Haiku Divorced

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.

Adjustable Frames: Reverie vs Ergomotion

Many online mattress dealers sell the ErgoMotion adjustable frames.  By all accounts, they are good.  But the Reverie adjustable frames may be slightly better--they are the ones recommended by Phoenix, the moderator of MattressUnderground.

The highest end Reverie apparently available in Split Queen is the 5D.  The corresponding ErgoMotion is the 400.  You really have to look carefully at a comparison chart to see the differences.  And you also need to go beyond that chart, though it is a good place to start.

A couple of small differences, the Reverie apparently has two presets whereas the Ergomotion has only one.  Then the Ergomotion has a backlit wireless remote whereas the wireless remote for the Reverie is not backlit.

Possibly the most important difference according to the chart is the Ergomotion 400 having a maximum head adjustment of 70 degrees.  That's among the highest (even other Ergomotion models don't go that high, 60 is typical).  The Reverie has a more typical 58 degrees.  Well, I might like the higher height, but I might worry about it damaging mattress as well.  On the other hand, I don't know if I trust this chart.  Sears, for example, lists the Reverie 5D in Split Queen and lists 70/47 as the head/foot degrees available.  That is identical to what the previous chart lists for the Ergomotion 400.  Strangely, Sears also lists the ErgoMotion 400 but does NOT list the degrees of head and foot lift.  The Reverie website does not give any numbers.  Nor, in fact, does the Ergomotion website give any numbers.

(Update: Chris Mullins at SleepingOrganic has been very helpful in providing addtional information about adjustable bedframes.  He had to call people to get this information.  The Ergomotion frame does have more head tilt, an industry leading 70 degrees, and he thinks that's a very useful and important feature.  The Reverie has less tilt, 58 degrees, as most online specification say.  He says the Ergomotion is lighter in some sizes because Reverie uses more legs--the added weight is in the legs, up to 12 legs in a split queen frame.  The Ergomotion uses a frame engineered to require only legs at the corners, and he says it is a very strong frame.  I'm now planning to get a regular queen, not a split queen, for which the Ergomotion actually weighs more than the Reverie, according to what I have seen.  As you might have guessed, I'm now planning to buy frame and mattress from SleepingOrganic, but the project has been delayed a few more weeks due to fan replacement.)

What about Craftmatic?  Craftmatic does not list any prices on their website.  You have to call to find out.  Years ago, you couldn't even call to find out, you had to have a Craftmatic salesman come out to your home.  This is obviously a hard sell, and reportedly Craftmatic prices are very high, and their products not especially distinguished (and possibly rebadged).  Their prices would have to be high to cover the advertising they are most famous for, as well as the salespeople.  I'm not sure if I want to bother to find out more.  Unlike many online adjustable bed sellers, their starting model (in fact, the only model available in Split Queen is Model One) comes standard with an innerspring core mattress.  That's elsewhere described as cheaper or inferior to a natural latex core.  An adjustable bed innerspring has to be made without the usual reinforcement bar on the edge.  That means there might be a tendency to roll out of bed (which is why that bar is usually there) as compression near the edge propagates to the edge without further resistance.  Latex, on the other hand, is a point resistance mattress type in which compression doesn't automatically propagate, similar to pocketed coils (the most expensive and rare form of innerspring mattresses...the type used in the original Beautyrest of 60 years ago).  Kudos to Craftmatic, however, for showing a cutout of their mattress composition, and admitting they use Bonelli coils, which are better than some but not as good as pocketed.

Adjustable Beds

Funny, I thought I had already written pages on this.  I wanted to check out all my links from a few months ago, and now I don't see them.

The upshot was I had steered away (rightly or wrongly) from the well-known (through endless TV advertising...) Craftmatic adjustable beds, and the high priced Beautyrest, to buying, separately, an adjustable bed frame (I forgot the brand, I thought I had posted it) and natural latex mattress (I had picked one out of hundreds of US latex mattress manufacturers).

