Fans
Buy and sell fans in Costa Rica.
In Costa Rica the everyday word is abanico, whether it stands beside the bed, turns slowly over the dining table or roars across a workshop floor. New and pre-owned, the category runs from the pedestal fan you carry from room to room to bladed ceiling fans with a light kit and the heavy industrial fans that keep a garage or a gym moving. The ceiling kind deserves the most thought, because in a house finished with a PVC or gypsum ceiling the question is not only which fan to buy but what it will hang from.
Pedestal, tower and box fans for the floor:
the pedestal is still the workhorse. It throws air the furthest and its blades come off for a wash. A tower fan takes a sliver of floor and runs quieter, but it pushes air with a long drum instead of blades, and dust collects where you cannot reach it without opening the case. A box fan earns its place in a window, pulling the evening air in or a hot kitchen’s air out. Wall fans suit a narrow bedroom or a soda counter, and the metal-bladed industrial fans belong to a workshop in Orotina or a community hall in Santa Cruz.
Ceiling fans and the ceiling they hang from:
a bladed ceiling fan stirs a whole room from one point, but it is heavy and it vibrates. In plenty of Costa Rican homes the ceiling is PVC panelling or gypsum board hung under a sheet-metal roof, and that skin will not carry a fan. The bracket has to screw into the structure above, a roof truss or a solid piece fixed across it. The blades want to sit at least 2.1 metres above the floor, so under a low ceiling choose a flush-mount model, or one of the 16-inch orbital fans, which oscillate from a ceiling mount with no long blades at all.
Blade span, DC motors and a fan for the veranda:
size the fan to the room: about 42 inches for a small bedroom, 52 for a living room, and two fans rather than one huge one along a long open space. A DC-motor fan uses far less power, runs quieter and has more speeds, but it answers only to its remote and receiver; an AC fan on a pull chain or wall switch is simpler to live with and to repair. On an open veranda or in an open-sided shelter in Sámara, buy one rated for damp or wet locations, because indoor blades of pressed board swell and droop after a season of sideways rain. And a fan only moves air: dehumidifiers take water out of a musty room, and only airconditioning units make it colder.
A ceiling fan’s price against a pedestal’s:
a pedestal or tower fan is around ₡15,000 to ₡40,000 new, so a used one has to be cheap and close by to be worth the trip. A bladed ceiling fan with a light kit is more like ₡60,000 to ₡110,000 before the electrician, and a used one keeps far more of that when it comes complete, because a missing canopy, light kit or remote is exactly what is hard to find later.
Wobble, oscillation and dust in a used fan:
run a ceiling fan on high and watch it. A slight wobble is what the balancing clip in the box is for; a heavy one usually means a bent blade bracket or blades from another fan, since blades are weighed and sold as matched sets. Let a pedestal oscillate through its full sweep: a click or a stall halfway is a stripped gear in the head. Shine a torch into a tower fan’s slots, because a drum furred with grey dust smells hot and blows weak. Bladeless fans sold as Dyson are copied down to the serial sticker; uneven seams and a light, rattly base give a copy away.
Taking a ceiling fan down to sell it:
most come down in a renovation, when a ceiling in Heredia is replaced or a soda in Atenas changes its look. Bag the bracket, canopy, screws and balancing kit together as you unscrew them, and photograph the label on top of the motor housing so a buyer can see the model, blade span and motor type. Say whether it runs on a chain, a wall control or a remote, and whether the light kit and downrod are included. Whoever collects it should carry the blades flat and taped together as one set, so they reach the next ceiling matched and straight.