Wiring a 3-way ceiling fan - Help Please!

13 years ago

My husband took down a ceiling fan and didn't pay attention to how it was wired in! Now we can't get it figured out to put it back up. Our living room has two ceiling fan/light combo units. They are 3-way with a switch that turns the fans on positioned at two entrances to our living room. So, two fan/light combo's - two switches that power them on. You can turn the whole units on/off with either switch, but have to use the pull chains to adjust the fan speed, etc. The fan and light aren't controlled separately at the switch - it's all or nothing - if that makes sense. Anyway - one fan is still up - no issues there, I assume the wiring there is fine since we haven't messed with it.

The fan that is down has four white wires, two black wires, two tan wires, and one copper (grounding?)wire. I have no idea what to hook together. The fan itself has one black/white wire, one black wire, one white wire, and one green wire.

Here is a link to the photo of the box and wires: http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h145/jagm/a.jpg

Can anyone help me with how we need to hook this up? Thank you!

Here is a link that might be useful:

Comments (4)

yosemitebill
13 years ago
Not quite sure what the exact problem is here, since you sound knowledgeable about the wiring, but with the insulting tone of your husband in this post you might want to start with a marriage counselor first!
jagmtx
Original Author
13 years ago
yosemitebill - - Hmm. Perhaps I came across differently in type that I intended. I have no problem with my husband whatsoever! Quite simply, NEITHER of us know how to do any electrical wiring - at all. I'm sorry you were offended by my post, it was entirely unintentional. (However, it does seem that you intended to be offensive by yours?)
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yosemitebill
13 years ago
jagmtx- That's good to hear! And I apologize if my reply was offensive.

Most likely the two connections on the left hand side of the picture are the switched hot and neutral but that would have to verified with a volt meter first - you can never assume. The bare copper on the right is your ground.

As far as the fan, standard color coding would indicate the green is your ground, white is neutral, black is the hot for the fan, and the black/white (although it's usually Blue) should the hot for the light. Again, I would double check that with a meter.

Once things are confirmed make sure the power is off at the breaker before installing - you never know what the last position the fan switch (on the fixture) was left in!
DavidR
13 years ago
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but couldn't you just drop the fan that's still working, make note of how it's connected, and duplicate that wiring on the one that you need to install?