My kid was taking a shower in the 2nd bath and when she went to flip off the bathroom fan it wouldn’t go off. Switching the switch to the off switch doesn’t do anything.
My initial thought was the switch was bad, so I replaced both light and bath switches—fan still going. It shuts off when I shut power to it, but that is the only way to shut it off (besides just unplugging it from the plug inside the fan housing). So then I replaced the fan with a new fan, turned the power back on and it still won’t go off!
So I have replaced both ends - the fan and the switch. What else is there but the wire? I checked elsewhere in the home to see if there was some odd switch but have yet to find any thing else that might switch it off. There doesn’t appear to be a thermostat that it is tied to. The rest of the bath fans work fine. So I am at my end point as to what it could be.
Let’s try something. (We’ll do this the safe way). Cut power to the fan at the breaker. Remove the fan switch and cap off any wires*. Turn the breaker back on. If the fan is now off, there’s a problem with the switch. If the fan is running, and assuming the switch did in fact previously control the fan, you wired something wrong when you replaced both switches at the same time.
*Two things on this. First, remove ONLY the fan switch, this will help troubleshoot any problems with the two switches be wired together incorrectly. Second, it might be easier to just unhook one wire and cap it off…yeah, why don’t you go ahead and do that. Assuming the switch only has two terminals and two wires, just unhook one wire and cap it off. Dosen’t matter which one.
Also, it’s not possible for the fan to be the problem, replacing it wasn’t going to fix anything since it doesn’t have any say over whether or not it gets power.
Are you 100% sure you didn’t buy a 3 way switch by mistake? How many terminals are on this switch? If it’s 4 plus a ground or 2 plus a ground, you’re okay. If there are 3 terminals you probably have a thee way. Hooking up a three way switch as a normal switch can cause some interesting problems.
When you say cap off–explain. What I tried to do was to unwire the switch and let the wires be exposed (without having them touch anything). When I turned the power on I didn’t have lights or power. I assume this is because the fan switch is tied into the light switch and since I didn’t have the circuit between them it wouldn’t have power.
I think it has to be a short between the fan and the switch too
When I say cap off, I mean put a wire nut over the exposed wires (but what you did was fine as well). I’m not usually one to say this, but as a CYA, I will. If you didn’t understand what I meant by ‘cap off’ you might consider calling in a pro.
Having said that. Your statement doesn’t really make sense “When I turned the power on I didn’t have lights or power” is confusing, and I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
You’re either going to need to really clarify what you were saying, or get in there with a multi-meter and tells us what wires are coming into the box, how many, what’s hot, what’s not etc…
Are there two switches? How many hot lines come into the box? I assume you have one hot line coming into the box, the red/black wire should split and go to each switch. Each switch should have it’s own red/black wire leaving the box and there’s probably three white wires tied together. Is that what’s going on?
No I figured that is what you meant but I thought I would ask. Into the Fan switch I have two bare wires that snap into the back of the switch and the white/black wires screw into the side screws. Into the light switch there are two bare wires into the back and then the two wires come into the bottom screw.
I figure I will need to get an electrician out here. Something simple like replacing a switch or outlet I am comfortable with but beyond that…well it would make me too nervous.
The odd thing is I don’t believe it is the switch or the fan. I have wired them exacly how they were wired before and it worked that way for 15 years. Everything was working then the other day it just wouldnt’ shut off. I think it is some kind of short that is bypassing the switch and so the fan thinks the switch is on. Thanks for your comments
Sorry Joey I just saw this–I purchased the same switches that were there and wired them the exact same way. All I did was pull the old wires off and put them back on. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the switches or the fan but for the life of me I can’t figure out what the issue is!
Rick when I shut the power off the fan goes off. Once the power comes back on the fan goes on regardless of the position of the switch.
When you say ‘two bare wires’ do you mean two wires with a half inch of insulation stripped off? Two wires with NO insulation at all? Two wires with a lot of insulation stripped off, but they still do have insulation (other then green) further back?
That could be part of the problem.
If they have no insulation whatsoever, they are ground wires and shouldn’t be snapped into the back, that would probably blow a breaker, but you never know how things are wired. If they have insulation further up, but there’s a lot of bare wire sticking out, that could be the problem. When you push the switches back into the box, they could be touching and the power is bypassing the switch.
Also, are you in the US? Other countries may wire things differently than I’m used to seeing.
My money is on the first switch being bad, the new one was improperly wired or a some bare wires are touching in the box now that weren’t before.
If you still have the old switch give it to the electrician, it’s pretty trivial to test the switch, determining if it’s good or bad will save him a bit of time.
If the fan is grounded then disconnect the ground and see if you have the same problem. You could have a short between the live wire and neutral and the circuit is completed via ground.
It shouldn’t since live to neutral will blow the breaker and since neutral and ground have a zero potential you can’t have power flow between them. The key word is shouldn’t. You never know where you’re going to find wonky wiring that might make this happen, but I think it’s pretty unlikely.
Also for a short from live to neutral and then ground compleating the circuit you would need:
A short from live to neutral, before the switch
A short inside the fan, from the hot side to ground (to complete the circuit)
Neutral and ground not tied together inside the house or you’d blow the breaker.
A dedicated neutral, probably all the way back from the transformer since the short from hot to neutral that didn’t blow the breaker is going to make every neutral wire in the whole house hot. This will cause a lot of other problems. Anything on the same phase will no longer work, thing on the other phase will now be getting 220v, which might be okay for some things, but for others, not so much.
In short, there isn’t a short from hot to neutral, that’s powering the fan by using the ground to complete the circuit.
I should mention that I was just kind of closing my eyes and envisioning how this would or wouldn’t work. Anyone can feel free to correct me if I missed something.
Assuming I didn’t rewire this incorrectly (I just redid the wiring that was there on the switch). So let’s assume for the moment that I haven’t done anything at all and posted this thread saying the fan wouldn’t go off. What advice would you guys give me?
How does any of this explain the original issue? Originally the fan just stayed on–it has been wired like that for 15 years. So if I had posted that the fan stayed on and the switch wouldn’t shut it off–what would be the recommendations? It clearly isn’t the wiring or it wouldn’t have worked for 15 years right?
So then is it the switch? The fan? Or something else? So I replaced the switch first and (and unless I rewired it incorrectly–which I admit could be a possibility) then that should have solved it. But it didn’t.
So then I replaced the fan and that didn’t solve it either. The fan is getting power as it is on, just won’t shut off.
My wife called an electrician and depending on when he/she can come out we might solve it then. I am going to take another crack at it tonight after I find a wiring diagram online on similar switching. What I have here isn’t unique or exotic, just a pretty standard situation. I am not an electician, but I have wired similar things in the past and not had any issues–this one just confuses me because logically it doesn’t make sense.