I'm having a problem trying to replace my bathroom switch….there are 9 separate wires coming out from the wall…1 red, 4 white, 4 black…there is an exhaust fan and then there is a light above the sink and then there is an outlet… I can't seem to figure out which wire's go together and which wires are supposed to have a pigtail in order to put 4 total wires on to the new Switch…can someone please help me???!!! Thank you.
Wiring a bathroom exhaust fan light and Outlet on one switch
switchwiring
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No way from here to know which wire fed the light or fan, but you have a continuous hot feed into the box that fed the receptacle, light and fan. The third wire, maybe it fed the fan or maybe something something else farther down the line, if the latter that needs to be tied in 100 percent to the hot feed. All whites still tied together, blacks to the dimmer from the light and hot. All grounds tied together set with a screw to the metal box. Securing the ground to the box is not needed if the box is plastic.
Before I got too wordy, here is a sketch
Still have to learn to format better
The sketch is a little rough, it should get the idea across I hope
I've never connected a motion switch before but it looks like the two whites neutrals in the wall box stay together, and then just twist one of the two blacks coming out the wall box each and individually with one of the blacks coming off the switch (just pick one from wall to twist with wire nut with one on the switch, and then do the other blacks). The green and the other small wire are ground wires so those will go from a newly connected pigtail to the metal box, and follow instructions from the Important Grounding Note section below for correctly connecting the grounds.
Important Grounding Note: You should use pigtails to connect the two grounding conductors to the circuit grounding conductors, and the box. Putting them all under the same screw, is not the proper way to do it.
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Best Answer
Here's the trick with electrical wires in junction boxes. There is no color coding. Wires are the colors they are because that's how cables are made.
There is a system and practice for relating wires to functions. However, the information is stored in the the way the wires are connected together already. For instance, in a lamp box with 3 blacks and 3 whites, a wire-nutted group of 2 blacks / 1 white has a specific meaning. There's no need for further documentation; any electrician instantly recognizes what that is, and now knows the function of every wire in the box.
So, that is why we need to see the current, existing relationship of wires in the box to each other.
From time to time, a newbie will pull all of that apart, not realizing. In that case, it's time to call the electrician. We on the Internet cannot possibly discern the function of a bunch of unmarked wires. The electrician will be on-site and will be able to trace out each cable's function.