Celing fan switch confusion

[MayhemMOORE]

Ok, not garage related, but in a house we just purchased on Friday. Before I can begin work in the garage I have to get the house up to par for the wife. I am replacing a ceiling fan in our living room and I am a bit confused on the wiring coming from my switches. I may just be overtired but I am not understanding what they did. Coming from the ceiling I have a red (constant hot, not switch controlled), black (switched hot) neutral and ground. The red I get, I can use the fan independent of switches if I so choose. The black is my switched hot; there is a switch on either side of the room that will control the black, simple enough and I get how two way switches work and using just the 2 it works as it should. Now this is where I am getting lost. On one of the switchplates there is a 3rd switch that I could not figure out what it did....until I took down the fan; this is a single pole switch that also controls the black to the fan. It will energize the hot regardless of the position of the other two, two way switches, basically overriding them and making them useless. Is there some reason for this that I am overlooking, because to me it just seems like a huge pain since if that switch is on then the switch across the room becomes useless. I don't know why someone would run three switches to one fixture all in the same room, one of which overrides the shutoff feature of the other two. I may just disconnect the random switch unless there is some valid reason to have it.

 

[MayhemMOORE]

Ok, hooked up the new fan, and now only the single switch will control it. The two other switches are still switching power, but the fan/light will not come on using them. Note that it did work before but was intermittent which I believe was due to a faulty wireless controller. It's late and I don't think I should be playing with electricity anymore until I get some sleep. I will attempt to get it sorted out again tomorrow before I result to calling in a pro.

 

[tfi racing]

Did someone intend the three-way switching to control the fan's light from each doorway and the other switch strictly for the fan independent of the light?

 

[DesertSparky57]

Incorrectly wired 3way-4way-3way can be a bee-itch to trouble shoot if you're not very familiar with the way it's supposed to be wired, it sort of sounds like this may be what you are dealing with. It gets worse if they didn't follow the unwritten wiring standards also, like where the hot is vs. where the switch leg is and proper technique for "stuffing" the wires back in the box correctly. Personally I never try and decipher what some other person was trying to wire, I just pull the switches out and unhook everything, get a meter and make it right.

You should get a DIY'er book on basic residential wiring. You'll have the knowledge to do it right in no time. something as simple as the person before you buying the wrong switch and trying to use it in place of a 3 way or 4 way can really be misleading as to what the wiring is actually set up for.

Have you yanked all the switches to get a look in the boxes and see what's really happening?

 

[MayhemMOORE]

I have not yanked the switches yet, that was my plan today. I need to pick up a decent book anyway for when I redo the garage and add my sub panel, so I will pick one up today also. Hopefully I can determine why the two switches no longer work the fan even though they switch power. And I'm hoping I find the source of the red wire and can connect that to a switch for independent fan and light operation. I'll come back with my results if I get it done today. Thanks.

 

[DesertSparky57]

When testing the power on the two switches, are you testing to ground? Or to neutral? If the wiring in the switches, like the travelers connecting the two 3 ways, has been goofed sometimes the white ends up getting dropped and you are left with only a hot in the fan box.

120v to ground is nice, but it won't do squat on a fixture of any kind without 120v to neutral, the circuit is open without the neutral, open meaning incomplete

If you are planning more wiring in the future getting the book is a very very good idea. My first journeyman ever, feels like ages ago, told me something that has always proven true.

If you can't draw the wiring you are working on, you really don't know what you're working on. Now I don't mean draw as in blue print quality, simple dots and lines is enough for any circuit you are going to come across in a residential setting. If you want, I can post a simple sketch of what I mean, using your 3way setup as an example.

 

[MayhemMOORE]

I didn't get out the meter and test all the connections as of yet, I was just using a non contact tester to make sure I wasn't grabbing a live wire when doing what I thought was a simple swap. I will be picking up a book when I go to Lowe's in a bit to get some other stuff. I am a visual person so I will definitely do up a sketch once I yank the switches and chase all the leads. Like you said, I think a neutral got dropped or crossed up somewhere which would explain why the single pole switch is the only one that works even though the 3 way setup switches power. Hopefully I can get it sorted out today and find where the red, constant, hot is fed from and tie it in to a separate switch to control the fan motor independent of the light.

 

[DesertSparky57]

I have to say also, two 3 ways hooked up parallel with a single pole with a constant hot at the fixture is a very odd way to approach fan switching. Maybe the previous owner had some special reason for it, but it just makes no sense to me. I guess with a remote fan control unit it would make some sense but I've never been a huge fan of those either.

If I didn't have enough wires heading up to my fan I would just make it so the one switch worked both the fan and the light. If I ever had a need for just the light, a simple tug on the pull cord would shut the fan off.

I would say once you pull out some switches, after cutting the power of course, try and figure if the wire is for 3way-4way-3way or some other oddball setup. The 3-4-3 is 3 switches in 3 locations that always work in opposite of one another no matter what, usually this is the most desirable wiring in a larger room with 3 switch locations.

Here's a sketch. The ground is not drawn in, it should hit every device, fixture or switch or anything with wires on it in your house. It's a crude drawing but it only takes 2 minutes to do if you know how the switching actually works. The hard part is realizing that all this wiring is not in one box but scattered across your living room.

 

[MayhemMOORE]

Thanks for the drawing. I picked up the B&D 5th edition wiring book and will use that as well. I got the new fan up and hooked up the grounds for now, but I will start pulling switches and tracing wires before anything else is connected. What still baffles me is that the single pole switch is in the same box as one of the 3 ways, and the other 3 way is across the room where it should be so you could hit a switch whichever way you walked in. I will dig into the wiring shortly.

 

[MayhemMOORE]

Ok, got it figured out. I think I was over thinking and jumping to conclusions before getting out the meter and actually checking what was switching what. The red is still always hot like I stated originally. The black is switched from the single pole switch and I have that hooked to the fan motor so it can be switched on its own. The 3 way switches on opposite sites of the room switch the white wire at the ceiling box. So with the white from fan to white from the house, blue from fan to red from house, and black to black, I get a switched light from both sides of the room and switched fan from the single switch. It's been a while since I've gotten into wiring, but now that I own a house I hope to get back up to speed on things. I still will pull the switches and look at how it's wired, just because I learn by seeing, and I need to move one anyways. Thanks for the help, I'm sure I'll be back with something else as I do more.

 

[RickP]

The red is still always hot like I stated originally. The black is switched from the single pole switch and I have that hooked to the fan motor so it can be switched on its own. The 3 way switches on opposite sites of the room switch the white wire at the ceiling box.

Whoa there - do you only have 4 wires going to the fan? (B, W, R, G) If the white wire is switched, then how is your fan motor connected to neutral when the white switch is off?

 

[MayhemMOORE]

Whoa there - do you only have 4 wires going to the fan? (B, W, R, G) If the white wire is switched, then how is your fan motor connected to neutral when the white switch is off?

That was what I was wondering myself. I need to pull switches today and trace all the wires to find out, because I don't want to leave it as is if there could be a potential hazard.