Heller Ice Fan

This is a fan that's been in my wish list for years. Admittedly it wasn't in my to buy list when I travelled to Sydney last year, but this unexpectedly popped up on Marketplace, so I had to buy it!....not realizing that it wouldn't fit in my suitcase, but we'll get to that later.

When I was at the seller's place, they told me that this fan needs a few minutes of warm up time to get up to full speed. I didn't think much of it as I felt just a couple drops of oil should fix it no problem. The thing that attracts me to this fan is how ridiculous the concept of this fan is. The user is supposed to put water in the 2 bottles, freeze them, then put the frozen bottles back in the fan to get airflow about 2 degrees cooler than ambient air, which only lasts for a maximum of 4 hours on low from my experience, much less than the time required to re-freeze the bottles. It seems like the user also has to provide a small tray to put this fan on, as this fan makes condensate. I don't think the mostly dry climate in Australia will translate to a full tray of water after a nights use, but this fan definitely left a huge mess on the floor after filming since the humidity around here is annoyingly high. I'm not sure how popular this fan is, but I don't think it's more popular than a regular desk fan, since the airflow thing thing puts out is less than half than a standard 12" oscillating desk fan, so it seems that 50% of the fans I ended up bringing home from Sydney are ridiculous 'why the heck would you buy that?' fans.

Which brings me back again to the day I bought this fan. I had crossed my checklist for several fans, including a ridiculous exhaust fan, totaling my purchase to 4 fans.I didn't think much about how I was going to pack everything, I only had it in my head that everything will fit. That was before I agreed to buy another fan for a fellow collector, which threw my suitcase packing strategy out the window. At that point, I already had a carry on & a checked baggage, which have all been filled to the brim. As a result, I honestly thought about leaving this fan at the homestay as it's the biggest & lowest value fan I had. I then thought about packing this fan in a cardboard box, and see whether I can negotiate my way into bringing in 2 checked baggages that's right at the weight limit in the airport. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one with overflowing baggage, several of my classmates also bought more suitcases to bring all their shopping home. Fortunately enough the airline allowed our group to check in our baggage as a whole, so the few overloaded baggage were offset by the much lighter ones. So my 2 checked baggage strategy worked for the international leg of the journey, but it can't possibly pass through the domestic flight I also had to take. Fortunately a classmate agreed to send the box containing this fan through postage, which meant I can fly the domestic route home without worrying about the extra load which was this fan.

When this fan finally arrived, I immediately brought out tools to take it apart, only to find out that this fan is held together with security screws. Annoyed, I bought a set of security screwdrivers online & waited a couple days until it arrived, at which point I discovered that the bits are to short & wide to fit in the screw holes. Frustrated, I left this fan in storage for quite some time, until I thought about getting a regular long shaft screwdriver & cut it up to fit the security screws on this thing, which actually worked! That lead to the discovery that I wasn't expecting, which is the fact that this fan utilizes a C frame shaded pole motor. I'd always thought that this fan had an induction motor due to how big the motor enclosure is at the front. So in conclusion, not only is this fan terrible at providing proper cool air due to it relying on ice alone, at moving air due to the shallow blade pitch, 4 restrictive grilles & awful aerodynamics, it also has terrible efficiency. This is definitely a fan that I will not be using, which is unfortunate as the gentle breeze this fan puts out is perfect for some situations, and it's also great at making white noise.

#Heller #Ice #Fan