I have ceiling fans in four rooms all with lights. The fans are hardwired to the breaker box, but the lights are on switches. I'd like to add another switch to control the fan, either on/off, or a 3-speed switch. It is an older house, and most of the wiring is 2-wire no ground. What is going to be the best way to go about doing this?
Electrical – Rewiring A Ceiling Fan – Add Wall Switch
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Related Solutions
Another thing that seriously needs to get corrected is the totally unacceptable workmanship of the wire attachment at the switches. The wire insulation should be right up at the screw head. The tail end of the wire should only extend out from under the screw heads by a very small amount.
If this wiring was prepared by someone that you paid to do the work you should take proper recourse to get them back to correct this extremely shoddy work.
If you have no recourse then you owe it to yourself, for safety and peace of mind, to get this mess cleaned up.
Number one thing, I'd mark the reserved wires in the switch box and the ceiling box so when you open things up in the future it's clear what's what. I also write myself notes inside the cover plate with a sharpie.
I'd connect the grounds and neutrals at both ends and cap the hots with wire nuts. I'd not put a switch in the switchbox, I'd leave a blank there. (Use Decora style switches.)
If you ever put the light and separate switch in, it will be easy; if you never do, it will be safe; if you decide to do something different that you haven't even thought of now, it will be easy to see what's there and available.
If you really want the maximum flexibility you could run conduit from the switch box to the fixture, depending on the framing and the layout it might not be all that hard with ENT (the blue stuff).
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Best Answer
The simplist solution is to replace the fan/light combinations with modern units that have wireless remote controls for both light and fan, and include multispeed settings for the fan.
Your current setup probably has a direct hot connection to the fan with a single pair of hot wires going to the switch for the light. This switch could be converted to turn the fan and light on or off together, but not separately without running additional wires.
You could snake new wires in to have separare controls for fan and light (a cable with three wires would do with a double switch), but this is requires routing cables through the walls and patching the plaster/wallboard after installation.
This also would not give you three speed controls at the wall. The three speed switches in most fans (those that use pull chains instead of a wireless remotes) cannot easily be controlled by a wall switch without a significant change in internal wiring, not a job for a novice.
A retro conversion could be done, but a replacement may be easier and maybe even cheaper than hiring an electrician to do the rewiring (remote fan/light combos can be had for less than $100).