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Post by organistjx on Jan 13, 2014 16:57:57 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure that at least some of you know about the Comfort-Touch control system, Casablanca's supposedly first remote control for its fans. While the remote itself has somewhat interested me, something that has interested me even more is the question of whether or not some new homes that were built when the Comfort-Touch was produced (from 1990 to around 2002, I'd imagine) used exclusively Comfort-Touch models.
If it confuses any of you, the main theory I've had is that the fans would work sort of like a home intercom system - there would be a single remote in say, the kitchen or the living room (again, like an intercom), and nearby it would be a list of all of the fans in the house and the various channels that they were on. (so to turn one of them on, you would take the remote into that room and put the remote on that channel to control the fan).
Do you know of any houses that use this sort of method? If so, pics of the thing would be great...
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Post by Cole S. on Jan 13, 2014 20:58:57 GMT -5
I don't think anybody ever did that. Changing the channel of the control is such pain that nobody would ever do it if they didn't have to and it takes unnecessary time. It's much more convenient to have a CT control in each room for each fan to control the fan without having to run somewhere else to find the remote. The control also has to be in the same room as the fan for the "Auto" feature in order to calibrate fan speed with the temperature of the room it's in. What you describe would be a cool concept for an even more intelligent control system (like one that switches channels automatically for one thing), it's just not really feasible with the specifics and limitations of CT.
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Post by fancollector12 on Jan 13, 2014 22:30:38 GMT -5
I've only seen Casablancas in model homes, and they were all IT. Most builder homes I've seen have builder-grade fans (at least that's what my parents could've opted for when we got our house, but we put our own fans in).
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Post by organistjx on Jan 14, 2014 0:20:31 GMT -5
I don't think anybody ever did that. Changing the channel of the control is such pain that nobody would ever do it if they didn't have to and it takes unnecessary time. It's much more convenient to have a CT control in each room for each fan to control the fan without having to run somewhere else to find the remote. The control also has to be in the same room as the fan for the "Auto" feature in order to calibrate fan speed with the temperature of the room it's in. What you describe would be a cool concept for an even more intelligent control system (like one that switches channels automatically for one thing), it's just not really feasible with the specifics and limitations of CT. Hm... I never realized until about an hour ago that the control needs to be in the same room as the fan for 'AUTO'. I guess this problem could be solved by putting up brackets in all of the rooms (so the control could temporarily be set there for 'AUTO' to work), and as far as the whole 'searching for the remote' issue, I would assume that it's just like any other fan remote - keep it in its place, or maybe even a phone for that matter (I have first hand experience with that one). And according to this site: www.casablancafanrepair.com/HTMLFiles/instructionmanuals/Chapter23/CT_OPforWeb/MMCTOper04.pdf , changing the remote channel is simply a matter of holding the 'TEST' button, picking a number between 49 and 63, and then pressing 'TEST' again. But then again, I've never used a Comfort Touch in real life, so this is all hypothetical for me. |
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Post by Cole S. on Jan 15, 2014 0:47:54 GMT -5
It's not that changing channels is hard, it's that it's wasted time when a control could just be mounted in each room. If a remote is already set to the fan's channel, you press one button and you're good to go in two seconds. If you had a house full of CT fans and relied on them for light at night, you'd spend a lot of time going from fan to fan turning the lights off swapping all those channels where otherwise you could just walk by each control and push one quick button to turn them off.
I'm not really saying you'd lose the remote, I'm saying if you have it mounted in the kitchen and you go to bed, you might wake up in the middle of the night and want to turn the fan on. Then you have to go out to the kitchen to get it, probably change the channel, and then you can finally go back to bed. If you just had a control for that fan and that room it would already be in the room and already be set. Or say you did remember to bring it to the bedroom at night. Next morning you forget to bring it back to the kitchen. Then you have to go to the bedroom to get it again to control the fan in the living room. Not bad if you live in a tiny house, but most houses that would have high end CT Casablanca fans are larger homes and you'd do a lot of back and forthing just to run some ceiling fans. I can come up with a thousand scenarios. What if you have a guest room and they want to control their fan. You get up in the middle of the night and want to turn yours that's running on speed 5 off because you're now freezing. Do you barge into your guest's room at 3:00AM to get the remote that they're using? It doesn't seem feasible to me to use one remote, or two, or three for X amount of fans. They included one with each fan for a reason.
I'm not like trying to attack your view or anything, I'm just trying to see the other side. Having experienced a number of control systems and their many limitations I can come up with scenarios that don't work much easier than scenarios that do. I think you could probably control two or maybe three fans alright using that setup (based on location), it's when you get into four, five, ten fans that there are going to be issues with using a single remote for so many fans.
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Post by organistjx on Jan 19, 2014 0:22:01 GMT -5
Interesting theories. While I can definitely agree that there would be some downsides to this whole thing, I am however interested in the upsides of all of this. I also think it would be a good idea to have a hypothetical home, like what Cole is suggesting, to try and test this theory out, so I've decided to use one from a story that I'm working on as an example for this. If anyone (not just Cole) can find a good or bad scenario with this one, I'd love to hear it.
So here it goes:
The home was built in 1978, and initially had some early-model IntelliTouch fans installed. Around 1992 however, the owners decided that they wanted some new fans installed. Seeing that they already knew about Casablanca's good reputation from their previous units, they decided to again go with Casablanca, but try out a different control system. While one of them was out shopping for a replacement part for the cassette player in their intercom system, they noticed a demo panel of the Comfort Touch system. Fascinated, they eventually replaced all of the fans with Comfort Touch models, except they used my theory of a single remote for all of the fans. (They put it right next to the intercom master unit, between the dining room and the kitchen) Here's what they put in:
Foyer/Stairway: Casablanca Shadow (Channel 50)
Kitchen/Dining Room: Casablanca Santa Cruz (2 fans, both on Channel 51)
Upstairs Library/Hall: Casablanca Metropolitan (3 fans, all on Channel 52)*
Living Room: Casablanca Stealth (2 fans, both use Channel 53)
Study: Casablanca California Zephyr (Channel 54)
Bedroom A: Casablanca Constellation (Channel 55)
Bedroom B (Guest Bedroom): Casablanca Constellation (Channel 56)
Bedroom C: Casablanca California Metropolitan (Channel 57)
Bedroom D: Casablanca Stealth (Channel 58)
Decks/Patio: Casablanca Shadow (5 decks, 1 per deck except Living Room, all on Channel 59)*
Pool Enclosure/Bar: Casablanca Santa Cruzita (Wet-rated blades, 6 fans, all on Channel 60)*
Master Bedroom: Casablanca Gallery Venus Halo (Channel 61)
Master Sitting Room/Private Library: Casablanca California Gold (Channel 62)
Master Bathroom: Casablanca California Zephyr (Channel 63)
The owners of the home left Channel 49 as a "dead air" channel for the remote to return to if none of the fans were being used at the time. The fans with asterisks next to them (kitchen/dining room, upstairs library/hall, decks/patio, and the pool enclosure/bar), also used a 4 speed knob switch that was modified to allow the user to select which fan of the 'fan bank' to control. Also, the owners installed remote holsters in the bedrooms and the bar for people to hold the remote in if they were using it for an extended period of time (like what Cole suggested with the 'guest theory').
Oh, and thanks for all of the suggestions and input, by the way...
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