Now I'm trying to remember what I had picked out before, and possible re-think a bit more, since I'll be ordering soon.

In the course of my previous investigations, I discovered the Mattress Underground, which once had a post listing many of the known-best latex mattress manufacturers.  Well, it turns out that there's a bit of a conflict of interest in that those listed manufacturers are also members of the Mattress Underground.  So while I'll still take it as a list of interesting ones to check out (which I have mostly done already) I won't take it as the ultimate short list.  I decided I liked the one I had picked out prior to discovering the Mattress Underground better, based on stuff I learned at Mattress Underground and my own ideas/feeling/intuitions.  Actually, though, it was Google that picked out the mattress company I had previously decided on, because in my first recent search for natural latex mattresses they were featured near the top--a privilege they must have (once) paid for.  But anyway, that's how it goes, one way or another I've checked out the sites for a dozen manufacturers, and am about to do so again.

Doorstops

Today I ordered genuine Baldwin Estate 4045 3" Wall Bumper (aka doorstop) and a Baldwin Estate 4050 3.75" Wall Bumper, both in Lifetime Polished Brass (just like my Baldwin door knobs).  The Baldwin doorstops seem to have fairly uncommon (in high end doorstops) feature of a hex portion of the stem which makes it easier to tighten.  Of course there is also the advantage that it will match my Baldwin doorknobs in finish, brand, and prestige.

I also looked at many of the Whittington doorstops over at Signature Hardware but I only liked the Pawn style (which I visually liked only slightly better than the Baldwin's), and I figured it would be easier to get replacement bumpers in the future for a genuine Baldwin product, and the Whittington's lacked the hex stem portion.  Another plus for the Worthington's was the slightly wider 1.75" base, I fear the 1.18" base of the Baldwin's may put too much stress on my cheap drywall, but, I will hope for the best.  The Baldwin Estate doorstops were cheaper than Whittington, but the difference may have been made up in the rather high shipping charge (they note in a disclaimer that the actual UPS fee might differ).

It's hard to figure whether I'll need the 3" or the 3.75" since that depends on where I'm actually able to mount the stop, which depends on where the studs are.  The door knobs are 2.5" but the doors on the hinge sides are much farther out from the wall than that (up to 5 inches).  If I had to mount the doorstop at a stud only 16 inches from the hinge...it would certainly need to be longer than 3 inches, and the next stud, at 32" would be too far out. So I bought both sizes.  The shorter ones have the advantage that less stress is put on the wall due to leverage, etc., and given my (cheap) walls that's a big plus.  So if a shorter one can be used, it should be used.  I'm thinking I may be able to use the shorter one in the Queen's room (where the non-load-bearing wall has 24" oc studs, a mere 6" from the end of the 30" door) but then the longer one in the King's room (where the load bearing wall has 16" studs, which would put the closest stud about midway on the door, and the next stud past it).

Here's one of the Whittington styles that just looks too much like you know what.  I liked the Pawn style better than the plain-vanilla Baldwin's, but none of the others.

Bookcases the make books inaccessible on the sides

I'm looking to replace the pair of DVD storage racks now in the corner of the King's room with a single tall DVD storage cabinet only on the side wall, leaving the back wall free for a second night stand (already ordered) beside the bed for my friend to put her drink or other paraphernalia.  I only have 36" of wall space along the side wall, so that's as large as the cabinet could be, but it could be as tall as 84 inches.

You see many cabinets sold at different online stores under different names.  The downside of this is that the variety of products actually available is thereby limited.

Many of the stands available have a peculiar misfeature that I remember when I was looking for bookcases in the 1980's to accommodate my growing collection of books.  On these units, the side pillars wrap around each shelf on the far left and right, making the books (or dvd's) in those locations impossible to remove without removing other books, and often hiding the books so you can't even see what they are.  This is a totally unacceptable design solution, yet it is very common, and in fact it seems more common in pricier units that use real wood as compared with melamine (or cheaper) coated particle board.

