I live in a freshly built house and in the master bedroom Ive attempted to replace the ceiling fan. I took a multimeter to the light switch, and it's reading 110-120v. At the spot where the fan connects to the ceiling, I took a reading from there and it's reading 60-70v. I thought it was the switch, so a quick trip to Lowe's and grabbed a new one. Swapped it out and the same results. Now, I moved the fan I replaced to another bedroom and its working just fine with that wiring. I've done multiple fan installs, and haven't ran into this before. Anyone have any insight what to look for?

Thanks in advance.

 

You're most likely seeing what's called phantom voltage, it has to do with the way digital voltmeters measure voltage. The best piece of test equipment you can use is a $4 neon test light which will not give you false results like this.

If you're interested, you can do a search on the forum for "phantom voltage" and you'll see a boatload of posts of similar issues.

The real issue that you're having is that something isn't switched right; where you're seeing 60-70 volts, you're actually getting zero. You may have switched some wires around - if you go into more detail about what's connected where, I'm sure someone will be able to help you sort it out.

Good luck!

 

If you are in a new house, typically if it is set up for a paddle fan then there will be a black, red, white, and bare wire for ground in the paddle fan box. Black is usually the fan and red is the light. My suggestion, take switch apart and make sure of good connections. I suspect looking at the neutral connections in both places. Not a good connection....No paddle fan