Tower Fans- Love 'em or Hate 'em?

I don't know how you guys feel about tower fans. First, because there is so much sloppy terminology just about everywhere, let me clarify what I mean by tower fans. Specifically, I am referring to those floor standing fans that are about 3-3 1/2 feet tall and perhaps 6" to 9" wide. They are typically round and often have a feature that allows them to oscillate so that multiple people sitting in different areas of the same room can be comfortable.

Now, that out of the way, let me give you my experience on tower fans. I don't know how many in total I saw before I decided to start picking them up, but I've actually picked up four of them this summer. Two worked fine, but I needed to clean out the insides (lots of dust) before allowing them to be used by my family.

The other two that didn't work- that was a different story. I took them apart and both were quite a bit of work without much in results. In both cases the motors had screws that I stripped accidentally so that I couldn't really take apart the motors. Also, the motors and brackets seem to be quite oily and messy to work with.

I kept some notes on the second fan. It was a Lasko brand and quite tall- taller than the usual tower fans. Unlike the first fan I took apart, the Lasko one didn't have those triangles with a number from 1 thru 7 to indicate that the plastic could be recycled. Too bad. The first one DID have plastic that was recyclable.

I counted the screws that I removed to take this baby apart. I removed a whopping 74 screws on the Lasko fan and there were at least 8 more that I didn't remove because I didn't need to in order to remove the scrap. All the screws required a Phillips head screwdriver, but there were probably 5 or 6 different sizes. Way too much for for less than 3 1/2 ounces of soft copper wire (not including the power cord, since I could just clip it without having to open the fan), a motor that I couldn't take apart, and a few metal parts.

Even though 2 of these taken apart is not a big sample size, the early returns are not promising for tower fans. They take up a fair amount of space (in my car and in my back yard). I didn't mind the waste of time as there is quite a learning curve to scrapping and I don't mind chalking it up as a learning experience.

For the amount of effort, space taken and tiny returns, I am leaning toward just snipping the power cords in the future and moving on. The only problem with that strategy is that if the fan works, I can use it for my house. So that means I need to take it home first, even if I only get a power cord out of it.



What does everyone else think about tower fans?

I break them down to the motor and sell them as Lt Motors for a few cents more than shred.

Alot of them are filled with dog / cat hair. I will still take them depending on what else i already have waiting to be broken down, some times i just dont want to deal with all that plastic

What hobo finds said

I’ve taken a few of these apart for the copper inside the motor. I’m filling a 5 gal bucket to melt.

I do make sure it’s pure copper, and not CCA.

I wouldn't ingot any recyclable metal. Its just wasted time & equipment co$t$ & the scrap buyer cannot know whats inside it so you will always get the lowest $ value for it.
Thats if they would buy it.

Melting Aluminium into items that sell would be a good way of making extra $$ from scrap.
But then its really a Casting operation, not scrapmetal.