If you are here, you already have the fan or you are about to put it up, and you just want the paperwork that came in the box, the one that always seems to disappear the moment you actually need it. Good news. You do not have to keep searching, and you do not have to order a replacement copy and wait for it. The complete Hunter Augusta II owner’s guide and installation manual is written out for you right here on this page, from the first safety warning down to the last troubleshooting fix.
The Augusta II is the 52 inch model that Hunter builds on their Type 2 platform, the same reversible motor and pull chain setup you will find across a lot of their traditional fans from that era, usually sold in the antique brass finish with five reversible blades and a fitted light fixture underneath. What follows covers the whole job. You will find the tools and hardware you should have laid out before you start, the safety cautions that genuinely matter, the three mounting options built into the bracket, the wiring, the tool free blade assembly, the light kit, how to run the fan through summer and winter, and what to check when it wobbles, hums, or refuses to turn. Read the part you need, or read the whole thing top to bottom.
August Ceiling Fan Manual PDF
The manual is below – it is embedded below this line. You should be able to see the Augusta PDF manual in your browser.
What Should Be in the Box Before You Start
Unpack everything on a soft surface like a bed or a carpeted floor so you do not scratch the finish, and take a minute to lay the parts out and match them against what should be there. You are looking for the motor assembly, the five blades, the mounting bracket and ceiling plate, the downrod that threads into the top of the motor, the canopy that hides the bracket once you are done, the light fixture with its glass and the small hardware that holds it, and a bag of screws, wire connectors, and the two pull chains. Somewhere on the motor you will also find a Hunter nameplate with the model number and date code printed on it. Before you throw the carton away, write that model number down or snap a photo of it, because if you ever need a replacement part or a warranty claim down the road, that number is what everything gets matched against. If a part is missing or looks damaged from shipping, stop and sort that out first rather than improvising partway through the install.
On the tool side, keep it simple. You want a Phillips screwdriver and a flat screwdriver, a stepladder tall enough that you are working comfortably and not stretching, a pair of wire strippers or a knife, and either wire nuts from the box or your own if you prefer. A voltage tester is worth having so you can confirm the power is actually dead before you touch any wires. If you are replacing an old fixture, you will also want whatever it takes to get that one down cleanly. Have a helper on hand if you can, because the motor is not heavy exactly, but holding it up near the ceiling while your other hand is busy with wires is the part of this job where a second set of hands earns its keep.
Safety Warnings That Are Actually Worth Reading
The single most important thing you will do all day is turn the power off at the breaker, not just at the wall switch. A wall switch in the off position can still leave the wires live, and a fan install has you gripping bare conductors with both hands near a metal box, so kill the circuit at the panel and then confirm it is dead with a tester before you strip a single wire. This is not the step to take on faith. If you are not comfortable working with household wiring, there is no shame in having an electrician handle the electrical connection while you do the rest, and honestly that is the smart call for anyone who feels out of their depth.
Beyond the power, a few things protect you and the fan over the long run. The outlet box overhead has to be rated and marked as acceptable for ceiling fan support, mounted firmly to the building structure, because a standard light fixture box is not built to carry a spinning load and can pull loose over time. Do not use a solid state or dimmer style speed control with this fan, since that kind of control can make the motor hum and can eventually damage it. Use only the light fixture and glass that came with the fan, and never exceed the wattage rating marked inside the fixture. Keep the blades a safe distance from walls and from anything that could catch them, mount the fan so the blades sit at least seven feet off the floor, and never put anything into the path of the moving blades. All of your wiring needs to follow national and local electrical codes and ANSI/NFPA 70, which is the standard your inspector is working from anyway.
Picking the Mounting Method That Fits Your Ceiling
Hunter designed the Augusta II bracket around what they call Installer’s Choice, which is a fancy way of saying the same hardware handles three different situations so you do not have to buy anything extra for a normal install. The standard mount is the one most people use, where the fan hangs from the downrod that comes preassembled in the box, and it works on any flat ceiling with ordinary height. If your ceiling is on the low side and you are worried about headroom, the same bracket supports a low profile or hugger style setup that brings the motor up closer to the ceiling, though on this fan the standard downrod is short enough that most rooms are fine as is. And if your ceiling is sloped or vaulted, the bracket is built to accept an angled installation, which on steeper pitches may call for a longer downrod and an angle mounting kit to keep the blades clear and level.
