Ceiling Fans review...cut the costs of cooling your home and make life more comfortable

Many years ago we lived in the lush, beautiful tropical town of Kununurra, Western Australia. Just about every room in every house there had ceiling fans, and we loved them. Seven years ago we bought our house here in Adelaide, South Australia, and every summer we said "one day we'll get ceiling fans installed." Well,last November that one day came. We decided it was high time to get it done, it wasn't going to get any easier or cheaper.

We contacted an electrician that we had used before to ask what ceiling fans he would recommend and quote for installation. He told us where he gets the fans from and which one he thought we should get so that we could go to their showroom and have a look. So we went and had a look at the Lucci Futura Eco Series fans and the lady in the shop was very helpful. We went and had a look in other fan shops, but the sales assistants didn't seem interested in trying to make a sale, their display wasn't as good or they didn't know as much about the product. We went back to the original shop (the name of the shop escapes me at the moment!) and spoke to the same sales assistant and had a few more questions answered.

We decided the Lucci Futura would be good for the bedrooms. They have three speeds and a light fitting that looked reasonably nice. As we have a low pitch roof with no crawl space the electrician would be unable to get into the roof to install wiring. The fans could be installed where there was a light fitting already, without having to get into the roof space. However, we had to go with using a remote control instead of a switch on the wall. We opted to go for the Lucci LCD Fan Remote Control (Series No. SKU 210013) as it has a temperature control and timer function. We thought this would be handy for the bedrooms as we could set the temperature and the fan speed automatically adjusts according to the temperature of the room. When the temperature drops to match the temperature you have set it at, it stays at low speed to maintain the temperature. If it drops below, it automatically switches off, and only switches back on again if the room warms up. That would mean we wouldn't have kids calling out in the middle of the night that they are cold and could we please switch their fans off!

So that was the bedrooms sorted out, but for the lounge room and dining room we wanted a fan with a really slow low speed. There is nothing worse than sitting at the dining table enjoying your meal but getting a thudding from the fan blowing air on you. The Lucci Airfusion Climate II DC ceiling fan has speeds, with the lowest being so low it feels more like a gentle breeze or slight airflow you would get from having a window open, rather than a fan on. Much more pleasant for sitting directly under when eating your dinner. A remote control is included, so we didn't need to get them as an extra. Another advantage of the DC fan is how efficient they are...on the slowest speed they use 4 watts. You can get them with a light fitting, but we weren't going to need that for the lounge room and dining room, as we didn't want the fans where the lights were.

We only had to wait two weeks for the electrician (Robertson Brothers) to come and do a very professional job of installing them. Oh, I've just remembered the name of the fan shop, Beacon Lighting at Mile End. Robertson Bros supplied and installed all 5 fans and remotes for $2,200.00. I thought that was very reasonable, given the difficulties in installation. If you were to go for switches instead of remotes for the Futura fans, you would save more, as the Lucci LCD remotes are $100 each,

It's funny how things look differently installed at home than they do in the showroom. In the show room we preferred the look of the Futura fans to the DC ones, but once installed, thought the DC ones looked fantastic and blended in really well with the house, while the Futura ones looked a bit old fashioned. Nonetheless, we are extremely impressed with our choice in fans and remote controls.

This summer we have hardly used our air conditioner. Instead, we have used the fans a lot, keeping the house at a comfortable temperature both day and night. We have solar panels and consequently don't get electricity bills, but it will be interesting to see how much our usage is compared to previous summers at the end of this one.

The new fans are so quiet, sometimes you forget that they are on, except for the feeling of a breeze inside the house!

Two in one recipe: Peach and rockmelon juice and peach, rockmelon and passionfruit sorbet - egg free, dairy free

I have a juicer which is great but I find that, during the process of extracting juice, there is a lot of pulp left behind. I don't want to waste the perfectly good fruit pulp, so the other day when I made this Peach and Rockmelon juice, I used the pulp left over to make a very yummy sorbet.

For the juice:

1/2 rockmelon (cantaloupe)
4 peaches
2 oranges
1 tablespoon lime juice

Juice the fruit according to the instructions for your juicer. For example, I have a different attachment for doing 'fleshy' fruits like the peaches and rockmelons and another attachment for juicing citrus fruits. Months ago I juiced a heap of limes and put them in the ice cube trays in the freezer. I picked out enough cubes of frozen lime juice to make about 1 tablespoon and added them to the rest of the juice.

For the sorbet:

Collect the pulp of the peaches and rockmelons from the juicer.

In a saucepan, place 1 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water and slowly bring to a boil until sugar has dissolved. Put aside to cool completely.
Once cool, stir into the pulp along with some passionfruit pulp and seeds (or omit if you don't like passionfruit).
Place into a shallow freezer proof plastic container and freeze. After a few hours (when it is almost frozen solid), pull out and beat, then place back into the container and freeze again. If you leave it longer (I left mine for two days!) and it is frozen solid when you pull it out to beat it, just let it sit at room temperature until it softens.

Many sorbet recipes say to whip raw egg whites into frozen mixture when beating it. With two young kids in the house I wasn't keen on using raw eggs, so left them out.

Last night we tried the sorbet and it got the thumbs up from everyone. My husband was impressed that it was so tasty, and bar the cup of sugar, was relatively healthy.

Peach, plum and fig smoothie - dairy free

The best things in life are free and free fruit can't be beaten. I made a delicious smoothie from some 'free' fruit that we had - yellow peaches that we had growing in our garden plus some our neighbours gave to us, white flesh peaches that a friend gave us, plums from the next door neighbour and some figs a neighbour that I only met today while walking past his house and striking up a conversation about his fig tree. I peeled the peaches and chopped them roughly, chopped the plums and the figs and blended these all until smooth. (My mum would love this as she has extolled the virtues of her Nutribullet to me in a previous conversation!). I also added some lime juice that I had frozen from limes given to us by the same friend who gave us the white flesh peaches...I don't know if I would add limes again, the flavour didn't quite go with the other fruits. You could change the amounts of each fruit to your own taste, but I did 2 x white flesh peaches, 1 x yellow flesh (Million Dollar variety) peach, 1 x fig and 1 x plum.

It was absolutely delicious an soooooo refreshing. I could have used my juicer instead of the blender, but I really wanted the advantage of having the fibre in the drink rather than just the juice.