I gave it a shot. I spent $1400 for a Haiku Bamboo fan for the King's Room with all the accessories (LED light kit and wall controller). It arrived, and I spent nearly another $300 to have it installed by my electrician on a Friday morning. It looked incredibly beautiful, and was about as powerful as my Casablanca fan in the Queen's Room: powerful enough! But it had a peculiar sound that I didn't like (more about this later). I tried to fix the problem by removing and reinstalling the fan blades following the directions exactly (which the electrician did not think necessary). According to the directions, the fan blades are supposed to be installed with the fan motor turned upside down and before it is hung to the ceiling. The electrician had always installed the blades after hanging the motor--less likely to damage the blades that way. I removed the fan and reinstalled the blades and then re-hung the fan on Saturday evening. All my work made little difference, if any. About then I noticed that the Haiku had been sold with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. So I took down the Haiku fan on Sunday and called Big Ass Fans on Monday. They told me that the sound I described was not normal, and that they would be happy to send me a replacement fan. But I did not want to take another chance, so I asked for a refund, and they graciously offered a full refund and to skip the restocking charge. That divorce was the best part of all!
I'm still working on the re-packing, though, with no diagram or picture provided (I asked but they didn't provide anything). The fan has many parts which don't quite fit into all the openings in the styrofoam that goes into the shipping box. Not to worry, I've done a lot of very careful packing over the years, but I still worry obsessively until it's all done and the box out of my hands.
Now about the sound I heard. It starts with the 3rd lowest speed and got louder to the top speed (10). It's a pulsing, chuffing sound. I eventually plan to post a recording and/or movie, but it turned out to be very hard to record...masked by the noise in my smartphone microphone, but still audible in my best recording. In practice, laying on the bed with the fan on speed 10, it was very audible to me...audible to the point of distraction, and I kept hearing it in my mind for hours. I have characterized this sound as being "like a helicopter" but that's being far too harsh because it's not very loud and many people either wouldn't notice or wouldn't object to it. But if you can imagine a heliocopter 1,000,000 times softer, that's what it's like. The fairly low level was why it was so hard to record. My friend didn't notice it at first until I asked her to listen from close to the bed, then she did hear it.
Now there were several reasons why I decided to try the Haiku instead of just ordering another Casablanca fan, which had been my first plan (following on the success of the Casablanca Bel Air in the Queen's Room). I did like the looks better, that was for sure (and I liked the looks even more when I had it in my room). But the #1 reason why I decided to buy the Haiku fan was that it had been advertised as being quieter than any other fan. I wanted a fan that would be quieter than the Bel Air. I slept in the Queen's Room for a couple weeks while the King's Room was being remodeled, and I came to love the incredible output of the Bel Air. What an incredible luxury to have wind blasting on you and at your command! And the Bel Air is fairly quiet (ignoring the simple hiss of the rushing wind). But it does have it's own noise, a motor hum noise, that increases with speed (until drowned out by the wind at higher speeds), and worse--the hum warbles a bit with every AC line fluctuation, such as when the HVAC kicks in. That warbling was the part that bothered me the most. I was thinking a DC fan might not have that problem, and when I saw the ad for Haiku claiming to be the quietest fan ever, I quickly decided that was what I wanted.
But unlike the gentle hum of the Casablanca, the pulsing chuffing sound of the Haiku was intolerable to me. I could hear it in my mind hours later. I could hear it doing things like running the faucet. (BTW, if you look at a high speed slow motion movie of water coming out of faucets...it does indeed come out in pulses because of the way water pumps and water systems work. But normally these pulses are imperceptible.)
Now it could also be that my slightly vaulted ceiling aggravated the Haiku fan motor a bit. I used the standard downrod, which put the blades mostly about a foot from the ceiling, but on one side the blades might have been only 8 inches from the ceiling. That could have been a major factor, and it might have been fixable with a different downrod (which didn't seem to be on offer). The Haiku had come with a relatively short (6 inches) downrod and a very long (18 inches) downrod.
But I have another fear, that the pulsing chuffing sound (which I did hear at speeds as low as 3) might be part and parcel of the high efficiency of all DC motors. AC motors are inefficient precisely because they put a lot of energy into creating a shifting magnetic field. The motor armature rides in this field, taking as much force from it as it needs to keep up, but leaving the rest. All this happens without any electronic intervention, the motor armature basically a passive piece of metal riding on a magnetic field. The complexity is in the magnetic field itself, at the level of physical properties, and so the adjustment that occurs as the load varies happens as a law of nature--instantaneously. The Casablanca motors use a very large number of magentic poles to be as smooth as possible. The unused energy in the magnetic field ultimately becomes waste heat in the motor and things attached to the motor. But in order to work properly, and smoothly, that extra energy has to be there.
