One evening I pulled the chain on my whole house attic fan to turn it off and thought at the time it sounded a little funny. The next morning I went to turn the fan back on and found out why — the switch for the pull chain had broken. I am not a big fan of getting up in my attic since I live alone, so I got a ladder and checked to see if the switch was accessible from the house instead of the attic. It was. I had to reach through the grate and it required some dismantling, but I got the switch out and headed for the computer to find one here in town. I love my attic fan so much and wanted it working again immediately. I called everywhere; hardware stores, lighting stores, electrical supply stores, Radio Shack. I went to the big box home improvement stores hoping they would carry it despite the fact it wasn’t listed on their web sites. No one carried the switch I needed locally. I gave up and couldn’t believe the best price I could find on ordering it was once again on Amazon for $7.99 and no shipping. The switch came with wiring instructions and was easy to put in. I reassembled the box it was housed in and everything worked perfectly. The switch came with a pull string so I added the chain from the old switch and it was good to go. Whole house fans start at $200 so I was thrilled mine could be easily repaired for $8.
The DIY Girl
Girls can fix stuff too…
Very helpful! Definitely took the stress out of trying to figure out what to do when my pull cord snapped inside the switch Thank you!
Always nice to hear when something I’ve written helps someone. Thanks for letting me know.
Do you happen to have a video of how you repaired it? And what brand do you have? We have Attic Aire and I cannot locate a video of how to repair the chain mechanism.
My husband unscrewed the screws and could then see the pull chain mechanism but said he couldn’t get to it to do anything with it.
I’m sorry — I have since sold this house. With mine I was able to change it out from a ladder and didn’t have to get up into the attic. I just removed the grill so I’d have access to it.
Just the chain broke this morning while I was turning it off…does that mean the whole switch broke and I can’t hook the chain back on??
When my chain broke there was no solution but replacing the switch. It wasn’t a difficult repair. Remove the switch to get the part number and hopefully you’ll find a replacement online.