I installed 2 ceiling fans yesterday in two separate and am having the same problem with both.

Before I removed the old fans I disconnected 1 wire at a time from the ceiling to see what stopped working. So I think one wire is the neutral and made both light and fan stop working, 1 wire was for the fan, and one for the light, and a ground wire.

The switches for the fan and the light are in different parts of the rooms. The light switches are near the doors. The fan switches are near the opposite walls.

The old fan switches were big chunky 5 or 6 speed switches and I replaced those with the 3-speed switches that came with the new fans. The switch plate also has a light swith on it but I ignored it because my light switch and its wiring is in another place in the room. There was a black wire already attached to the switch from the black of the fan switch but the other spot doesn't have anything.

When I tried the light, it works fine. The light switch controls the light. When I tried the fan it seemed OK, however, when on high speed it dimly lights the light as well. Also, the fan will only work if the light switch is off.

I didn't pay attention to which way I attached the wires to the fan switch because I didn't think it would matter. The fan switch has a little black square thing at the back and some wires going into different places but I don't mess with any of it. I only connect two wires into the little plastic connectors.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Matt

Ok, what make/model are the new fans? Do they have pullchains?

Hi,

The brand is Mercator. It's a "grange" model. The model number is FC033134. I'm in Australia and it might be an Australian company - I don't know. They have a website - Mercator - Home. It's a halogen light bulb. Things might be a little different here. There are not any pull strings but there is a Summer/Winter switch.

I remember there being a sticker somewhere on the fan that says don't use solid state switches. I don't know if the switch is solid state or not but the fact that it came with the fan makes me think it is not. But there is a little black thing on the back of the switch and I don't know what it is.

Another thing is that there were some red wires poking out of the hole in the ceiling that were just connected to each other. I just ignored them. I think it might be the weird wiring in my house that is the problem but why did the other fans work OK?

The other thing is I connected the ground wires to a ground wire that is attached to the mounting bracket thing. Then I attached the ground wire from the fan to the mounting bracket as well. However, there are these white plastic connectors where you put one wire in one end and screw it in and then put the other wire in the other end and screw it in. Well I put the fan wire into one end. But I didn't put anything into the other end - only attached the ground wire from the ceiling to the wire that was separately coming from the bracket - because the 2 ground wires coming from the ceiling, which were twisted together, were too thick to fit into the little plastic thing. But I don't think would stop the whole thing from working anyway because it's just a ground wire.

Thanks,
Matt

I'm not familiar with Australian fans, but they can't be that different.

Let me know, in detail:

What wires you have from the ceiling
What wires you have from the fan
What wires you have from the wall
What wires you have from the control

Also, in Australia, is black hot and white neutral, or is it different?

I will take the covers off either tonight or tomorrow and write everything down. And I'll take photos.

Under these circumstances I would seriously suggest calling an electrician, because a) you've got no warranty on your fans whatsoever, and b) if there is an electrical fault in your house, whether it is the fans, you will no longer be covered by any home insurance.

Just a side note as well, in Australia, black is almost never hot (unless a sparky was doing dodgy work) and white is never neutral...

From the sounds of your description, the power is looped at the light - so there should be a bundle of red cables connected together (all live)- and a bundle of black cables together, in this instance all the black cables (including the one from the fan which may be black or blue) need to be connected together. In theory there should also be 2 free red wires, 1 should come from the fan controller on the wall, the other should come from the light switch on the wall...

Obviously the red from the switch needs to be connected to the tail for the light - it should be labelled "light" and may be red or white, - the tail for the fan should be brown and that's where you connect the red from the fan controller switch... mind you the connections of these cables is what that white terminal block is for. (Hopefully all the tags are still there, and everything should be labelled accordingly... )

If you wire the fan controller incorrectly, you'll either burn the motor out or the knob won't work as you'd like it to... the should be a wiring diagram that will tell you how to do it, off recollection it may be the grey wire that you need to connect to...

Since you clearly don't know what you're doing I may again suggest calling an electrician. If you do decide to attempt this, make sure that you've turned power off at the switchboard and if you second guess yourself, give up and call a sparky... But hey, it's only your life and perhaps your family that you're toying with to save a few bucks...

You cannot fry a fan by hooking a control up wrong, but you can fry the controller.