Just bought a house and have a confusing situation concerning the wiring of a ceiling fan with light kit. I installed 4 of this model fan in the house with no problem but then encountered a situation where the fan works when turning on one switch, but the other switch did not activate the lights. I removed the switchplate and toggled the breaker while using my tester and validated that one set of black/red wires are not hot. Was thinking maybe they needed to be connected to the ones that are (powering the fan) but not sure if that's the correct approach. I have attached a pic of what's going on behind the wall plate. The switch on the left is powering the fan successfully. The wires on the right were just capped off in the box and were not connected at all to the switch that was on the right, which I assume is needed to power the light kit. For reference, at the ceiling fan box I connected Black/Black, White/White, Gnd/Gnd, and Red(house supply) to Blue (from fan) per the instructions and my several previous successful installs. Supposed to move in this week and would love to get it resolved before then, so thanks in advance! -Andrew

 

Can't tell where the red or black wires come out of which cable. One of the black wires should be hot and needs to be spliced to other switch. I am guessing the bottom black wire on switch is the hot.

 

I can remove both the black wires from the switch and use my tester to see which is hot and splice off that one and run it over to the other switch. Sound legit?

 

If you mean a non contact tester don't bother. The results wouldn't be reliable.

There are too many black wires for two cables. Are there three cables, two 2-conductor cables and one three conductor cable? If so then the connections would be

• The blacks of the two 2-conductor cables coneected together and to two pigtails.
• One pigtail to each switch.
• Red of the 3-conductor cable to the other side of one switch.
• Black of the 3-conductor cable to the other side of the second switch.
• All whites connected to each other.
• Grounds connected per code.

If you do not have two 2-conductor cables and one 3-conductor cable stop and post back.

 

Yep, there does indeed appear to be two 2-conductor cables and a 3-conductor cable. Using your diagram, I believe I can accomplish those connections successfully. I'll be back out there tonight and will give it a shot. Thanks so much for your feedback. I'll post back and let you know how it goes.

 

It worked! This diagram was a huge help. Wired it as described and everything tested out good. Thank you so much, ray2047!

 

Glad we could help. Thanks for letting us know the outcome.