light stays on after installing new fixture

Hi everyone new here, first post. Hoping I can get help with a problem I’m having with the wiring on a ceiling wall. The light was working fine until I removed the old ceiling fan to do some ceiling work. The when I connect the wires (black to black, white to white and ground to ground) the light stays on, the switch has no effect on it.

The wires coming from the ceiling consist of 2 main wires with 3 wires each The 2 main wires were connected to each other ( black to black, white to white etc)I’m just not sure how to connect the ceiling fan to those wires.

I can add links to pictures I took if it helps.

Thanks! Any feedback would help.

Welcome to the SDMB. I have requested that the Mods move your thread to the General Questions forum, where it is more likely you will receive an answer to your question.

Too late to add: And by “requested”, I mean I hit that little red triangle with the exclamation point in it that sits in the upper right corner of every post. If you ever need to talk to a moderator for any reason, that’s the fastest way to go about it.

Moving this to The Barn House from ATMB.

There are different ways of wiring up lights and fans and switches. The one that usually screws up people who just wire white to white and black to black is the switch loop. The power feeds into the box up at the fixture, then a wire is run run from there to the switch. The part that screws people up is that they tend to use the exact same kind of wire, so one white and one black wire. If done properly, the end of the white wire on both ends will be wrapped with black electrical tape to indicate that it’s actually a hot wire and not a neutral. One of the wires will be the constant hot and the other will be the switched hot coming back from the switch. It’s very common for people to not bother to wrap the ends of the white wire with electrical tape, which often just leads to confusion later.

Here is a diagram I drew for someone in another thread. They were trying to connect two LED lights where you are only trying to connect one light, but it’s the same basic principle.

http://home.comcast.net/~sokosfamily/fanwiring.jpg

the description of your situation is confusing.

two cables might go to a ceiling box if it was controlled by two switches or two locations are being controlled (like two ceiling lights). or a fan switch and a light switch could be wired with two cables (not how i would do it).

if it was a switch loop like engineer_comp_geek mentioned then it would trip the breaker when that switch was closed, if it was miswired.

is there a wall switch for the fan that is separate from the wall switch for the light?

it is good and essential to put a tape label on the wires before you disconnect it.

good to know thanks!

engineer_comp_geek & johnpost and everyone else thank you for your suggestions and help. johnpost here is a link to images of both the wires coming from the ceiling and the light switch that is supposed to control the light:

That’s a three way switch. Is there another switch somewhere else that controls the same light?

I think what you probably have up in the fixture is a constant hot and a switched hot that comes from your two switches. By tying all of them together you are making your switched hot constantly hot which is why the light stays on. It’s also why turning the switch on isn’t shorting everything out and tripping the breaker.

There are different ways of wiring this up depending on where the feed from the branch circuit is coming from (i.e. does it come in from the fixture at the top or does it come in through one of the switches).

This is the basic principle of how it works:

Might be a good idea to let a proper electrician sort this out.

i’m going with that this is confusing with not enough information.

i see three wires going to the switch. my first impulse was that it is a three-way switch. i think it is not. the photo is not totally in focus (hard to do for this type of photo) but if i squint i can see ‘OFF’ on the toggle, meaning it is a single pole switch. it has two back stabbed (stuck in the back) wires and one under a screw terminal. this is unusual (though it can be done for a reason). if that is the case then the 2 black wires are connected to the red wire when the switch is ‘ON’ and the two black wires are connected when the switch is ‘OFF’.

where is the light connected?

you show wires connected at the ceiling. where from and where to?

there are 3 wires at the switch. where from and where to?

if it’s a 3-way switch or a single pole switch with three wires then you could have stuff like you are seeing.

call an electrician.

Hard to tell from those pics.

Can you supply one of the wires on the back of the switch to confirm it is wired properly. There’s no red at fan so there’s another switch or junction somewhere.

If you haven’t changed anything - Simple solution - disconnect the new ceiling fan. Check voltage with switch on then off.

I’m going to have an electrician come and check it out. Thanks for the help everyone.

report back after it is solved.