electricalwiring
There are little dots along the lines in many wiring diagrams, like in response to the question "How do I know if a ceiling fan with light and the switch are wired correctly?". Some of these seem to indicate a junction with another wire, or a color change, but some are just in the middle of a single color wire. What does this indicate?
Also, why does the color change along a wire in a diagram?
With another clockwise fan from the same maker, I was able to reverse the direction by interchanging the yellow and black wires as some answers here indicated. The explanation as I understood is that the rewiring changes the winding with which the capacitor is in series and hence the starting direction is inverted.
In 3-phase motors, each of the three stator windings carry a current out of phase with others and the phase difference generates the rotating magnetic field required to cause the motion. With single-phase ones, a phase difference is engineered by splitting the single phase current into two stator windings and putting a capacitor in series with one of the windings so that there's a 90° phase difference between the currents in the two windings. This page on electric motors explains the concept with illuminating animations.
The following figure shows my guess, based on the above information, at the internal wiring of the clockwise spinning fan whose image is posted in the question, for clockwise and anti-clockwise rotations.
A point to note here is that single-phase AC itself produces a changing magnetic field - though a pulsating one, not a rotating one. But this pulsating field can be resolved, as per the double field revolving theory (the link has an excellent video of the workings by the way), into two revolving fields rotating in opposite direction to each other. These two fields produce an equal but opposite torque. On a static rotor, they'll cancel each other out. But an initial rotation makes torque in one direction greater than the other and starts up the fan.
This is what, I believe, happened when the OP switched red and yellow wires on his fan. The result was that the capacitor was in series with both windings => there was no phase difference in the currents in the windings. When he added a slight initial rotation, the fan continued spinning in the nudged direction.
I just did a search for John Woods thermostat wiring and found the John Wood website.
Then I used it, and your pictures to create the modified picture below.
It looks to me like you have it wired right. Also, it looks like the original wiring was done so that both the upper and lower heating elements would be on at the same time. With it wired the way you have it now, the upper element should go off when it reaches its set temperature, and simultaneously turn on the lower element. I would check this with a voltmeter if I were you.
I AM NOT AN ELECTRICIAN: JUST A DO-IT-YOURSELFER OF ABOUT 50 YEARS. So, you might want to wait for a real electrician to respond.
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Best Answer
Are you talking about the orange/yellow dots in this?
These are not standard wiring diagrams, they're just drawings that Tester101 makes to make his answers easy to understand.
He appears to be using the orange/yellow dots to indicate splicing the wires together using a wire-nut.