Today I had an electrician install several Inovelli White switches (dimmers and two fans) the dimmer switches have worked very well so far but the fan switches were able to turn on my fans but could not make them run faster than the very lowest setting. The electrician simply said he was no expert on the switches and offered no further troubleshooting.
These ceiling fans have no lights built in, they are pull chain (but are mounted high up, the chains are never manipulated). Unfortunately because we live a hot, muggy climate I had to have the fan switches removed when they didn’t work properly (they could power the fan on and off, but could not make the fan go faster), it would simply have been too hot here not to have the fans at full strength.
Any help would be great, getting the fans into my smart home was the thing I was looking forward to the most with this pricy project.
Before you installed the fan switch, did you turn the fans on with a dumb switch to make sure that fan was set to the highest setting?
Neutral or non-neutral configuration? If a neutral configuration, was the switch reporting that it had a neutral? (Not sure what visibility you have with a white series.)
Thanks for your help! The fans are Hunter “Silent Breeze” (21776-380). Yes, before the switches were installed the fans were on dimmer round dumb switches (that’s what they’ve been on since the house was built in the 1980s). When I turned on the fan with the Inovelli switches I initially thought pulling the chains would resolve it, so I got a ladder and climbed up and did so, but even after pulling on the chain with the Inovelli switch powering the fan all they would do is either spin (slowly) or turn off when the chain was pulled.
They’re on neutrals. When you ask if it was reporting if it had a neutral what do you mean? The only other thing I did notice was that the light bar was indeed indicating that it was moving up as I tried to increase the speed (though the speed did not increase).
Since you encountered the same issue with two switches, the odds both switches are defective are extremely low.
The fans are old and have pull chains, so they are likely AC fans and therefore compliant. (I couldn’t find specs on hunterfan.com.)
I asked about a neutral because in a non-neutral configuration, you lose the high speed setting, leaving the medium and low. But in your case, it’s not clear to me if you had two speeds working, or if the fans were just slow.
The fan switch will auto-detect if a neutral is in place, and that is reported to the hub. Hence my question as that setting can sometimes be used to diagnose wire faults.
Is there more than one fan on the switch?
If the switches were installed, there would be some troubleshooting that could be done. However, since they’ve been removed, I don’t know what to suggest.
I just shot a (likely not very helpful) clip of my set up:
Yes, I think the switches were fully operational/not defective (again, just from lighting up and being able to turn on and off the fans). A few months ago I did contact Hunter Fans and asked to make sure they were AC fans (which they confirmed), however they did tell me that “their fans are not compliant with any smart switches” (which I think they simply said to try and make me purchase newer fans or to purchase something from them, I think it was just sales talk or liability jargon in case something like this happened).
Ah, I see what you mean about the neutrals, but yeah, I had the electrician come and do a survey because having no neutrals was my big fear (and what I had encountered when I was trying to update my 1950s-built grandparent’s house, there were no neutrals and having them installed was quoted at $12,000-$16,000). So I was very cognizant of making sure I had them here. And all the Inovelli Dimmers I had installed yesterday are working well.
So I had the two of the Inovelli White fan switches installed. On the first switch there were two fans on the switch (this is where I was pulling the chain, on one of these). On the second switch it was just one fan. Also, the second fan is a slightly newer model of Hunter fan. However both switches were encountering the same issue and wouldn’t speed up (it would run at its slowest speed but nothing more).
I’m still really hoping to get these working, having the fans made smart (5 fan switches through the house was the ultimate goal) was the primary reason for this 40 switch replacement project (the other being attaching an Inovelli White to an outdoor pathlight switch that’s on/off is located outside. Sadly I think it’s protective clamshell case is also preventing the Thread signal from reaching it).
The dimmer light switches work great and are really cool, I hate that I’m disappointed about the parts of the project I really, really wanted to make smart (the fans and the path lights) are the ones that aren’t working…
Thank you for any help though, I certainly appreciate it.
I have a house full of Hunter AC fans and they all work perfectly with Inovelli fan switches. That would be true for their DC fans, but not the AC ones.
Again, without having the switches installed, there isn’t much to suggest.
For the dimmer with 2 fans, I would find out if the fans are wired in parallel or series. If it’s the latter, that would substantially impact the fan speed. But you’re having the same issue with the single fan, so I don’t know.
I’ll ask, I’d like to put together some troubleshooting questions to put to the electrician when he comes back to finish the rest of the house. Any questions you can think of would be a huge help! In the moment it was frustrating that he said “all I can do is install them, I can’t answer questions about the switches.” I get that but I didn’t even know what questions to ask him to try to troubleshoot things.
