ceilingceiling-fanelectricaljunction-boxwiring
I looked all over the internet and my outlet box seems to have unorthodox wiring/ colors.
On the ceiling outlet box I have 3 thick wires, red, white and green, and a fourth single little wire that is orange.
On the ceiling fan there is motor, light and neutral wire. There is also a little green wire connected to the mount which I think is the ground wire.
What connects to what?
I would like to add that this condo building is about 8 years old. So it's fairly new.
If you want the fan and light to operate separately, then connecting the wires as you described is the way to go. If you want the whole fixture to be controlled from a single switch, the manual is describing the proper wiring.
As for the green grounding wire, simply attach it to the green grounding wire in the ceiling. You should use an appropriately sized ring or fork terminal, to connect the ground under the same screw as the ground from the ceiling.
I was able to get a hold of the electrician who built my house. He said that in Chicago, they use steel for grounding throughout so there is no grounding wire. He said the yellow and purple wires hook up to my switches (though the purple is just hanging loose in my switch box). The grey is neutral and the red is always on (if I wanted to not use the switch and only use the pull strings).
Best Answer
What was there before? By the colors you describe, I suspect there was a hard wired smoke detector there, the smaller orange wire is daisy chained to all detectors so if one detects smoke/Co/extreme heat, all detectors go into alarm mode. If you removed a smoke detector, you have violated local codes!