How to Balance a Ceiling Fan Blade

Ceiling fans are a functional, attractive addition to any room, until one of them starts wobbling around like a carnival ride. There are all kinds of reasons that fans fall out of balance, either immediately after installation or with time, but the problem can usually be fixed by simply affixing a little extra weight to one of the blades to nudge the fan back on course. Since it's nearly impossible to tell just from observation which of the blades needs the weight, it's a process of trial and error and may require a little patience.

Things You'll Need

• Household cleaner Paper towel Roll of duct tape Pennies Stepladder

Instructions

1. Turn off the fan. Tighten all the screws securing the fan blades to the motor. Turn it on and see if that has solved the problem. If not, proceed to Step 2.

2. Thoroughly clean the fan blades with a household cleaner, and dry them. Pull out a small length of duct tape and lay it down on sticky side up on a table or work area. Press six pennies onto the sticky side of the tape, arranging them in a group, with plenty of free tape around the outside of them.

3. Place the duct tape sticky side down on the top of one of the fan blades, near the outer end of it, so that the pennies are pressed down to the blade.

4. Turn on the fan and observe it. If the wobbling is still present but seems less prominent, then you've found the right blade and you just need to add another strip of pennies. If the wobbling is worse, stop the fan, peel the tape off the one blade and affix to the next one. Repeat the process, moving the tape between the blades and adding pennies if necessary, until the fan is in balance.

Tips & Warnings

• If you don't want to mess with tape and pennies, you can purchase weight kits with clip-on weights for your fan blades. If you bought and installed the fan yourself, it likely came with some of these weights for you to use.

References

• More information is available here.