Ceiling Fan troubles :(

1468 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by 220/221, May 11, 2009

hertz469

Discussion Starter · May 10, 2009

alright heres my problem
I had 1 single pole switch with a piece of 12-2 running to it from the outlets. The switch when flipped on turned on the top outlet. I had a white wire at the top of the single pole switch and the black was at the bottom and ground to ground. Now I have removed this switch and installed one of those lutron fan sliders with a light switch. I installed a ceiling fan and ran 12-3 up to it black being the fan, red being the light, white being neutral i am guessing (white to white on the fan end), and ground to ground. what I wanna do is be able to control the light on the ceiling fan and the top outlets with the switch on the new switch unit and the slider controlling the fan speed. How might one achieve this?

Note: on the switch idiot guide it says black goes to the main power coming in, red to the fan control, and yellow to the light. When wired this way the lights plugged into the top outlet go dim and yea its just weird if I unplug them the fan stops working if I turn the switch on the cord for the light off it turns the fan off so yea I def do not know about this please help!!!!

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InPhase277

· #2 · May 10, 2009

You don't have enough wires coming to the switch in that 12-2. There is no neutral in the switch. The only way this is going to work is either you sacrifice the switched outlet, and rewire the 12-2 so you have a neutral, or you replace the 12-2 with a 12-3 back to the receptacle it comes from.

As it is now, the 12-2 is hot coming in, and switched hot going back.

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220/221

· #3 · May 11, 2009

Simple fix, but you can no longer control 1/2 the recep.

Go to the switched recep, take it apart and rewire it....whites to whites and blacks to blacks. Put a new recep in that doesn't have the tab broken out.

You now have a hot (black) and a neutral (white) at your fan switch.

White together at sw box, black incoming power to the sw, red and black outgoing to the fan/light.

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hertz469

Discussion Starter · #4 · May 11, 2009

u guys r the best. I was afraid I would have to sacrifice the top outlet being switched but oh well it is wut it is. So lets say for instance I do wanna still make the top outlet hot when the switch is flipped and can run 12-3 to the first outlet can all the outlets be fed with the existing wire (12-2) or do i need to replace the wire with 12-3? if it can be done with existing how do i go abouts that?

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220/221

· #5 · May 11, 2009

You can't do it with the existing and you cant put a recep on a dimmer.

If you still want the 1/2 switched recep, your best bet would be to:

Leave the wiring as is with the 2 wire in the sw box operating the recep.

and

Change the single gang switch box to a 2 gang box and and run a new two wire feed for the fan/light from a close recept or other power source.

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