on/off for flush mounts independent of wall switch

we just had an addition put in our house and as an afterthought want to install a ceiling fan in a room replacing one of four flush-mount ceiling lights with the fan. but three of the lights were wired to the fourth which goes to the wall switch. so if we installed the fan we could never have it on without all the lights on.

we thought that instead of having to rewire/fish/break dry wall that it might be possible to install separate on/off switches on these ceiling lights so that they can be controlled independently of the wall switch - is this possible? i have looked around and have not yet found ceiling flush mounts that switch separately

any other solutions, or are we stuck with getting an electrician in again?

tx for your help

 

In a word, yes.

 

Home Depot stocks a "Wire-less" fan/lite control. All you need is 120 volts at the ceiling outlet-box.

 

PATTBAA, although he could install a remote, it would not solve the problem. His complaint was that, "we could never have it on without all the lights on." That's still true even if he puts a remote in the fan.

 

Yes, John has stated the problem. In practical terms, keeping it cool at night when someone is sleeping on the sofa.

The low tech fix we considered is to merely loosen the bulbs in the existing lights for such situations! I was thinking that this forum might have a high-tech solution...but so far it sounds as though the path of least resistance is the electrician;.)

 

Well, there are probably lots of possibilities. You could replace the lighting fixtures will pull-chain fixtures so that you could turn them off individually. You could install some high-tech solutions -- X10 must make something that will work.

 

what is X10?

tx

 

nevermind, i found x10 - looks good. thanks for the tips, john. also, the places i looked for ceiing flush mounts originally, nor any locally, didn't have pull-chains. but i looked harder on the web and found some possibilities.

 

john nelson,

i have two follow-up questions.

1. lets say I get the x10 compact screw-in module to deal with the three lights i want to turn off so that i can run the fan in the fourth unit. unfortunately the compact x10 does not do dimming. can i assume that my lutron dimmer on the wall will still dim those lights? (its the kind that has a regular switch and then a dimmer slide just on the side)

2. i read that the lutron dimmer is not meant to support a ceiling fan. does this mean that it would not be safe to still run the fan off of this switch, or rather that it will not be effective and that i should have the dimmer full-on when i am running the fan?

tx again!

 

You cannot run the fan on a dimmer, even if you set the dimmer at full throttle whenever the fan is on.