Electrical – Installed Ceiling Fan With a Remote And Think I Made a Mistake

ceiling-fanelectricalwiring

I installed a Hunter ceiling fan with a remote control receiver about a week ago. During installation it said to connect grounds to grounds, blacks to blacks, whites to whites, etc. which I did. I am sure the wiring I did between the fan, receiver and ceiling box were correct (with one exception, see below).

The problem is that the remote control receiver has TWO white wires on it, but the manual only mentioned one (and I checked the manual 3-4 times to see if it mentioned that second white wire). I went ahead and connected both white wires on the receiver to the white in the ceiling and the white on the fan (making 4 whites in the wire nut).

Anyway, the fan works perfectly. However, this 2nd white wire bothered me, so I did some googling around and realized that that extra white wire (on the bottom of the receiver) is the damned ANTENNA wire for the remote control. But now I have it connected to the white neutrals on the fan and ceiling box. Is this a danger? Should I take the fan down and disconnect that wire from the neutral circuit? As I said, the fan works fine and I've had no issues with it or the remote.

Why Hunter made the antenna wire WHITE is beyond me. They don't even mention what this wire is in the manual. I didn't realize we still used external antennas on devices such as this in 2018. If they're going to use external antennas, they should do 2 things:

  1. Make the antenna wire an off color like purple or pink or something (a non-electrician color).

  2. Clearly mark in the manual what the freaking wire DOES and how it should NOT be spliced together with other wires.

The wire is stranded like it WANTS to be connected to a wire nut. It is even pre-stripped on the end.

In any case, what should I do?

Best Answer

It sounds like you figured everything out. I agree their documents should be better (MUCH better) and identify the antenna somehow, use pink or purple for the antenna wire, not strip the end.

Now the part I think you already know but were hoping not to hear:

You should disconnect the antenna from the neutrals.