Ceiling Fan with Light and CBus

Discussion in 'C-Bus Wired Hardware' started by impact, Feb 4, 2018.

  1. impact

    impact

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    So this weekends little pet project is now on hold....

    Got a Fan controller L5501RFCPlying around waiting to be used, so with the current heat, thought I would replace the light in the study with a celing fan with a light.

    Off to Beacon to look at fans, making sure that I got something where the light was dimmable. Found something... Get home, look at the instructions - boom.

    Dimmable - yes... Turn it on at the switch its at 100%, turn it off and back on within 2 seconds and its at 60%, turn it off and back on with 2 seconds its now at 10%

    Looks like I need to return this - I didn't want bloody logic.... I just wanted a compatible globe that I could dim - argghhh...

    So when looking at ceiling fan / light combinations - what do I really ask for / need to ensure that it does dim on an external dimmer !!!
     
    impact, Feb 4, 2018
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  2. impact

    impact

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    The more I think of this the more I think it gets harder....

    So I have found fans that have lights dimmable by a dimmer - a Clipsal UDM - for instance.... but they all have a wiring diagram that shows a common Neutral, and two actives - one for fan, one for light...

    So in the cbus world - I have an active and neutral coming from the dimmer module, but there is also a active neutral from the fan control module... Does it matter which neutral I use - if they all end up at the common bus ?

    This is a retrofit, the cbus was all installed when the house was built - I know every crook and crany throughout, it was not designed for fans - and to get an extra wire to where the fans will be - is difficult, not impossible, but bloody hard. It all comes down to location of where I place the Clipsal fan controllers... I had thought of running the Clipsal fan controllers away from where the dimmers were, but then realised that they must have the common live on the same bus....
     
    impact, Feb 4, 2018
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  3. impact

    DarylMc

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    Anything incandescent will work well on a dimmer.
    Everything else is a bit trial and error.
    You should at least know whether you have leading or trailing edge dimmer before you go shopping for dimmable LED's.
    Even that won't help a lot because many fan and light manufacturers dont supply enough info about their product.

    I have not done a lot of testing with dimmable LED bulbs on CBus dimmers.
    In my experience any fan with a proprietary LED array is unlikely to work well.
    If you have used a standard E27 LED bulb on your dimmer successfully I would consider a fan light which accepts them.
    To this day I am unaware of any great performing E27 dimmable LED for CBus though.

    The switch dim fan you had could work.
    But use a relay channel instead of a dimmer channel.
    I've seen some very unpredictable results with switch dim bulbs on dimmer channels.

    Probably easiest thing in the long run would be to consider using separate fan and lights.
    If your CBus dimmer and the CBus fan relay are on separate RCD's.
    Then you are going to have another problem because fanlight internal wiring generally shares a common neutral.
     
    DarylMc, Feb 4, 2018
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  4. impact

    znelbok

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    I have exactly this. Fan with dimmed light in multiple rooms

    First off - you questions suggest that you rally need an electrician to do this.

    To answer you question - the light is fed from the dimmer channel, the fan from the fan controller. The common neutral meas that the dimmer and fan controller must be on the same RCD otherwise an imbalance will occur and you will trip every time you have both on. Weather you use two neutrals (one for light and one for fan) makes no difference electrically as long as they terminate under the same RCD - but a single neutral will remove any confusion in the future.

    There is no neutral form the dimmer to the lights - there is a neutral from the protected neutral of the RCD to the light and the dimmer is also connected to that protected neutral
     
    znelbok, Feb 4, 2018
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