A DC motor works very differently. By design, it only puts as much energy into the magnetic field as needed--and from moment to moment. It requires some kind of feedback mechanism, combined with a servo mechanism, to put more or less energy as the situation demands it. For example, when the blades face greater wind resistance because they are closer to the ceiling, the motor has to put out a tiny bit more energy to deal with that. As a result of this fundamentally interacting nature, the energy ultimately has to come out in pulses. Thus, it may not be surprising if a DC servo motor sounds "pulsy".
I've seen this whole game before, back in the 1970's, when DC servo turntables were introduced, mainly by Japanese manufacturers. These motors had impressive specs, and the ultimate best ones were and still are quite good by most standards. But right away audiophiles began complaining that they could hear the "servo hunting" and other anomalies as a result of the way DC servo motors work. I myself have never heard this, but I only bought the better units, such as my current Sony PSX-800, a high end turntable that could have been described as Sony's 3rd or 4th generation best turntable drive. Some turntable manufacturers eschewed DC motors altogether...notably the industry leader Denon did this, and bragged about their AC servo motors as being fundamentally superior to DC servo motors. But to this day some of the most highly regarded turntables do not use servo motors at all, they use plain old AC synchronous motors connected to the turntable platter by a belt or idler wheel. That approach is considered to be superior to DC servo motors by most audiophiles even when the DC motors have far better specs. Ordinary AC synchronous motors have a significant amount of vibration, but the motor vibrations are damped out by using a soft belt or a very massive platter, or both. And while AC motors have vibration, they lack the peculiarly annoying "servo hunting" or pulsing sounds that audiophiles complain about.
Now while you don't think of listening to your music through a fan, a fan is basically just like a loudspeaker, with response to DC (one way wind). A loudpeaker fundamentally moves air, and so does a fan. DC wind is what you want from a fan, but you are likely to get many additional sounds from motor variations, which are essentially amplified by the system of blades. I kid you not, one of the best subwoofers ever is basically a very sophisticated fan--and most likely one with a custom DC servo motor! BTW, it costs over $15,000.
Interesting, you can find retro fans that use some kind of flexible band to transmit the driving power from the motor to the blades. When that was first being done, it was probably done to make quieter fans (otherwise they would have made a racket).
So anyway, my whole experience with the Haiku has made me leery of DC fans in general. Perhaps it should not, I don't even know if my particular Haiku might simply be defective, let alone indicative of how other DC fan motors would work. But I like to stick with proven technology for my household fittings, which I hope to last for a very long time, and AC fans have been around since Tesla invented the AC motor, a very proven technology, and Casablanca has made high pole fan motors since the 1980's. So I've decided to order another Casablanca fan with proven AC motor, which was one idea I had in mind before I came across Haiku, though at that moment (just before ordering Haiku) I had decided to go with the newer DC technology. Now, I think I'd like to hear another DC motorized fan before buying one again. A DC motor will have to prove to me that it doesn't sound pulsy.
I'm also wondering if the push for efficiency has temporarily outstripped the technology, much as it did with the first 1.6 gallon toilets. Perhaps the end game for efficient fan motors will be low voltage AC motors, as used in the 1970's by Denon turntables, not the DC motors they are using now.
I'm still working on the re-packing, though, with no diagram or picture provided (I asked but they didn't provide anything). The fan has many parts which don't quite fit into all the openings in the styrofoam that goes into the shipping box. Not to worry, I've done a lot of very careful packing over the years, but I still worry obsessively until it's all done and the box out of my hands.
Now about the sound I heard. It starts with the 3rd lowest speed and got louder to the top speed (10). It's a pulsing, chuffing sound. I eventually plan to post a recording and/or movie, but it turned out to be very hard to record...masked by the noise in my smartphone microphone, but still audible in my best recording. In practice, laying on the bed with the fan on speed 10, it was very audible to me...audible to the point of distraction, and I kept hearing it in my mind for hours. I have characterized this sound as being "like a helicopter" but that's being far too harsh because it's not very loud and many people either wouldn't notice or wouldn't object to it. But if you can imagine a heliocopter 1,000,000 times softer, that's what it's like. The fairly low level was why it was so hard to record. My friend didn't notice it at first until I asked her to listen from close to the bed, then she did hear it.
Now there were several reasons why I decided to try the Haiku instead of just ordering another Casablanca fan, which had been my first plan (following on the success of the Casablanca Bel Air in the Queen's Room). I did like the looks better, that was for sure (and I liked the looks even more when I had it in my room). But the #1 reason why I decided to buy the Haiku fan was that it had been advertised as being quieter than any other fan. I wanted a fan that would be quieter than the Bel Air. I slept in the Queen's Room for a couple weeks while the King's Room was being remodeled, and I came to love the incredible output of the Bel Air. What an incredible luxury to have wind blasting on you and at your command! And the Bel Air is fairly quiet (ignoring the simple hiss of the rushing wind). But it does have it's own noise, a motor hum noise, that increases with speed (until drowned out by the wind at higher speeds), and worse--the hum warbles a bit with every AC line fluctuation, such as when the HVAC kicks in. That warbling was the part that bothered me the most. I was thinking a DC fan might not have that problem, and when I saw the ad for Haiku claiming to be the quietest fan ever, I quickly decided that was what I wanted.
