Can I cannabalize the remote set on a Hunter fan?

mike720 · 10-06-2012, 10:18 PM

Hi,

I'll explain this the best I can.

We have identical Hunter fans in our living room, model # 20537, which is discontinued and impossible to find. Believe me, I've spent hours online and on the phone.

My wife doesn't want different fans in the living room. She wants them to match. You know the old saying, "When mama's happy, everybody's happy." So I'm trying to keep her happy. But I'll be damned if I'm buying 2 new fans.

Anyway, both fans came wired for the remote. The remote set-ups came with the fans.

One of the fans has problems. The fan works fine but light quit working. It won't turn on by the remote or the pullchain.

I pulled the non-working light kit out and put it in the other fan and it worked fine in the other fan.

I used a circuit tester and for reasons unknow, there is no power going from the lighting wiring coming down from the motor housing.

So I said screw it. I'm not taking the motor housing apart.

I located an identical fan someone is selling on craigslist BUT this fan did not come wired for a remote. It has a light kit attached but again, no remote.

Can I take that top bowl from the bad fan which contains the wiring for the remote and just stick it on the fan I found that is not wired for the remote?

Whew, I hope I made sense there.

Thank you.

redman88 · 10-06-2012, 11:36 PM

my guess is its a poor connection for the light, might be worth it to take the motor housing off and check for lose wires. don't know how many times in my job where just taking a connection apart and putting it back together fixes a no power problem

mpoulton · 10-07-2012, 12:47 AM

You're going to have to do some much better troubleshooting to identify exactly where the problem is before you can be sure that swapping parts will fix it. My bet is that the problem is in the remote unit itself, so swapping that remote unit into a different fan won't be very helpful. If I were trying to fix this, I would be looking for a replacement remote unit, or would rewire the fan to use a generic fan remote unit. After verifying that the remote is the problem, of course.

ddawg16 · 10-07-2012, 11:14 AM

I have replaced the remote in the in-laws fan twice. First time, it failed....second time one of my kids tossed the remote in the water.....

There is a 'box' shoved up inside the top part of the fan (hood that connects to the ceiling box). It's a tight fit....but it fits. It's pretty much a generic box. Power comes in....outputs to fan (light and fan). The remotes come in two typical flavors. Fan and light on/off....or fan on/off, light dimmable.

You can get a new remote at any of the big box stores...takes about 20 min to swap out.

So....to answer your question...if that little black box fits....yea....it will work.

However.......like mpoulton said...more troubleshooting is needed.

First...the pull chain is 'after' the remote....so....if the remote is bad, you can pull on it all day long and it won't make a difference.

Typically you have 3 wires....white (neut), black (hot for the fan) and blue (hot for the light). Open up the hood....(after turning off power)...remove the remote and just wire the black and blue to your incoming hot. The fan and light should now operate from the pull chains. If that is the case....your remote is bad.