Old House-Weird Wiring

[Teken]

I have nothing to offer in terms of value to the technical question at the moment. Besides its so cool to get a flash back of a wooden mounting plate on the ceiling!

 

Honestly haven't seen that in 30 plus years . . .

[chrishick]

Still need to see the wires inside the junction box that is above the gold mounting bracket.

[smokegrub]

There are two wires that enter the junction box--the same two at the switch. One is white and the other black. Both have power just like they did at the switch.

[smokegrub]

I am going to abandon this project for the time-being. I have the kitchen and fan torn apart and my daughter and her family are returning from shopping --they are here on vacation. Maybe at some time in the future I will seek help on this again. Please accept my sincere thanks.

[giesen]

If you do get at it again, what you *should* see in the junction box are 2 black wires (hot), 1 white wire (neutral), and a white wire with tape on it (typically red or black - this is the "load" leg from the switch).

The neutral wire (white) with no tape should go directly to the neutral on the fan.

The two hot wires (black) should be tied together with a wire nut. (Should not go to fan)

The last white wire (with tape - "load" wire) should be tied to the hot (black) wire from the fan.

 

 

Note that it is not uncommon for the load leg and the hot leg from the switch to be reversed (ie the black wire from the switch goes to your fan, and the white wire from the switch (which should have tape on it) to be tied to the hot from the panel. Functionally it doesn't matter.

 

If there's no tape on either of the white wires, the one that is either tied the hot black wire in the junction box, or tied to the fan hot, *should* be the one from the switch. To be able to tell for sure, turn off the breaker, disconnect and separate all the wires (so they don't touch), turn the breaker back on, and carefully check with a multimeter which pair is live. That is the pair from the breaker panel, and the other pair is your switch loop.

[stusviews]

What you should see is at least two black and two white wires (ignoring any ground wires).

[apostolakisl]

It appears that you have 

 

1) 2 black wires coming off of the fan.  One would be for the fan and the other for the light.  They are spliced which means you can't turn them on separately.

2) A black and a white coming from the box which we can't see.  The white wire would be neutral as it is connected to the neutral wire on the fan and the black would be hot, probably coming from a switchloop

 

You say both wires are "hot" at the switch.  This isn't likely as it makes no sense electrically.  Probably one is hot and the other goes to the fan.  They would only both be "hot" if connected to the switch and the switch were turned on.

 

Basically, the typical arrangement is that power

1) enters the box above the fan via a black wire

2) That black wire is connected to one wire of a pair that is sending the hot to the switch

3) The other wire of the pair is bringing the hot back from the switch (when the switch is on)

4) That other wire bringing power back from the switch connects to the black wires entering the fan

5) The white wire coming from the fan is where power exits the fan and connects to the house neutral (white wire) closing the electrical path

 

You have a green wire which is connected to nothing.  That is a ground wire and should be connected to ground to prevent fire or electrical shock in the event that something goes amiss in the fan.  If no ground exists (certainly possible in an old house), you might ask an electrician what is best to do, either leave it unused or connect to the neutral, not sure which is best.

 

You can connect the pair of wires going to the switch to the hot and neutral from the house panel and that will give you power for an insteon kpl  switch.  You will then need a second insteon fanlink at the fan itself and then you can link those two switches to control the fan and .lights separately.  

[smokegrub]

I sincerely apologize, but I fear I have been describing my setup incorrectly. I am going to carefully reassess with the help of a competent electrician then I will post a schematic. Again, I am so sorry if I have wasted some of your valuable time. I will not post on this again until I am certaibn about my setup.

[stusviews]

The images show the wires entering the fan/light. They do NOT show the ceiling box. You'll have to remove the bracket and plastic ceiling medallion to expose the wiring in the ceiling box.

 

An electrician will have to remove the fan/light. For the same or nearly the same cost, the electrician can do the wiring, too. The instructions are:

 

The Fanlinc requires unswitched line and neutral, black and white, respectively. Red powers the fan, blue powers the lights.

The Keypad requires unswitched line and neutral, black and white, respectively. The red (load) wire is capped.

 

That's it for the wiring. Everything else is done using scenes.

[apostolakisl]

What stusviews says is spot on.

 

My assumption would be that you have 4 insulated wires entering the box above the fan and possibly some bare ground wires.  These are likely arranged as one black and one white in each of 2 jackets.  The one pair of wires is going to your circuit breaker and the other pair is going to your switch.  It is irrelevant for this wiring scheme which is which.

