Hi, hope someone can help me...I saw that my ceiling fan was wobbling, and so I took it down to see what the problem was. I saw that foolishly the installer of this fan used a wood screw to attach the bracket to the electrical box!! Not surprisingly it was loosening and fortunately didn't fall and injure anyone. Anyway, I replaced the screw with a proper screw and reattached the bracket. I hadn't yet had a chance to put the fan back up, but I turned the breaker back on so that the other items on that circuit could be in use. I don't know why, but when I flipped the breaker on there were some sparks and a popping sound coming from the box, almost like the sound when a light bulb pops. Of course I quickly turned the breaker back off. I have no idea why this happened. It happens to be that the wires were not capped at that exact moment ( although I did afterwards) but the hot wire and the neutral were not even close to touching each other, or the box. In other words, I'm not sure what was different when I turned on the juice then any other time the juice is on and the circuit is running normally. When I turned the breaker back on again, that incident did not repeat itself. And I measured 120 V from hot to neutral. So no idea what occurred. The only thing I'm wondering is perhaps the longer screws that I used to attach the bracket to the box somehow made contact with something?? But all of the wires look properly insulated, albeit on the older side. (Some of them seem to have some kind of crumbling paper-y insulation on top of the plastic). The box has three neutrals together and one red hot wire. That's how the fan was wired. There are also three black wires which were capped off and not in use. I assume they're hot; when I took the nut off the black wires, the exposed portion of wire looked white and green, oxidized. Perhaps that's why it wasn't being used? No idea. Anyway, any suggestions would really be appreciated, because as I am not an electrical expert I would like to understand what happened before I hook everything back up the way that it was before. Thanks!!!

I have power that goes off and on all by its self at same time in the same 2 outlets, ceiling fan and switch. But no breakers get tripped. It doesn't happen all the time but when it goes off it comes back on days later all by its self. There is an gfi in bathroom but it has power still even when power is out on other outlets and all as explained before. Could it be a bad gfi even though it is on other side of house ? Could it be a breaker going bad? Or what else could it be? I haven't ever ran into a situation like this before. Please help somebody