Noisy ceiling fans are the worst, especially when you are just trying to snatch a quick nap in the living room or trying to go to sleep in the bedroom. While removing the ceiling fan is an option, its also a pain in the neck, especially considering the fact that you have to deal with wiring, along with cutting the power.
With older ceiling fans, there should be an access hole where you can insert a squeeze applicator and fill it with oil. If that hole is not there, you will have to take the fan down and completely disassemble it, in most cases.
Not all fans have a specific oil hole for you to access. However, there are generally going to be gaps in the aesthetic design of the fan that will allow you the same level of access or even more freedom of access. It’s also important to remember that some ceiling fans require oil and some do not.
How Do You Know if Your Ceiling Fan Requires Oil?
As a ceiling fan gets older, the original oils that existed around the bearings eventually dry up, which forces the bearings to start rubbing against each other. The friction that is created not only increases the noise level of the fan but also generates heat, which enlarges the problem.
Excess heat continues to dry up any of the remaining lubrication. Once the bearings start creating friction, the ceiling fan is on a rapid, downhill slope. Some ceiling fans come with sealed bearings. These are not designed for you to add oil. At least, they’re not designed for you to easily add oil.
Modern fans, as in any fan that was manufactured within the last fifty years, are more likely to be sealed, meaning you will have to completely disassemble one if you want to oil the sealed bearings within.
Older fans are likely to have easily accessible oil reservoirs that allow you to add oil to the ceiling fan whenever you think it needs it.
Kind of Oil to Lubricate Your Ceiling Fan With
The best oil to use on your ceiling fan, whether it is new or old, is motor oil with a weight between 10 and 20. You do need to be sure that it is a non-detergent motor oil as well. Once you add the oil, the ceiling fan should be good to go for a very long time.
Oil like you get in a WD-40 can is only useful as a very short-term solution. The stuff is simply not thick enough to last a long time and you will find yourself climbing the ladder to your ceiling fan more often than you care to.
Ceiling fans aren’t monumentally complicated machines and you don’t need to go down to AutoZone to pick up a quart of premium, synthetic motor oil. Cheap motor oil that you will find in a Dollar General is more than adequate to lubricate your bearings for years, not months.
How to Oil You Ceiling Fan
Whether you are lubricating sealed bearings in a ceiling fan or pushing oil down into a reservoir, it’s always a good idea to go cut the power to the breaker. You never know. It’s better to play it safe rather than risk a nasty shock.
Oiling an Old-School Ceiling Fan
You’re not going to be able to carry a quart of oil up the ladder and pour it into the tiny hole at the top of the ceiling fan. You’ll end up getting motor oil all over the fan and probably yourself as well.
You need to transfer about a cup’s worth of motor oil into a squeeze tube applicator. It’s up to you what kind you use, so long as it has enough of a nose on it to reach the oil hole on the top.
There should be a visual indicator of the oil reservoir and you should be able to see how much is in there or at least where the fill point is. Squirt the oil in there from your applicator and keep going until the reservoir is completely topped off.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. With the oil reservoir completely filled up, it will be years before you have to climb up there and do it again.
Oiling Modern Fans
Some of the modern fans are not designed for allowing you easy access. It’s one of those strange things about the advancement of technology. Manufacturers always seem to have this innate desire to make machines more complicated while also making them more difficult to access and repair.
If you are completely comfortable working with electric wires and motors, this is the kind of job that requires it. First things first—cut the power to the ceiling fan from the circuit breaker. Now you will need to unbolt the ceiling fan from the round bracket in the ceiling.
Once it’s unbolted, don’t drop it down quickly, as the wires from the fan are connected to the wires running down from the ceiling and they need to be separated. Once you are on the ground with it, the rest of the disassembly depends on the design of the fan.
You may have to remove the fan blades and brackets and you may not. However, your ultimate goal is in the center section of the fan. Disassemble the motor completely. When the bearings are exposed, pour your motor oil onto them lightly.
There may or may not be an oil reservoir. The ball bearings in modern ceiling fans are supposed to be self-lubricating. How that lubrication is distributed depends on how the ceiling fan was manufactured. When you are all done, simply reverse the process to reassemble the fan.
Final Thoughts
It’s probably a 50/50 prospect as to whether you will have to take the ceiling fan down from the ceiling or oil it while it is still installed in the overhead. Ceiling fans are not enormously complicated, so even if you have to take them down, you should be able to lubricate them without issues.
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