I can ask him if they’re parallel or in series, for the second, solo fan, is there any chance that that could be wired in series with the lights and cause an issue? If the 2 fans are wired in parallel is that an expensive process to fix (like tearing out sheetrock). My family has a limited threshold for what they’ll tolerate to get these switches going, but I’ve invested so much money in all of this I just want it to work…
Do either of the existing fan switches turn lights on or off at the same time as the fan? If a fan switch just operates the fan or fans, then no.
In anticipation of the electrician coming back, make sure that all three fans are set to high (or double-check that they are). Turn the fan controls all the way up. Then pull the chains on the fans until they stop. Once you are convinced they are off, then do one more pull. That will be high.
The electrician should insure that the constant hot goes to the Line terminal and the switched hot going to the fan goes to the Load terminal. You can’t just grab the two conductors without makeing sure you know which is which like you can with a dumb switch.
When the fan is wired, it should have three conductors plus a ground (probably) connected to it.
If he wires the switch and the fan is running slowly, make sure the Inovelli is all the way up (or better yet put it in the exhaust fan on/off mode via quick taps) and measure the voltage between the Line and Neutral terminals ON THE SWITCH. It should be 120VAC approx.
Both of these fans is on a 2-way, right? i.e a single switch controls the fan(s).
Oh, no, no, nothing like that. The two fans on the same switch do turn on/off from one switch, but not the lights on the solo fan.
Now, unrelated to these fans (but for the fans in the next bedrooms where the electricians are going to work next) those were originally overhead lights that a fan was later connected to. So the overhead lights and fan turned on from one toggle switch (no dimmer, the fan is permanently at full strength via its unreachable pull chain). Those would be the next rooms in line to be wired with Inovelli switches. We just unscrewed the ceiling bulbs all these years so the fans could run while we slept and made due without having the lights (we were excited that we might be able to add smart bulbs once we got the fan switch installed). But anyway… those are the next rooms.
But yes, both of THESE fans (the 2 on one switch, and the solo fan on solo switch) we’ve been discussing are on 2-way (the next room I mentioned above is on a 3-way, sigh). I will say the 3-way dimmer switches we put in yesterday have been frustrating. I bought all smart switches because I didn’t want the switches to look different. I think there’s wiring issues (not Inovelli switch issues) where one of the 2 way switches is killing power to the other. Like 1 has to always be on,or the other doesn’t work. Anyway, I’m sorry, that’s a minor issue and not an Inovelli issue.
Thank you for this suggestion! I will say the electrician is a young guy that said he had five years experience (and was sent because the boss said on the phone “he’s young, he’ll know about these things”). I don’t know how familiar local electricians are with the smart switches here (rural Mississippi). But if that is an unusual aspect of wiring fans to smart switches I’ll be sure to ask him if he’s confident he did that. (Because he has so many switches to do next time, he may be unwilling to test connect the switch again, but I’m willing to have him out to try to do it again and see once the project advances).
Does the Inovelli fan switch need to be put into “dimmer mode” (I’m not even sure if the fan switch can be put into dimmer mode, I do think I tried to do that yesterday, but it was stressful and I may not have). I should say before it’s asked, I did hold the fan switch in the up position to ramp it up and also up-tapped it many, many times to try to get it going faster, so I know it’s not a case of me not pushing the “speed up” button enough times. If after being put into exhaust fan on/off mode (up on paddle and tap three times), it is not 120VAC on the switch, what might that indicate? Looking at the controls if I did try to put it into “dimmer” mode (like you would on the dimmers), it looks like I would have held the paddle down and pressed config 3 times (which it looks like would put the fan into 3 speed mode on the fan switch). Would that be a problem? I think I presumed that the pull chain basically meant “3 speed” and maybe that was what was needed for my fan when it didn’t speed up out of the box.
I don’t have whites, but if the fan switch is like the Blue, it should default to the on/off mode, which is fine for your purposes. When on, the switch should put out 120VAC on the Load terminal.
When testing the load output, if you get 120VAC between the Load and Neutral, make sure you get 0 VAC when you turn the switch off.
And if there is anything other than 120VAC between the load and the neutral is there something that could be done to address that that the electrician may need to be told? Or will he understand that when seeing it?
Also, when the electrician returns if I ask him to install a test Inovelli white fan switch on the fan in my bedroom (where if it does not immediately work, I can tolerate the fan not running and not make the rest of the family uncomfortable while trying to troubleshoot it), would having a fan (with an unused light in the bottom that I do not wish to use, as I know they make those canopy ) that wired in series with ceiling lights lights (that have had the bulbs removed and are no longer used) make the fan switch unusable?