So how do you search online for stands that aren't built this way?  Stands found in brick and mortar stores typically aren't very tall, and the ones in actual furniture stores tend to have the inaccessibility misfeature.  Sometimes this is (inaccurately) called "Barrister."  A true Barrister bookcase is sectioned and permits each shelf to be moved as a box (which it is).  The blocked sides of a Barrister bookcase shelf would be part of the glass door, when you open the door you should see all the books. behind it.

Just another example of things that seemed designed by people who never actually use such things.

Update: After looking at the (limited) options available online (not as much variety as first appears), I decided to go for the Atlantic Oskar 1080 CD media storage unit.   This was one of the very few units I could find that would maximize the width I have available (40 inches...if I move the dresser and other CD rack over as far as they can go), and maximize the height as well (very very few go as high as 71 inches).  The majority of storage cabinets are either narrower, like 24 inches (a very common width) or much wider.  The one other unit that might have worked...was the pseudo Barrister style I describe above.  It might have been better in some ways, such as being sturdier, but I can't deal with a storage unit that hides 5% of the contents.  I've read the reviews, and unfortunately it seems the Atlantic Oskar has been cheapened in the last few years, made with narrower shelves and so on.  OK, I would have bought the earlier and more expensive unit if I could find it, but I couldn't.  This does also have the virtue of being quite inexpensive (but as I said, I would pay more if I could find something better that had even close to as much storage).  The real wood units online were far more expensive, as you might imagine--and I couldn't find a single one that was a good fit, and the Boltz all steel units weren't in compatible sizes either (unless I were to string together a whole bunch of the very tall ones--at great expense--and I still wonder if all that steel would introduce steel resonances into my listening room).

I would think somebody would have a way of making these things so it could be sized exactly to the wallspace you have available, or make better size options.  Atlantic offers a good array of different sizes so perhaps it is not surprising I ended up buying an Atlantic storage unit.

Sealing the Ceiling Fan opening in the King's room

Gap all around ceiling box, especially on the left

The weekend before my cataract surgery on September 18 I was very busy.  Tom and his nephew had just finished remodeling the King's Room and installing the two new doors, curtain rods, and TV mount.  I was still occupying the Queen's room, which was actually quite ok, even with my larger bed, and a friend suggested I not bother to move back until two weeks *after* my eye surgery...which would have been just last weekend.  Not knowing exactly how well I would be even then, and thinking that the more time to move into my room gradually the better, I decided to move back into the King's room right away instead, which was the weekend before my eye surgery...

This was as daunting a task, or nearly as daunting, as moving out of the King's room had been two weekends earlier.  And you could say the job still isn't done, three weeks later, since the living room is still loaded with stuff.  But you should have seen the living room the weekend before the 18th, it was not just loaded but stacked.  And the Queen's room as well.

Anyway, I did a pretty good job of moving my stuff back into the King's room.  Unfortunately, I missed the Audio Society meeting, knowing it would be pedal to the metal all weekend.  And there was one little job that might have been better done first.  But I couldn't do it first because my help for moving the bed was on Saturday afternoon--essentially the beginning of the weekend.  So that had to get done first, and I hurredly did the rest of the major furniture moving, and some of the CD moving.  But what lagged was that little job--sealing the ceiling fan opening as I have done with the two other ceiling fan openings I've had ceiling fans installed in recently, using OSI acoustical caulk.

Attempted use of Duct Seal, each new glob pushes the previous one up

Builders and electricians typically leave a large gap between the ceiling drywall and the ceiling fan box.  Inside Lyndhurst, the drywall subcontractors left a gap from 1/4 to 5/8 inch, so large I bought two pieces of wood dowel to enable the caulk to hold better.  I had no such difficulty with the Queen's room  sealing, which was a comparative piece of cake, since John Jones made the ceiling hole in the first place, and they do the finest work, there wasn't that much gap that needed sealing.

