Three Wires On Fan, Only One Wire In Ceiling...

We removed an old ceiling fan and we're replacing it with a new one we've just purchased.

In the ceiling there is only one hot wire coming down out of the plate. I'm assuming this is power (there is another cable but it's capped off and was never used).

The ceiling fan has three wires: a blue for the light, a black for the motor and a white labeled neutral.

The instructions says that I should connect both blue and black cables to the hot cable in the ceiling, twist them together and cap them off (wrapping electrical tape around them afterward).

It says connect the white to the ground or neutral. Since I have no other ceiling wires left (as I only had one coming down to start) can I just cap off the white by itself and leave it discounted?

Ideally, I'd like to not burn the house down. So any help in that regard is much appreciated!

Thanks!

 

Pull the plate. There should be a white behind it.

If you use real wirenuts not the fake ones that come with some fans you never need tape.

You would never connect the white to ground. It is a code violation and unsafe.

No. The fan won't work without a neutral.


Final caution: The box must be fan rated.

 

Thanks for the info. However, I was trying to just reconnect this fan in the same manner the other fan was connected. The other fan ran off this one wire and worked for over twenty years. Surley there must be a way to reconnect it using the old method?

Can all three fan wires connect to the one power from the ceiling?

 

As was said earlier, there must be a white neutral wire somewhere behind the box. The white wire coming from the fan must be connected to the white neutral wire conductor inside the Romex line feeding the box, and that should be already inside the box, but if not it must be behind it. Can you pull more of the romex wire into the box as perhaps someone has cut it off in the past at the wire clamp. There is no legal way to connect your fan any other way, and despite what someone else may or may not have done in the past, now you really need to wire it properly and safely for the reasons you already have said.

 

A circuit needs at least two wires in order to work. One supplies power, the other returns it to its source. Your fan would not have worked on only one wire.