View Single Post
  #18   Report Post  
Old 30-07-2004, 02:35 PM
Salty Thumb
 
Posts: n/a
Default I Can't turn off my ceiling fan

(TimR) wrote in
m:

Salty Thumb wrote in message
. ..
(TimR) wrote in
om:

GFRfan wrote in message
news:x0yMc.21707$eM2.1485@attbi_s51...


sytech.at.oohay.moc wrote:

I have a Hunter-Douglas (Home Depot) ceiling fan in my office.

It has one of those chain "puller" switches to adjust the speed
and to turn it on or off. As I was turning on the fan, the
chain pulled out and now I can't turn the fan off.
HELP!!!!!!!!!

Any advice will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Sy


When you go to Home Depot and buy the replacement fan switch,
you're going to notice it has several wires.

They are different colors.

I do not know what colors they are because I am color blind. The
result is that my ceiling fan does not go High, then Medium, then
Low like most. It goes High, Low, Medium. If you know what the
chances are of that combination, you are way too good at math.


I seriously doubt that the color of the wiring has anything to do
with fan speed. The pull chain on a ceiling fan connects to a part
called a rheostat which handy people should be able to replace. You
can also get a wall switch or a remote control device that has its
own rheostat and leave the one on the fan on 'high' (provided the one
on the fan isn't busted completely). Now if you get a wall switch
or remote control device, the wires will have different colors,
white, green or bare copper and probably two more of black, red or
blue. By code, the white is always the grounded wire and the green
or bare always is the grounding wire. The other two are hot and
connect to the fan or light.


No, this is not correct, fan motors with pull chains don't work on a
rheostat, or anything similar. Fan switches are multiple position,
and one wire at a time is hot. I intended some humor with this reply,
but I actually did make that mistake once. When you get a fan apart
you'll see lots of wires - mine had four suspended lights plus of
course four or so fan wires, it takes care to get them all poked back
in.


Sorry, but that sounds ridiculous. I'm not an expert, but I have installed
5 ceiling fans in my life (and installed a couple of them more than once).
These were all modern fans, model year 2000 or higher. None of them had
any wires other than I mentioned. If your fan switch does indeed have
multiple wires, then where do they connect? You have one supply wire for
the fan. Connecting your multiple wires to the one supply wire (or the fan
motor) is tantamount to having one connection. If you have any splitting,
it would be much more economical (and idiot proof for the installer) to
have the splitting internal to the control device. I don't suppose the
fan you are talking about is a Hunter Original fan?

That mistake I've never made. Don't just turn it off, get a meter and
do live/dead/live, and prove it is off. You should not touch a home
electrical repair, ever, even the simplest, without a meter. Turning
it off isn't good enough. You never know how bad the do-it-yourselfer
before you screwed it up, sometimes there's power in surprising


Good advice, although most of the cheap meters I have seen are only rated
for max 10 amps whereas household wiring can carry 15 or 20 amps. You
don't need to know how much electricity is flowing, just whether it is on
or off, which you can test with a relatively cheap light probe. But when
it comes to your life, it pays to be anal.

places. I got shocked once from a computer chassis, because some
moron wired the outlet backwards, and the LAN cable was hot instead of
grounded.


And how exactly do you do that? I've also assembled my share of computers
and what you've typed makes no sense.