But unlike the gentle hum of the Casablanca, the pulsing chuffing sound of the Haiku was intolerable to me. I could hear it in my mind hours later. I could hear it doing things like running the faucet. (BTW, if you look at a high speed slow motion movie of water coming out of faucets...it does indeed come out in pulses because of the way water pumps and water systems work. But normally these pulses are imperceptible.)
Now it could also be that my slightly vaulted ceiling aggravated the Haiku fan motor a bit. I used the standard downrod, which put the blades mostly about a foot from the ceiling, but on one side the blades might have been only 8 inches from the ceiling. That could have been a major factor, and it might have been fixable with a different downrod (which didn't seem to be on offer). The Haiku had come with a relatively short (6 inches) downrod and a very long (18 inches) downrod.
But I have another fear, that the pulsing chuffing sound (which I did hear at speeds as low as 3) might be part and parcel of the high efficiency of all DC motors. AC motors are inefficient precisely because they put a lot of energy into creating a shifting magnetic field. The motor armature rides in this field, taking as much force from it as it needs to keep up, but leaving the rest. All this happens without any electronic intervention, the motor armature basically a passive piece of metal riding on a magnetic field. The complexity is in the magnetic field itself, at the level of physical properties, and so the adjustment that occurs as the load varies happens as a law of nature--instantaneously. The Casablanca motors use a very large number of magentic poles to be as smooth as possible. The unused energy in the magnetic field ultimately becomes waste heat in the motor and things attached to the motor. But in order to work properly, and smoothly, that extra energy has to be there.
A DC motor works very differently. By design, it only puts as much energy into the magnetic field as needed--and from moment to moment. It requires some kind of feedback mechanism, combined with a servo mechanism, to put more or less energy as the situation demands it. For example, when the blades face greater wind resistance because they are closer to the ceiling, the motor has to put out a tiny bit more energy to deal with that. As a result of this fundamentally interacting nature, the energy ultimately has to come out in pulses. Thus, it may not be surprising if a DC servo motor sounds "pulsy".
I've seen this whole game before, back in the 1970's, when DC servo turntables were introduced, mainly by Japanese manufacturers. These motors had impressive specs, and the ultimate best ones were and still are quite good by most standards. But right away audiophiles began complaining that they could hear the "servo hunting" and other anomalies as a result of the way DC servo motors work. I myself have never heard this, but I only bought the better units, such as my current Sony PSX-800, a high end turntable that could have been described as Sony's 3rd or 4th generation best turntable drive. Some turntable manufacturers eschewed DC motors altogether...notably the industry leader Denon did this, and bragged about their AC servo motors as being fundamentally superior to DC servo motors. But to this day some of the most highly regarded turntables do not use servo motors at all, they use plain old AC synchronous motors connected to the turntable platter by a belt or idler wheel. That approach is considered to be superior to DC servo motors by most audiophiles even when the DC motors have far better specs. Ordinary AC synchronous motors have a significant amount of vibration, but the motor vibrations are damped out by using a soft belt or a very massive platter, or both. And while AC motors have vibration, they lack the peculiarly annoying "servo hunting" or pulsing sounds that audiophiles complain about.
Now while you don't think of listening to your music through a fan, a fan is basically just like a loudspeaker, with response to DC (one way wind). A loudpeaker fundamentally moves air, and so does a fan. DC wind is what you want from a fan, but you are likely to get many additional sounds from motor variations, which are essentially amplified by the system of blades. I kid you not, one of the best subwoofers ever is basically a very sophisticated fan--and most likely one with a custom DC servo motor! BTW, it costs over $15,000.
Interesting, you can find retro fans that use some kind of flexible band to transmit the driving power from the motor to the blades. When that was first being done, it was probably done to make quieter fans (otherwise they would have made a racket).
So anyway, my whole experience with the Haiku has made me leery of DC fans in general. Perhaps it should not, I don't even know if my particular Haiku might simply be defective, let alone indicative of how other DC fan motors would work. But I like to stick with proven technology for my household fittings, which I hope to last for a very long time, and AC fans have been around since Tesla invented the AC motor, a very proven technology, and Casablanca has made high pole fan motors since the 1980's. So I've decided to order another Casablanca fan with proven AC motor, which was one idea I had in mind before I came across Haiku, though at that moment (just before ordering Haiku) I had decided to go with the newer DC technology. Now, I think I'd like to hear another DC motorized fan before buying one again. A DC motor will have to prove to me that it doesn't sound pulsy.
I'm also wondering if the push for efficiency has temporarily outstripped the technology, much as it did with the first 1.6 gallon toilets. Perhaps the end game for efficient fan motors will be low voltage AC motors, as used in the 1970's by Denon turntables, not the DC motors they are using now.
Did you ever get the replacement, and if it had the same issue?
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