Also, I just found this on the Inovelli site where it shows a diagram with the neutral wire jumper that is included in the box being used on the fan even when working with the neutral.
Admittedly I was not looking over his shoulder as he did the installations, but I did not see him make use of any of the included neutral wire jumpers. Could this cause a speed issue while still allowing the fan to function?
By default, I believe the switches operate in an On/Off mode (i.e., for controlling a single-speed bathroom exhaust type fan), and don’t provide speed control.
If using Home Assistant, there is a setting “Switch Mode” that lets you choose between the Exhaust fan mode, and a 3-speed controller.
If not using Home Assistant, there is a manual button-tap sequence (you’ll have to check the user guide) to set this.
Also, you mentioned your fans have a pull-chain speed adjustment. Be sure that is set in the “high” speed position. Put the fan wall switch into its highest speed mode and try pulling the pull chain to cycle between speeds until you find the highest one.
We can troubleshoot if you have issues. I don’t speculate.
You’d be better off with testing a fan alone. Regardless of whether or not the bulbs are installed, you’d be installing the fan switch in a configuration for which it is not rated.
The three conductors are Line, Load and NEUTRAL. If he didn’t use the jumper then he should have used his own pigtail. Some prefer not to use the short stranded jumper for a number of reasons, opting to cut the proper length solid pigtail from Romex or a roll of THHN.
What hub are you using?
If the next installation does not go properly, please post pictures with the switch pulled out so I can see all the connections to the switch and into the box to see the connections there.
Okay, that makes me feel like maybe I can’t do the two bedroom fans at all then.
Shifting gears back to the fans that he did do work on (pullchain, solo fan on one switch and pullchain duo fans on one switch). I’ll be sure to ask if he used the jumper or made his own (or just neglected that). If I understand correctly, when not using smart switches he wouldn’t use those (in other words he might not have known to use them if he’s not used to doing smart fan switches locally, which is very likely since we’re quite rural).
I’m fully Apple Homekit and my hub is a brand new HomePod (non-mini). Everything in the home is thread based (trying to avoid getting any other hubs). Lots of Eve Plugs, but this was the first more intensive installation work I’ve had for the smart home.
Thank you, I will, he’ll have to go back into that box because one of the White Dimmers attached to our outdoor flood lights isn’t working, so I’ll plan to ask him. It might be a week or two, I’m waiting for the next set of switches to arrive Monday and then I’ll make the appointment.
Thank you! Yeah, I haven’t moved into Home Assistant yet, just Apple Homekit so it’s the tap sequences for me. It looks like that’s “down paddle plus 3 clicks of config for orange light” which I did do when I had the switches in (I remember the orange light, I did that a few times on each of the two switches).
The fan switch is meant for 1 fan per switch. The speed is varied with a series connected capacitor, so the more fan motor load you put onto the switch, the slower the low speeds will be.
There is only 3 speeds. Varying the LED light up and down won’t vary the speed for any change. It only steps from speed to speed. I think the levels are 1-33%=low, 34-66%=medium and 67-99%=high or something like that.
The high speed will put full line power to the fan when you put the level high enough. High speed is full line voltage which would run the fan at full speed.
If you don’t have a neutral then you lose the high speed. I would suspect that might be what happened. You won’t get much for the lower speeds, especially with 2 fans on one switch. A big fan might also have anemic low and medium speeds. Others have posted here about how low speed was useless and medium was about what low speed should be on their fans.
Do you think that getting it up to high speed (with a neutral, which these have, whether the electrician installed the jumper or a pigtail, I’m not sure) would get the two fans on the single switch up to high at least? In other words if the high speed puts full line power to the fan (in this case two fans) will that be equivalent to the dumb switch putting full power to the two fans? Or is it impossible for the Inovelli switch to power two AC fans at full speed due to the capacitor that you mentioned?
The 5 AC (not DC, just to clarify, since I know these can’t work with DC) ceiling fans in my house are in these circumstances:
Two fans powered on one switch (attempt was made to add Inovelli White fan switch, speed inadequate)
One fan powered on one switch (attempt was made to add Inovelli White fan switch, speed inadequate)
One fan with unused light built into fan, fan is on the same line with lights in ceiling that are also unused now (not yet attempted to attach Inovelli fan switch)
One fan with unused light built into fan, fan is on the same line with lights in ceiling that are also unused now (not yet attempted to attach Inovelli fan switch)
One fan attached to one switch (not yet attempted to attach Inovelli fan switch)
I’m afraid to ask, but it sounds like you’re saying that perhaps only fans #2 and #5 would be workable? (even though fan in bullet #2 was attempted and had the same issues as the the two fans in #1).
