The house has four ceiling fans. One large ceiling fan on the ceiling in the lounge room circulates air during hot summer days whilst the other three are smaller ceiling mounted extractor fans in the kitchen, shower and toilet. The latter is permanently wired to the light switch and as this is the smallest and darkest room in the house the light is frequently on. As a consequence the bearings in the fan are badly worn and it rumbles louder than my stomach at noon. We’re going to install a new kitchen and I thought it would be a good idea to replace the toilet fan with the one from the kitchen. They are the same make and model, which suggested there wouldn’t be a problem. Seems like I erred in my judgement again.
After removing the kitchen fan I discovered two things. Firstly it was very dirty, covered in accumulated grease. However I could (and did) clean it. The second problem I discovered after it had been removed. The wiring terminals were inside a sealed box and this box was connected to the fan motor with long rivets. In the end I had to drill the heads off one end of the rivets to remove the cap off the plastic terminal box. Then I had to solder a new cable to the motor windings. The replacement cable came from an old computer power cord (or was it my razor cord?).
The motor was reassembled and the long rivets reinserted, but they were now not long enough to secure the cap on the winding box. In the end I used a ‘dob’ of Sikaflex on the end of each rivet leaving the glue to set before reassembling the fan.
All cleaned and ready to replace the noisy toilet fan.
Two days until it’s officially winter and the temperature was in the low 20’s. We had a BBQ lunch today and I can see us having a few more with this weather.
One of the gum trees in the front yard had a second haircut this morning. I don’t believe the tree has realised this is a long and steady slide into oblivion. Each week I’m topping up the rubbish bin with more foliage and eventually the tree will have gone.
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