I believe the poster above is correct (not that the warning in the manual doesn’t suffice) that the dimmer cannot be used on a fan — even if a dimmer at 99 were the same as a switch when on (I don’t know enough about the electronics to say but can state from experience that something is clearly still different) — which may damage the fan — it’s also likely that the dimmer wouldn’t be able to handle the high inrush current from a motor load — which may damage the dimmer. Bad on both ends.
Sounds like we’re in pretty much the same situation. I have a fan with Hue bulbs in the light kit (so I never want to turn off power) and only one load wire at the switch (and there isn’t really room to add a gang for a fan switch even if I wanted to). I’m sure you’ve seen Inovelli’s Project Hurricane, Fan & Light Switch (Project Hurricane), which is what I’m planning on using to solve this problem … as soon as my pre-order ships in (hopefully) a few months 
It does require installation of a canopy module for the fan, but I was already using one and just plan on swapping out my existing Hampton Bay Fan Controller with this. I’ll gain a usable wall switch for both the fan and lights in a single gang (via Central Scenes since I’ll disable local control, apparently the same as you — which I guess I could already do with the switch if I didn’t mind using the config button for the fan, but this will look nicer, be more intuitive, and give me the big LED bars that I’d be missing compared to the Dimmer that I prefer everywhere for this reason).
I also thought about permanently wiring the line and load to bypass the dimmer as suggested above, but the Hampton Bay Fan Controller requires a very precise reset sequence if it ever falls of your network, and doing that with a breaker does not sound fun. (But I will say my problems with it have practically disappeared since I replaced its antenna. I still want the Inovelli for the wall switch, though!)