Decide which of the three you are doing before you climb the ladder, because it changes how the bracket and the ball at the top of the downrod sit together. For the vast majority of installs you are doing a standard mount with the downrod as shipped, so unless your ceiling is unusually low or clearly sloped, plan on that and keep moving.
Getting the Bracket and Downrod Ready
Start at the ceiling by fastening the mounting bracket to the outlet box using the screws and washers that came in the hardware bag, and make sure those screws are seated tight into the box, not just spun on. The bracket has to hold the full weight and the vibration of a running motor for years, so a loose bracket now becomes a wobble and a rattle later. Many of these Hunter brackets include rubber isolators that are meant to sit flush against the ceiling to cut down on noise transfer, so if yours has them, seat them properly rather than leaving a gap.
Down at the motor, the downrod threads into the top and there is one detail people miss. The threads on the downrod adapter have a special coating on them, and that coating is there on purpose. It locks the threads so the downrod cannot slowly unscrew itself while the fan runs. Do not clean it off, do not file it, and once you have assembled the downrod to the motor, leave it assembled. Thread it on fully, tighten it, and then secure it with the crosspin and the small screws provided so there is a mechanical stop as well as the coating. Feed the fan’s wires up through the downrod as you go so they come out the top ready to connect, and set the ball at the top of the rod into the bracket so the fan is hanging safely while you free up both hands for the wiring. Line up the arrows or the tab on the downrod ball with the slot in the bracket the way the hardware is shaped to sit, because that keyed fit is what keeps the motor from spinning on the mount.
Making the Wiring Connections
With the fan hanging from the bracket hook and the power confirmed off, you are matching up a small handful of wires. Coming out of the fan you will typically have a black wire that feeds the motor, a blue wire that feeds the light fixture, a white neutral, and a green wire or a bare ground. Coming out of the ceiling box you will usually have a black hot, a white neutral, and a ground that is either green or bare copper. The straightforward version is black to black for the motor, white to white for the neutral, and ground to ground, twisting each pair together and capping it with a wire nut so no bare copper is showing below the connector.
The light wire gives you a choice. If you want the fan and the light both controlled from a single wall switch, connect the fan’s blue light wire together with the black motor wire and cap them onto the ceiling’s black hot, so power reaches both and you run the fan and light using their pull chains. If you have wiring set up for separate switches, you can instead land the blue wire on its own switched hot so the light and the motor answer to different switches on the wall. Either way, wrap each connection so it is snug, tuck the connected wires neatly up into the box so nothing is pinched when the canopy goes up, and make sure your grounds are joined to the box ground and to the bracket ground screw if there is one. Once the connections are made and tidy, lift the canopy up over the bracket and secure it so it covers the box and the wiring completely.
Locking On the Blades With No Tools
This is the part Hunter made genuinely easy. The Augusta II uses their Easy Lock blade system, which means the blades snap and twist into place on the motor without you fumbling with a dozen tiny screws overhead. Each blade slides into its spot on the motor hub and rotates to lock, seating with a positive catch so you can feel it grab. Work your way around and install all five, and take a second to confirm each one is fully locked rather than just resting in place, because a blade that is not seated all the way is the classic cause of a wobble that no amount of balancing will fix. If your particular unit came with blade screws instead of or in addition to the snap fit, drive those to secure the blades and the blade irons firmly, keeping the torque even from blade to blade. Handle the blades by their edges as you go so you are not leaving marks on the visible faces, and once all five are on you are basically looking at a finished fan.
