Project Finished...but.....

Question for John,
Replaced an old ceiling fan with a 2 wire chandelier to the existing junction box. Ceiling fan was controlled from switch for the light portion, and pull chain for fan portion. At the ceiling there is 1-2wire and 1-3 wire coming into the box. The fan is obviously in the middle of the circuit. When I replaced the lamp, I figured I could wire all 3 wires together and then just add the fan. That made fan hot regardless of switch. Traced it to 1 hot black, 1 switched red, and one switched black from same receptacle. I hooked it up this way.

Hot black to red.

Chandelier to other black(non-hot, presumable switched)

Whites together.

This was not the hookup for the fan, as both blacks were together in that case. Is my hookup wrong, even though it is working perfectly??? I believe it to be correct, but of course value this site as the bible....

Jason

 

If the fan worked properly, why wouldn't you just hook the chandelier to the same wires the fan was connected to, leaving other connections in the box alone?

You reversed the direction of the switch loop. This makes no difference whatsoever to the ceiling fixture, but it makes a difference to whatever is downstream of the switch. You turned something that was not previously controlled by the switch to be controlled by the switch, or vice versa. A little investigation should reveal what that is.

 

How do I unreverse what I did??? I will need normal functionality in the future...I think I know what the switch controls....Also, since I took the heavy fan down by myself, I wasn't able to see exactly how it was hooked up due to lack of hands, and arms. I do know that the 2 blacks were tied together. When I attempted to replicate this, I got constant power at the source for some reason...obviously not what I wanted...not sure what to do next....

 

Hook the two blacks to each other, but not to the chandelier. Hook the black from the chandelier to the red. Connect all whites. I hope this isn't what you already tried.

 

I think I did, but I'll try again