I was exhausted on Sunday evening and lay down about 9pm to rest.  I woke up around 12:30am.  That was when I finally got around to starting the sealing job.  It was also set back by the fact I had forgotten to get new drop cloths for this project on Friday night.  So I had to do it with ad-hoc drop cloths.  And after cutting off the room breaker, I had to wire in the main lamp and tensor lamp with extension cords from the bathroom, which I had to be careful not to trip over.  And though I had moved the matress and box springs on their end leaning on the dresser, I didn't have time to deal with the bed frame.  So I put the 8ft ladder (always tricky to move around) inside the bed frame.

It was stressful all around.  I decided not to use the caulk because of the limited drop cloth coverage.  I went ahead and tried to use duct seal, a product specially made for sealing around electrical boxes.  But it is really intended for sealing around from the back side of horizontal electrical boxes, it is very hard to use from the front and from underneath especially.

I discovered just how hard this was to do.  Despite pulling off large pieces that could still into the large gap (this was a pre-existing hole with electric box replaced the previous week) they didn't hold well.  What happened was that as I was pushing in each new piece, it dislodged the previous piece, pushing it upward into the ceiling.

Cardboard cover for now

I struggled with this far too long, hoping I would get the knack to get the job done.  But it was not getting done, so around 4:30am in the morning I called the project off.  And then I fashioned a cardboard cover for the box so that the air, dust, and now globs of duct seal wouldn't fall out of the hole and potentially get into my eyes, just after the eye surgery (!).  I added an extra lip on the bottom side of the cardboard to catch any dust that was coming through the hole.  The lip was made from 14 day painter's tape, but I did not have it touch the ceiling at all, just a few millimeters beneath it.  Then I moved the ladder out of way and set the bed up, and got to bed around 6 am.  It worked out OK since I slept until about 12:30 PM on Monday.

But the job had not been done, and until the job did get done, I could not order ceiling fan, and I could not order new bed until I had ceiling fan installed.  And my friend was suggesting I should drop other priorities (such as the new audio amplifier I am thinking of buying) until I got the new adjustable bed.

So I had to get this done, and I got to it on the third weekend after my eye surgery.  On the first weekend after surgery, I was struggling with frequent eyedrops, taping on an eye shield even for the briefest rest, and so on, I just barely drove my car home from work on Saturday, can't remember what I did on Sunday but it was likely just moving around very light stuff like CD's, possibly setting up cell phone charger.  On the second weekend, I hooked up my bedroom stereo, a very complicated job, dusting equipment off while moving it in, digging through boxes of cables, cutting new speaker cables, arranging power strips, and so on.  And I battled ants which started swarming inside the house on a very rainy Saturday night.  On that Sunday, which would have been my monthly party, I went to Camerata San Antonio with my friend, which I hadn't done in several years because it nearly always conflicted with my monthly party.  But though I moved some heavy unused equipment back from the Queen's Room   into the King's room, I couldn't move all of it yet, my eye started hurting just before I could move the 30 pound PS Power Plant Premier.

Full setup with bed out of way

Finally by the third weekend, first weekend in October, I got to the ceiling fan hole sealing.  This required temporarily moving mattress and fittings to the Queen's room temporarily for resting on Saturday and sleeping on Saturday night.  Then moving the box springs and bed frame completely out of the way.  This time I had purchased two drop cloths, I put the cloth one down first then the plastic one on top of it.  Then I moved in the 8 foot ladder from Lyndhurst--always a challenging job not because of weight but because it's so long you nearly always almost break something, you have to watch both ends at once, and it doesn't fit through doors except at some kind of angle, likewise around corners.  Finally I had everything set up by 3:30 PM including a discardable box for squeezing out excess caulk.  I did the caulking quite quickly after all, the acoustical caulk was much easier to work with than the duct seal, the hardest part was cleaning the excess out of the electrical box without damaging the fresh caulking.  I then had dinner and went to the Symphony on Saturday night, unfortunately my friend couldn't make it, but she came over afterwards and we watched TV in bed with wine and strawberries until 1:30 AM.  We were using the Queen's Room bed, and actually my friend liked having the mattress on the floor and asked why I didn't do it that way in the King's Room.  It's actually inconvenient to have to get down so low, and the box springs can't sit on the floor because it has heavy duty staples underneath which could scratch the floor.  So the bed frame, which we both hate, will remain in use until I get the new adjustable bed.

