Wiring a ceiling fan with black, white, red, green in ceiling box and two wall switches

ceiling-fanwiring

I'm trying to wire a ceiling fan in my bedroom (condo built in 2014).

The bedroom currently has two wall switches and a single ceiling light (no fan). The right switch turns the light on/off and the left switch does nothing. The ceiling box has a black, white, red, and green wire. The red wire is connected to nothing.1

I bought a new fan that doesn't use a remote. It has a one gang switch with separate controls for the light and the fan. The switch has 4 wires: white (load), blue (light), black (motor), and green (ground). The fan has 5 wires: black (motor), blue (light), white (neutral motor), orange (neutral light), green (ground).

This is the wiring directions I received with the fan:
wiring diagram

I want to verify that I'm wiring this correctly.

For the wall switch:

  • Connect the black from the left switch to the black (motor) on the new switch.
  • Connect the black from the right switch to the blue (light) on the new switch.
  • Connect the white from the right switch to the white (load) on the new switch.
  • Connect the green on the new switch to the ground.

For the ceiling box:

  • Connect the fan black to the ceiling black.
  • Connect the fan blue to the ceiling red.
  • Connect the fan white, fan orange, to the ceiling white and tie the three wires together.
  • Connect the fan green to the ceiling green.

Is this correct? Do I do anything with the white wire from the left switch? Does my wall switch really look more like this (in which case, I can probably connect directly to the red wire)?:
wiring

Here's a picture of the ceiling box and switch box (sorry for the poor lighting). Thanks for your help.

ceiling box, no fan

switch box
switch box, other side

Best Answer

That's not really a white wire coming out of your fan control

When the instructions for your fan control say a wire is "black/white" -- they mean it's a black wire with white stripes on it, which has nothing to do with the white neutral wires in your box.

As to wiring up the fan control...

The new fan control gets wired as follows, then:

  • Green gets nutted in with the rest of the greens
  • Black/white gets nutted to the bundle of red wires that the two bottom black wires came off of (the two bottom black pigtails can be removed and saved for use down the road)
  • Black gets nutted to the black that was nutted to the top right black pigtail
  • And blue gets nutted to the red that was nutted to the top left black pigtail

You'll also need a two-gang faceplate that has a decorator opening on one side and a blank space on the other -- either that, or a decorator opening blank for your existing faceplate, considering that the new control only takes up a single gang of box space.

And to the fan itself

The fan, though, is a bit easier to wire:

  • Ceiling red to fan blue
  • Ceiling black to fan black
  • Ceiling white to fan orange and white
  • Ceiling green bundle to fan green

As to mounting that fan...

Your box is likely a special type of box known as a concrete box that was poured right into the ceiling. This type of box, however, does not have the correct setup for mounting a fan to it (the mounting ears will bend if you try, letting the fan fall on your head). So, you'll need to use masonry fasteners to mount the fan to the concrete surrounding the box, instead.

Related Topic