Saturday, May 28, 2005
Directionally Challenged
I won't complain about the hot weather, because I've been waiting for summer to come. The long hours of sunshine, even if the day doesn't take us outside. But I am confused about ceiling fans.
Fan blades are supposed to move one way for winter, to circulate heat, and one way for summer, to remove heat. It's a crap shoot to get it right. Yeah, yeah, clockwise for one season and counter-clockwise for another. But here's the confusing thing.
When I stand facing the fan, I can't tell which way it's turning. Don't laugh, I'm serious. While standing still look at your ceiling fan, if you have one. If you look at the edge closest to you, the blades appear to be going counter-clockwise (for instance). If you then look at the blades farthest away from you, the blades appear to be going clockwise. They don't look the same! I tried standing under the fan to try the experiment, and as long as I did't turn the other direction when looking at the opposite side of the blades, the results were the same. What's a girl to do????!!!
Oh, and don't bother telling me that if the blades slant one particular angle versus another then the fan needs to circulate a certain way in each season. You think if I can't tell which end of the fan to look at to see which direction it's going that I'll remember an even longer formula? I can't be the only one, female or male, in this awful predicament.
While cleaning one of the ceiling fans I noticed a switch that makes it change directions. It wasn't labelled. I figured out what it was. Don't tell me to read the instruction sheet, because it's long gone. Why didn't they label it? It would have been so simple to print "summer" by one side of the switch and "winter" by the other. But nnnnnoooooooooooo.
I'm just lucky I changed my mind about how to handle this dilemna once I saw the switch. Otherwise I would have thought the fan only went one direction, and that I would have to buy another one for the summer months. But I figured it out...I'm not blonde.
I gotta go change directions on the fans. If I change them once a day I'll be right 50% of the time. That's close to a passing grade.
Fan blades are supposed to move one way for winter, to circulate heat, and one way for summer, to remove heat. It's a crap shoot to get it right. Yeah, yeah, clockwise for one season and counter-clockwise for another. But here's the confusing thing.
When I stand facing the fan, I can't tell which way it's turning. Don't laugh, I'm serious. While standing still look at your ceiling fan, if you have one. If you look at the edge closest to you, the blades appear to be going counter-clockwise (for instance). If you then look at the blades farthest away from you, the blades appear to be going clockwise. They don't look the same! I tried standing under the fan to try the experiment, and as long as I did't turn the other direction when looking at the opposite side of the blades, the results were the same. What's a girl to do????!!!
Oh, and don't bother telling me that if the blades slant one particular angle versus another then the fan needs to circulate a certain way in each season. You think if I can't tell which end of the fan to look at to see which direction it's going that I'll remember an even longer formula? I can't be the only one, female or male, in this awful predicament.
While cleaning one of the ceiling fans I noticed a switch that makes it change directions. It wasn't labelled. I figured out what it was. Don't tell me to read the instruction sheet, because it's long gone. Why didn't they label it? It would have been so simple to print "summer" by one side of the switch and "winter" by the other. But nnnnnoooooooooooo.
I'm just lucky I changed my mind about how to handle this dilemna once I saw the switch. Otherwise I would have thought the fan only went one direction, and that I would have to buy another one for the summer months. But I figured it out...I'm not blonde.
I gotta go change directions on the fans. If I change them once a day I'll be right 50% of the time. That's close to a passing grade.
// posted by Annette @ 11:13 a.m. 