Hello, I was wondering if someone could give me some info??
My old ceiling fan went out, was givin a new(used one)
but when I removed my old fan, only back and white electrical wires, new one has , blue, black and white.
is blue one a ground wire, and where would I connect it to.
with the white wire, is it needed if my old one has none. helppp
thanks for help:confused:
Elizabeth
With three wires, you probably have live, neutral, and ground, and the white and black wires should mean the same thing that they did on the old one.
However, I’ve never seen nor heard of using a blue wire for ground. Ground wires are supposed to be either bare (plain copper with no insulation) or green. Given that your new ceiling fan doesn’t seem to follow the satandard color coding in this respect, you don’t know what else they might be doing differently, too, so it might be very dangerous to try to install it yourself. I would recommend that you call up a professional electrician who’s up on California code to ask his advice, or even to install it for you. Or at the very least, you should call the store where you bought it, and ask them what to do.
thanks Chronos.
I think this question is better placed in the “General Questions” forum, since there’s no Staff Report upon which it’s commenting.
If you do put up a ceiling fan, the folks from TRADING SPACES will just take it down again.
Could the “extra” wire be so that you can control the fan from a wall switch without affecting the fan?
NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!
The blue is NOT neutral, NOT ground!!!
The white is neutral. The black is hot, probably for the fan. The blue is ALSO hot, probably for the light. (The blue and black may be vice versa, consult your Chinese instruction sheet.) The fixture is wired so that you can control the light and the fan through separate switches if you want to.
The OP doesn’t mention a lamp on the new fan, but the extra wire could be for that too, if present. If the OP could provide a manufacturer and perhaps a model number, I might be able to find something.
Most ceiling fans these days are made to accept a light attachment at the bottom, even if the lights were not included with the fan when you bought it. You’ll therefore have wiring to connect both the fan and the lights. If you remove the cover at the bottom of the fan you’ll see the connector where the wiring from the light plugs in. Fan manufacturer’s also sell light kits should you decide to add a light later, in addition to selling the whole thing (fan plus lights) in one unit.
There should also be a seperate ground wire, which you didn’t mention. It gets attached to the ground in the electrical box and also to a ground screw in the top of the fan. Look in the box. Quite often it’s not attached to anything when you buy the fan. If you leave off the ground then if something shorts to the case of the fan you could potentially have a big hunk of metal sitting there at 120 volts. Sure it’s not that likely that someone can touch a ground and touch the fan case at the same time, but as a rule all metal cases have to be grounded.
As was previously mentioned, just connect the blue and black together.
I wanted to thank all who replied to my post, the blue wire was a ground, and yes it did have a light fixture.
Thanks again all, oohh and it runs wonderful, and I did it with all your help, thanks again.
Elizabeth.