Adding the Switch Housing and Light Fixture
Underneath the motor sits the switch housing and the light fixture, and the Augusta II uses a multi staked glass fixture, meaning the glass shade is held up by a set of small screws or thumbscrews spaced around the fitter rather than a single center nut. Attach the lower switch housing to the motor first if it ships separate, lining it up and securing it so the pull chains hang free and are not pinched. Connect the light fixture’s wire to the matching lead coming down from the motor, cap it, and fasten the fixture body into place. Then install your bulbs, staying at or under the wattage printed inside the fixture, and lift the glass into the fitter. Hold the glass with one hand while you gently snug the three staking screws against it, tightening them evenly and only enough to hold the glass secure without stress, since cranking them down hard is how glass shades crack. The glass should sit steady with no rattle and no wobble once all three screws are bearing on it evenly.
Running the Fan Through Summer and Winter
Once the power is back on, you operate the Augusta II with its two pull chains and a small slide switch on the motor housing. One pull chain steps the motor through its speeds, cycling from high to medium to low and then off with each pull, so you tap it until the room feels right. The other pull chain, the one with the light finial on the end, turns the light fixture on and off independently. That slide switch on the housing is the reverse switch, and it is the key to getting your money’s worth out of the fan across the year. In warm weather you want the fan blowing air straight down, which creates that cooling breeze you feel on your skin, so set the switch for downward airflow, which on most installs means the blades turning counterclockwise as you look up at them. In cold weather you flip the switch the other way so the fan pulls air up and pushes the warm air that has collected near the ceiling back down along the walls, which lets you run the fan slowly and even out the room temperature without a draft. Always stop the fan completely before you throw the reverse switch, since flipping it while the blades are spinning stresses the mechanism.
Keeping It Quiet, Balanced, and Clean
A brand new fan should run smoothly, and if yours has a wobble the fix is almost always mechanical rather than a defect. Start by confirming every blade is fully locked or screwed in and that all the blades are the same distance from the ceiling, since a single blade sitting lower than the rest throws the whole thing off. Check that the downrod ball is seated correctly in the bracket and that the canopy screws are snug. If a slight wobble remains after all of that, the fan came with a balancing kit, which is a small clip and a set of stick on weights. You clip the weight onto one blade at a time and run the fan to see whether the wobble improves or worsens, moving the clip around and along the blades until you find the spot that smooths it out, then stick a permanent weight there. It is a bit of trial and error, but ten minutes of it buys you years of a fan that runs without shaking.
For upkeep, wipe the blades down every so often with a soft dry or barely damp cloth, since dust builds up unevenly on the blades and that buildup alone can start a wobble on a fan that used to run true. Do not use harsh solvents on the finish, and never spray water or cleaner up into the motor. If the fan ever starts making noise it did not make when it was new, the culprit is usually a loose screw somewhere, a blade that has worked slightly loose, or a light fixture screw that has backed off, so a quick pass tightening the visible hardware fixes most complaints.
When Something Is Not Working Right
If you flip everything on and the fan does nothing at all, no motion and no light, go back to the basics before you assume the worst. Confirm the breaker is on and reset it if it tripped, check that the wall switch is on, and make sure the fan’s speed pull chain is not sitting in the off position. Then double check your wire connections at the box, because a hot lead that did not fully seat in its wire nut is the most common reason a freshly installed fan stays dead. A loose neutral or a ground touching a hot can also cause trouble, so if the connections look suspect, kill the power again and remake them cleanly.
If the motor runs but the light will not come on, the issue is usually in the light circuit rather than the fan. Check that the bulbs are threaded in fully and are good, confirm the light pull chain is switched on, and verify the blue light wire is properly connected to a hot source, since a blue wire that got capped off by itself and never landed on power will give you a working fan with a dead light. If the light works but the fan will not spin, make sure nothing is physically blocking the blades, then check the motor’s black wire connection the same way. A fan that hums but does not turn, or turns very slowly, is the telltale sign that a solid state dimmer switch is being used somewhere on the circuit, which this fan is not compatible with, so swap that control out for a standard switch or the proper fan speed control. And if the fan runs but wobbles, treat it as the balancing job described above rather than an electrical fault. Most problems with this fan trace back to one of these handful of causes, and working through them in order will usually have you sorted without a service call.