in Victoria. Luckily I made a cooling purchase last week...

I have a large 7/8kw split system, but needed to blow more cool air down my hallway so I decided to buy a fan. A bit bigger than the $20 jobs at the supermarket.

Had a look on Ebay and everything I wanted started at $150 which I didn't want to spend after being financially destroyed by Christmas. So I took a punt on a $70 fan. The description had lots of , "if you want blah blah blah, dont not buy this fan". Yeah, they are sick of the usual consumer whingers I thought.

Unperturbed, as all it needs to do is blow air right ? , I bought it. It arrived via Startreck couriers, a miracle in itself as most of their vans are generally lost in space. The box looked like it had gone 10 rounds with Jeff Horn, but the refugee driver was most polite I presume by the bowing, as he didnt appear to speak english.

After lugging it inside, I found a collection of bits and pieces smashed around the box with no packing whatsoever and no assembly instructions whatsoever. Looking back to the item description , I was reminded that "The package doesn't include any instruction for installation,If you mind,please DO NOT purchase". Roger that. The box and contents had no english whatsoever on it, its obviously not meant for the export market and is meant to be an affordable item to poor rural villagers.

The motor appears to be some sort of left over engine from a communist era fighter plane. Although the description says 230 watt motor, the sticker on mine says 320 watts. They did mention "The base of the fan is make of recycled plastic so it'll look abit old at the outside".

Mine was covered in bird shit and looked like it was made by poor villagers on the banks of Yangtze River by melting old coke bottles in to a pot. After assembling the fan, I had a number of left over parts which is always a concern when you have no instructions but I discarded them and pushed on with a hope that they were not in fact vital to keeping the thing in one piece.

Anyway, all assembled. Time for a test run. I took it to the entrance to the hallway and went to plug it in. The power cord does not reach the ground.....now that's different. Maybe they have a different setup on 1950's planes. After remedying the power issue, I turned it on and put it on 1 , the setting are 1 to 3. Immediately, I knew that I should have ear plugs on as it screamed to a vibrating crescendo that sounded like being on the tarmac at Essendon airport next to a Cessna at take off.

Whoa !! says me, I better wind it the other way to 3 (for some reason 3 is the slowest). But it didnt make much difference, 3 sounds like a plane revving to 3500 rpm. I checked the description again and noted "Please note that although there's 3 speed on the fan however the RPM does not have a much different. (not much different in the fan speed)"

So all up, it does the job but you cannot hear anything else. If you walk up the hallway, you have to lean forward like you going through a snow storm on the way to the top of Mt Everest. The fan itself has some sort of bad imbalance, when you turn it off and it winds down, it gets the wobbles so its best to hang on to the pole as it goes through its shutdown sequence.

But having said all that, it does do the job that I bought it for. Hearing the television, or even a family member standing next to you speaking, is secondary to the fact it blows air.

As I have solar, I will only be using it when the sun is out just in case it chews through 20 kw/h's every 15 minutes. Which wouldn't surprise me.

So all up, it has been a lot more entertaining than buying something Australian approved for 3 times the price

[admin]

Some of the temps in rural Victoria are getting pretty high, 45 has to be unpleasant. Its nearly 41 here and I am on the coast. I am glad its only a 1 day blast.

[mtv]

Mine was covered in bird shit and looked like it was made by poor villagers on the banks of Yangtze River by melting old coke bottles in to a pot.

Pisser!!!

You could probably get a decent large fan at Bunnings.

[admin]

I did look there first as I have one locally, but its still double/triple the price. Realistically its only something I will use on extreme temperature days which is why I have balked on spending too much.

I have a feeling this thing will never blow up, it was probably manufactured by the local tractor factory. The fan blade itself is made out of the same melted coke bottles as the base which is likely why it vibrates. I don't think they have a quality control department.

[mtv]

I don't think they have a quality control department.

You'd like to hope they don't, because if they did and your fan passed inspection... imagine what the rejects would be like.

[admin]

Ha, yeah, imagine their seconds sale !

The fan blade may have been straight to start with, having no packing in the box means anything could have been dumped on it. Though realistically it was probably never straight.

Its funny as hell listening to everyone yelling at each other in the same room, going What ?? What ?? I cant hear you over the fan !

