Seriously? 10 wires coming from the ceiling? (Changing a ceiling fan)

I’m a idiot. I didn’t mark my wires when I took down the old ceiling fan but I’m shocked (no pun intended) at the sheer volume of wires that are now extended from my ceiling. I can understand 8 of them, I suppose. The old fan had 2 wall controls, one switch for the light and another speed control switch for the fan.

It seems to me that 3 of the black and 3 of the white wires need to be wired together and that the other 2 sets of black and white are for the fan and the light. I have identified the line that feeds the room with my mulitimeter but how do I identify the other 2 sets to bundle it with since everything else shows no voltage?

Set your meter to resistance. Your wall switch should be almost zero (less than 10 ohms) when it’s on. Infinite when switch is off.

The Speed control will show a varying resistance as you turn the dial.

That identifies those wires.

Kill the breaker to that room first. You’ll burn up your meter if you hit voltage testing for resistance.

Thanks aceplace57. I’ll try it tomorrow once the sun comes up and I can see what I’m doing.

Some of those wires may be feeding power to something else downstream. I’ve seen wall receptacles fed that way. They get power directly off the ceiling light. If your wall plugs in that room are dead then that’s why.

It’ll be easier if you have a helper that can flip the switch and speed control while you check the wires with your meter.

Good luck. :wink:

This is exactly what happened. I didn’t know it until my daughter told me that the TV didn’t work in her room.

And thanks again.

to aid in this trouble shooting.

turn off the breaker for the circuit. unplug anything that is plugged in to that circuit, turn off any wall switches on that circuit.

your map/list of what breaker controls what fixtures and receptacles would be helpful. if you don’t have one then write what you find as a start of that list.

test all wires for having voltage on them before testing, they should not have any voltage compared to the safety ground of the circuit.

you would then use the resistance function of the meter to see what connections should be. in your daughter’s room. the receptacle should show infinite resistance. with the two wires going to to your daughter’s room connected (a paper clip works well) you should find zero resistance at the receptacle. those black and white wires going to your daughter’s room need to be connected to the same color wires feeding the ceiling fan.

above is a simple case general concept explanation of the type of testing that needs to be done. your situation could be different.

turn off circuit breakers before working on wires. always wires for voltage before touching.

Unlikely. The speed control knob is almost certainly not a simple potentiometer. That would generate a large amount of heat in the potentiometer when at partial speed. It is far more likely to be a SCR circuit which varies the speed by chopping off part of each AC cycle. You can’t identify that by just putting a meter across it.

There was a lot of head scratching and one very miserable trip into the attic but the ceiling fan is finally up and spinning, the lights are lighting and the receptacles are receptacling. Thanks again Dopers.

Happy it had a happy ending NG Hope you learned a valuable lesson. Mark the wires. My neighbor did the same thing. Except there was maybe 20 wires. It was complicated as the whole house used 12VDC switching. The house was constructed in the 50’s. It was a nightmare!

12VDC?? What kind of fresh hell is that?

Yeah, FTW? In the fifties, yet.

All the light switches were powered by a 12VDC transformer. When closed they powered a relay which took 120 VAC to the light.

Yeah, I guess that was when they were first available. In the attic was a diagram of all the relays written on a 4x8 sheet of plywood. Very interesting.

Like.