Hello -

I have a situation where I have a fan that I occasionally want to turn when when cooling loads come up - and I want to link it to two thermostats (in two different locations), plus a timer - so that whenever any of the three close, the fan will come on.

If you take a look at the attached drawing - it shows the (existing) primary fan (not of consequence to this question), plus the proposed secondary fan on another leg and a single thermostat (there are actually two) and a timer.

What I am concerned about is how I am proposing wiring this thing - so that there are basically three switches and a looped circuit. What I'm not sure about is if I can connect hot/hot, neutral/neutral and ground/ground - and what, if anything, would happen if two of the switches closed (say, the timer is already closed, and the thermostat closes) at that same time.

Would it short if wired this way? Could power present on the open side (or closed side) of a switch be an issue?

Thanks in advance for your input - it's appreciated.

 

Welcome to the forums.

Putting switches in parallel is not a problem. Your circuit should work ok.
I'm curious.... are these permanently mounted fans and what's with the power strip ?

 

It's just to take the circuit that has the overheat/shutdown switch on it and have everything on that circuit in the event of an overheat.

Thanks for the reply - I'll set up a little test before I install these things - but it will be nice to be more automated... Oh, and yes - they're permanently mounted - I just like having extra capacity in case I need it (as when it gets hot here, it usually gets very hot).

 

Just curious, what equipment are you plugging into the power strip? If it is the load that is creating the heat i.e power supplies etc. why not shut them down through the overheat sensor and leave the fans running.
Geo