The cool change is starting to hit here, so I just put it down to low, which is still fast. It was like going down through the gears on a truck

[ol' boy]

Freezing here now

[alpha0ne]

Maybe you should have asked the refo delivery driver to assemble your new wind machine, it was probably made in his village !!

We've only had a couple of warm.....ish days here in Mandurah this summer, its nothing like what summer is supposed to be here in WA and the last few days has been cold enough to have to throw another blanket on the bed

Last summer I only turned the air con on twice but it was going every evening during the coldest winter I can 'member

[bob_m_54]

The refo (sic) driver has probably read the forum and decided to give the fan a bit of a serv as retribution. LOL

[LeroyPatrol]

Been 40ish for days up here and still around 37 now and it's 10pm! I put a new swampy on last summer and it's bigger than required so pumps heaps of air. It's doing well but nothing like refrigerative

Leroy

[george65]

I Miss my Asian" Re-Rivery" man at the old place.
Dog sniffed him once when I had the door ajar signing for something and the next thing he had both hands pressed against the door with all his weight screaming No let out the dog over and over.
From then on, he'd come to the door, Ring the bell Call out Re Rivery in his happy tone then be seen pissbolting round the corner before I could get 12 ft to the front door from my office chair.
NEVER signed for another package again wether they had " Signature Required" or not.


I have a couple of broken soalr panels on my shed Roof connected to a pair of are Radiator fans. Things blow a gale and keep the shed beutifuly cool on hot days by stopping any heat buildup in the non insulated shed. About a week ago I got another panel and another pair of fans any put them over the manhole in the laundry to blow cooler air up into the ceiling. Geez the things blow up a storm!
I don't know if keeping the Ceiling cooler keeps the house cooler but everyone says it does and not like this cost me a cent, had it all lying round doing nothing and I can get as many fans as I want for Nix.

I'm thinking about putting a couple in the bearers of the pitched roof back verandah. again, power them with a panels and free cooling. Was also thinking of some water misters for the really hot days.

For your fan you could always buy a cheap Poor mans VFD in the form of a PWM motor speed controller. That would give you infinite turn of a dial control to get the speed ( and quiet) you want. I have a few of the things and they work great. I built one into a box with a power meter and a twin power point on the side so I can plug anything in. The meter lets me see how much power I'm putting into something. For shits and Giggles the other weekI wired the 3.6 Kw water heater with a plug and ran that off a bunch of solar panels going through a charger and then a 1.5 Kw inverter. Dialed it up to 1Kw and let it run like that. Without the PWM would have tripped the inverter out or escaped the magic smoke. I have also put one on a large kettle so it just simmers the water so it's on a rolling boil in 15 sec but don't boil away in 10 Min flat. Can use as litle as 50W once it's boiling to keep it on the edge.

This is the push button percentage read out version:


I see they now have them pre built like my setup so they are able to be plugged into anything:



And you can buy the basic boards to put into a housing:



They all work well in my Multiple experience with teh things. was using one today to slow down a pump from blasting the plants away.
Only thing you have to watch out for is if you slow down a single phase induction motor you don't slow it too much and the thing drops onto the start winding. Not good for magic smoke containment. you can generally hear the switch drop in and out so as long as the thing is up on the run windings which should be about 1/3rd motor speed+, they are fine.

As fans and the like all have crappy little universal motors, they won't care even if they do make a slight pulsing/ frequency sound.

[Landytrack]

The so called Mistral brand stand fan I bought from Bunnings six or so years ago is still going strong. Best thing I've bought from Bunnings for a long time.

[Uncle Fester]

....needed to blow more cool air down my hallway . . So I took a punt on a $70 fan...

We are pleased to read that you are happy with your new fan proudly designed and made under license by the PRC, not actually sure where, maybe Congo.
We think any inclusion of bird excrement should be free of the Ebola virus.
With this exceptional product you can now use your hallway as a wind tunnel to hover high speed model aircraft.
It exceeds the power of the far more expensive Dyson fans while maintaining the same amount of noise.
Keep in mind that the speed limiting capacitor may now contain a new communication chip from Huawei with battery backup that intercepts all your data and sends it to China's government for your protection against dissidents terrorists.
It is also 5G ready.
Why would anybody want to reduce the power of this Great Fan of China anyhow.

We hope you get a good service life from the fan, 20 running hours would be exceptional, and will replace it with the same model when the time comes.

PS: The backup battery will supply your 'protection chip' for several months so please don't throw it away.