Testing Remote-Only Fan before Ordering a Canopy Module

How To's & Flex Zone
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Posting this in the hope that it might help others in a similar situation…

I have a ceiling fan that’s remote-control only. There are no pull chains. Its most frustrating feature is that it “forgets” its state whenever power is cut - even when just turning off the wall switch. When power is restored, both the light and fan start out as “off” and will only turn on using the remote.

I wanted to install a fan canopy module, but I thought it wouldn’t be possible because of the requirement to put the fan on its highest speed before installing the module. If this fan forgets that it was on high, how can I install the module before it forgets?

It occurred to me that it might the the remote receiver that I’d be replacing with the canopy module that’s resetting things to off when power is restored, so I decided to test it. Here’s what I did:

  1. Set the fan speed to high
  2. Cut power at the breaker
  3. Unwired the remote receiver module
  4. Connected the hot and neutral wires directly to the fan load and neutral wires, bypassing the receiver module
  5. Restored power at the breaker

Lo-and-behold - the fan came on at high speed!

I don’t know if this would be true of every variation of fan that behaves like this one, but it’s worth a test before deciding a canopy module is out of the question.

1 Like
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This is what I did with one of mine that only had a remote with a legacy LZW36. I was lucky in that my fan did have a reverse switch, because the canopy cannot reverse directions AFAIK…

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I’ve got a couple that are only reversible via remote. Those will be staying on the Bond Bridge for now.

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The receiver you unwired is doing the speed control, so removing it puts full voltage to your fan and it runs at full speed.

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Yeah - obvious after having tested it. But before the test it was conceivable (at least in my head) that there was Yet Another Thing between the receiver and the fan motor - an electronically controlled switch or something - that might be doing the “forgetting” when power was cut.