 

The re-wire would involve

 

Shut off the breaker

 

In the box above the fan:

1) Splice the two house wire whites, the white from the fan, and the white from the fanlinc together. (In other words, every single white wire gets spliced together)

2) Splice the two house wire blacks and the black from the fanlinc together.(in other words, all the black wires EXCEPT the ones connected to the light/fan itself)

3) Splice the red fanlinc to the black from the fan that powers the light part (hopefully there is a label on it, if not you'll need test things out)

4) Splice the blue fanlinc wire to the other black wire on the fan that powers the fan part.

In the box at the switch

1) Splice the house black to the KPL Black

2) Splice the house white to the KPL white

3) Cap the red KPL wire

 

Hopefully you also have bare ground wires at each box, any and all of these get spliced together with the green wire on the fan.

 

In summary, EXCEPT for the two black wires connected to the fan, all white wires get splice together, all black wires get spliced together, and all green/bare wires get spliced at both boxes.

 

 

Turn the breaker back on, join your fanlinc and kpl to scenes so you can control it all.

[stusviews]

The switch box is metal. That suggests that there may be no ground wires. Guessing about wiring can be successful or it can be disasterous.

[apostolakisl]

The switch box is metal. That suggests that there may be no ground wires. Guessing about wiring can be successful or it can be disasterous.

I think he said this stuff was 60 years old.  In 1950 there was no such thing as a plastic box so that in and of itself doesn't tell you much.  But I don't doubt that 1950's wiring to what would have been an incandescent fixture would lack a ground.

 

Wiring it wrong could result in

1) shorting hot to ground/neutral and blowing the breaker/fuse

2) having it just not work, but otherwise not do anything harmful

3) energize the chassis of the fan and potentially result in a shock or fire.  This would require that you connected a hot to something electrically connected to the fan chassis, like the green wire or the mounting apparatus. Or, if the something happened to the fan internally it could short to the chassis (the main reason a ground wire exists).  Currently the ground wire on the fan is going to nothing (probably because no ground exists), which leads to risk of an energized fan chassis failing to blow the breaker/fuse and a risk of shock or outside chance of fire if some alternative path to ground existed that was just enough resistance to keep the amps below the fuse/breaker but still heat it up.  That is unlikely but possible. The house I lived in in college actually caught fire for that reason. . . the day before finals.  We were talking 1920's wiring in that case.

 

I have seen where the neutral was also used as ground, but this also poses some risk.  If some other load is daisy chained to this load, the neutral could become hot if a disconnect occurred in the neutral closer to the panel and the device further downstream were in the on position.  My understanding is that if no ground exists, that you just screw the ground wire to the mounting bracket of the fan, which doesn't actually ground it but whatever.

 

If no ground exists, you either live with that risk or you spend a ton of money and rewire the house.

[stusviews]

You are correct. If there is no ground connection, then connecting the ground to the fan bracket is as effective as cutting the ground wire off. OTOH, connecting the wire feels better

 

BTW, early non-metallic wiring (e..g, Romex) was usually installed using Bakelite boxes for both the ceiling and wall which were less costly than metal boxes.

[Javi]

My home was built in the 1948 so this may or may not work.

 

My entire house has metal conduit. A new electrical box was installed and the conduit was grounded. Then a screw would work to ground new fixtures..... You will have to check if code in your area allows for this to be done.

[stusviews]

Most construction with metal boxes uses metal sheathed wiring (e.g., BX, Greenfield/flex, EMT, conduit). The boxes are grounded. In that case, grounding to the box is not only OK, it's an approved method.

[giesen]

That may be true south of the border, but its all metal boxes up here and there ain't no BX to be found (at least in resi)

[stusviews]

BX was just an example in the list, not a definitive material for wiring. The particular metallic wiring method depends on both location and era. The point is that if you have metal boxes, then more than likely you do not have non-metallic cable.

[larryllix]

There was a metal stud building  era where metal boxes and metallic cable were both used.

 

I had  house like that. It wasn't uncommon to see me  drill holes spaced one inch apart for the whole 16" span of a stud spacing just to find a stud. Darn tinfoil things were terrible to find and just pushed out of the way if you didn't drill a thread hole first for the screw to tap into.   Aluminum wiring too.  

[giesen]

BX was just an example in the list, not a definitive material for wiring. The particular metallic wiring method depends on both location and era. The point is that if you have metal boxes, then more than likely you do not have non-metallic cable.

And I'm telling you in Canada, that is not true. Virtually all boxes are metal here, with loomex/romex used for residential work. Unless you mean the conductors are copper (or aluminum), it which case I'm inclined to agree

 

Not only that, when that part of his house was built, there were no plastic boxes, so metallic boxes are no guarantee of metallic cable. Not sure about his, but mine is filled with metal boxes and NMD-1 (tarred, paper-wrapped two conductor with no ground). At least, it was until I ripped most of it out and replaced with NMD-90/Loomex. Metal boxes are still used for almost all new construction to this day.