First day reseal, still some gaps which occured while cleaning excess

The next day I carefully put electrical tape in tiny pieces over the holes in the back of the electrical box. I used Scotch 33+ electrical tape.  I figured the duct seal would be just as hopeless as before, and the electrical tape was legal, you can have electrical tape inside an electrical box, but not caulk.

I also resealed some of the small gaps in the caulk, which had occurred mainly when I had been cleaning out the excess caulk the day before.  The result was nearly perfect.  I debated for nearly 30 minutes whether I should do the re-sealing at all, but in the end it was easy.  As I had started working on this, a friend I planned to visit that afternoon called and re-scheduled our visit to 7:30 PM.  So I had plenty of time.  I got back home around 10PM and did some initial cleaning.  Then my other friend came over and help with the critical and difficult parts of moving the bed, getting the box spring on top of the frame (which is nearly impossible for one person because if you don't land it perfectly, the adjustable size frame will expand, and you'll have no way to get it back down to size without taking it off again), and moving the mattress (which I could have done by myself, but my friend always insists I shouldn't.  We then watched TV on the bed back in the King's Room, with wine and strawberries.  It must have been more comfortable and convenient, she got up and came back at least once, and ultimately even slept for a few minutes.  You can camp for awhile without it, but ultimately a proper bed height helps.

Small pieces of 33+ harmless even if they do fall

So it was a very eventful and productive weekend, getting the sealing done, going to the Symphony, and visiting with friends three times.  That night, actually into wee hours of Monday morning, I ordered the Haiku fan.  I had started looking for reviews, but then after seeing all the praise I just decided to order it.  It won a design award and gets favorable marks everywhere I could find (though I wonder how many people actually own one) and is used by an impressive set of homes on Housez, chosen by major architects and designers, etc.  It must reasonably good as well as the coolest ever, the main remaining questions being about reliability.  Oh and I also wonder if rather than having the nice ball mount that the Casablanca fan in the queen's room has, it might have a hook mount where a round pipe is pushing up to the ceiling, possibly knocking off microscopic bits of drywall if it shakes.  Well most fans these days have the latter style of mount, the drywall knocked off over time probably reduces to near nothing because essentially all that's going to get knocked off gets knocked off right away, then leaving a microscopic gap, and much less than any gap would allow drywall and insulation from the attic to be emitted if the hole had not been sealed.  So in any case, it's best to have sealed the box opening, and especially if it doesn't have the kind of ball mount that the Casablanca fan has.

Finished and almost perfect seal, no need for cover

Standard measure is to put bead of caulk around pipe after it has been set up, I think now.  That's the old fashioned way to use caulk around any kind of fitting. That would both seal the opening and rubberize the vicinity and keep any drywall debris from dropping.

The Garage Exhaust Fan

I now highly recommend the idea of a garage exhaust fan for anyone who has an attached garage.  Firstly the bad air in the garage (having automobile or not--mine does, and then there are some stored paints and garden chemicals, and more) is kept from infiltrating the house.  And in fact the reverse airflow is set in motion, with the house air being exhausted through leaks to the garage (and my garage/house interface is very leaky because of a small room (which is part of house HVAC system) built in part of the garage.  Two stones killed with one bird.

For anyone who doesn't already have whole house ventilation especially (and I hadn't).  This is a good way to start.  Or so it has seemed to me both from prior observation and now a week of actual usage.  And in my case there are other good reasons for this.  The small room inside the garage also has chemicals (those which need more room temperature storage) and dirty laundry.  The dirtiest of laundry (dirty white cloths I use as rags while waiting for their turn at the laundry) is stored in the garage itself.

