My ceiling fan stopped working many months ago. I had somebody looked at it and they couldn't figure out what was wrong so I bough a new one today. When I dismounted the old one I found this strange wiring setup as shown in the image below. I'm no electrician, and this is my first time installing a fan, but it's still puzzling.
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Why are there four lines? You can see three at the top of the box and one coming in at the bottom.
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Why are all the hot lines connected together?
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Why was one neutral line being used as the live line? The terrible thing is I can't remember which one it was.
This is connected to only one wall switch. The previous fan was controlled by a remote. Is it possible that more than one switch was used to control the fan before the remote was installed on the previous fan? There are no other switches in the house which could be used. Perhaps they were removed.
Best Answer
It just looks like your wires going down to your switch are mixed up. We in electrical have a saying "back on black". That way it's easier to see which wires go where on your light (as in there would be one black wire and one white wire waiting for you in the box to connect to your light).
It looks like the wire that goes down to your switch is the cable in the top right of the photo. So here pretend I am an electron and lets follow the current. I come into the box in one of those cables in that big black bundle as a hot wire. Than I leave the bundle and travel down the switch cables white. Than after the light switch is closed I travel "back on black" to the light bulb copper screw (or fan black wire). Than I will go through the light bulb or fan and I will travel back to the neutral area of the panel (with all those other whites in that bundle).
Like the other guys said there are other loads so don't worry about the extra wires. They are just taking power from that box. So if you want to you can take your cable that goes to the light switch and either switch the spots of the black and white wires to make it less confusing for you, or you could just tape them the opposite colours. Or you could leave it and pretend that the white wire that goes to the light switch is a black wire...to help sort your mind out.