Until recently, I had a pretty standard fan in here. It was a pedestal thing – about 50cm across the front, three speeds, went side to side – really nothing special. I think it cost about £10 from a local discount warehouse place a few years ago. Every year I would duly store it away under the bed, then un-earth it during the summer.
It worked well enough, but it had two problems. I never really had a proper home for it, so it usually ended up bashing into the headstocks of my guitars when it was sweeping to-and-fro’. It would sit there clicking away as the gears were chewing away. Also, every year, it got a little slower at spinning the blades. It would take progressively longer to spin up every time at power on, and it was getting to the point where it really wasn’t shifting much air.
So I binned it.
So now I had to find a new fan. I knew those column fans were becoming quite popular, so I thought I’d look into them. The thing is, we’re in April, so all the DIY places aren’t really selling fans. I went to Wickes, Homebase, Argos and B&Q, and only the latter had any fans at all (that I could find anyway). Most were selling heaters still!
As B&Q were the only place selling them, my choice was limited, but I had a look anyway. They had two choices – a small unit, about a metre tall, for £19.99, and a larger unit. The smaller one was nice; three speeds, it turned side to side, it looked quite nice. Next to it, was something of a beastie! £49.99, but it was a lot taller, and had a remote control! How’s that for cool! It had to be mine.
After the obligatory exchange of funds, I took it home and put it together. It has some pretty natty features. It has the usual three speeds, but left-to-right oscillation. But there’s some other niceties – there’s a snooze timer, so it’ll power off after a set amount of time. There’s also a temperature gauge, so when the temperature you choose is reached, it’ll turn itself off. Otherwise, it shows the temperature on the front. The oscillation has some different settings, to chose how far it will oscillate – quite a nice feature. There’s a couple of other nice features with how the fan is controlled. Once called ‘nature’ makes the fan spin up and down randomly, to simulate a real breeze, and it actually works quite nicely. The next option is called ‘sleep’, which will do the same as nature, only it will spend longer at lower speeds over time, so as not to disturb you. All of this is displayed on a totally over the top LED display on the front. Plus there’s the remote, which allows you do control EVERY feature on the unit from the comfort of your own chair! It even beeps!
On the whole, I think it’s worth the extra money. The box made lots of noise about how it only costs around a penny an hour to run, which isn’t too bad really. It’s all very well running fans at full tilt in the summer, but they can suck a LOT of juice doing so.