Also the fact that the prevailing winds come from the SE and my garage is at the SE.  Thus the winds tend to force air from the garage, and the small room in the garage, into the rest of the house.  This is very undesireable during the fall and winter, when HVAC airflow in the rest of the house is lower, humidity falls below comfortable points, and then the extra load of toxics from the garage becomes all the more obnoxious.  In summer, a peculiar alternative airflow used to be set up, wherein hot air rising through the roof ridge vents would draw air through the attic opening in the garage, and automatically provide needed ventilation.  In the fall and winter, this desirable ventilation stopped, even reversing, adding noxious smells and particles from the attic to those in the garage that enter the house.

I've long wanted to seal the attic opening, since it is inaccessible anyway (at the boundary of the garage itself and the small room in the garage--and was even originally a crawlspace only to get to center of the attic, as compared with the side house vents which provide virtually walkable access) but feared that sealing it would eliminate the automatic airflow in summertime that makes the air in the house very clear.  So I determined that I should only seal the attic opening once I had the electric ventilation fan to replace it.

I purchased the Panasonic FV-08WQ1 fan sometime in 2012, when I had finally decided to act on the house airflow situation.  But it was a project that I could just not bring myself to do, I was not sure my analysis was correct, one could argue that this fan would have a worse effect on HVAC efficiency than actual home ventilation, though as I see it could only adversely effect HVAC efficiency IF it were super effective at ventilation, and I need at least some ventilation anyway.

Anyway, I finally called out John Jones to do this project in the last week of September 2013.  John and TJ did a wonderful job attaching the Insteon keypad switch I had also purchased for this project last year.  I expected the fan might be too noisy to run all the time, but it is actually nearly silent.  Perhaps it doesn't even need the switch!  I don't know, it probably did need to have some kind of switch, and with the Insteon switch I can program auto restarts (so it doesn't get shut off by accident).  And I can use the extra 4 buttons on the Insteon keypad to control other house functions--a cool bonus capability.

This new Insteon capability would be most useful for shutoff controls I would exercise upon exiting the house.  But before that, I need to get Insteon control in my house fixed.  I finally removed the old Insteon controller (only single band) because it was essentially useless, not even being able to control even the single backdoor light it was intended to control, as well as having the worst by far computer control software ever (the free Smartlink web-based interface).  I have recently purchased an updated Insteon controller that is dual band (as they all should have been, the idea of a single band controller is nuts).  I think I bought a new program also, but can't remember because I've been so busy I haven't even opened the box I got from Smarthome a couple of months ago.

I though I could tell the difference in smell almost immediately, and it seemed proven by the second day.  Dirty laundry smell which had begun permeating the house from the small room in the garage had disappeared, even from the small room in the garage.  And now that cool nights have set in, I'm clearly not getting the scratchy throat that used to accompany this--but this is inconclusive as yet because we haven't entered the period of low home humidity yet.

Immediately upon installing the fan, I noticed it was also drawing attic air smell into the garage itself (even though it didn't seem to back up into the rest of the house, except perhaps a tiny bit--I feared and thought I smelled once--in the Queen's room).  This was not good for getting out of the car and into the house, and the possibility of attic smell (and toxic particles) entereing the house was not making me feel good.

So I shortly called builder Tom to check out sealing the attic access hole.  I was afraid this might required adding the sheetrock panel from the attic side...and thus be very expensive, like major electrical work.  But he quoted me a very reasonable price.

So he is here today (October 8) doing this work as I am writing this sentence.  (Update: He finished before 6pm and left.  The attic opening has been perfectly covered with new drywall (supported with some new wood Tom put up first) and mudded flat.  Couldn't be better.  The fan surround is now caulked with 50 year DAP ultra caulk, and also the crack at the wall/ceiling boundary in the Queen's room, same caulk.)  I'm going to wait until 11pm before restarting fan to allow caulk to cure.

He's also going to caulk around the fan opening (John Jones it would be best for Tom to do that work) and a new ceiling crack in the Queen's Room (which opened up a few months after previous builder Rob remodeled that room).