ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

[cashkennedy]

I had a ceiling fan that I replaced the pull cord switch (zing ear) because the chain broke inside of it, after that it never sped up properly and ran at maybe 1/3 the proper speed at best, so I assumed I wired the switch wrong, but I later either bought a new one or confirmed it (I have 2 identical fans in separate rooms). and everything is hooked up right inside the fan (capacitor, direction switch, pull switch, no light kit)

Eventually we redid the room and all the outlets and the handyperson stupidly installed a regular lights dimmer instead of a notched distinct speed fan dimmer, it totally stopped functioning (button wouldn't click when depressed) a few weeks later. I already knew only a fool puts a light dimmer on a fan, so I bought a proper fan dimmer and installed it. The fan operated fine for a few minutes, but then I pulled the speed control cord on the fan and immediately heard the dimmer pop, and the fan stopped receiving power.

I took everything apart reconfirmed it was all wired right. Then decided to take the whole fan off the ceiling to clean it / inspect it further. Well it appears the ground to the case is snapped (hidden by the decorative molding). Does it seem reasonable that just the ground being snapped ever since I changed the pull switch is causing the speed issues and fried the proper dimmer? (I probably shook the unit a bunch in weird ways when I changed the pull switch, or years of fan vibration snapped the copper wire for ground).

To make matters more confusing my house often has about 50v between ground and neutral , (60v between hot and ground), so perhaps the ground just made temporary contact with the fan body where it was snapped when I pulled the pull cord...

[keeney123]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Sounds like your house has an electrical wiring problem. When you are measuring the house voltage is this at the panel of at an outlet?

[SteveNielsen]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

I presume you've removed the popped dimmer, if no do so. You can eliminate possible external cause by unplugging everything and check the outlet voltages. But it could be a bad connection on the neutral at a outlet, switch, lamp fixture, the fan or a splice somewhere in the house wiring, especially if those damn back-stab connections are used on outlets, switches and fixtures. I had a bad circuit in a house that did the very same thing with the voltage readings from a bad neutral in the back of an outlet.

[cashkennedy]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Of course I removed the failed dimmer almost immediately... it's home depot's problem now

I inspected the switch wiring really closely, and the white wire appears to be hot (~120 to ground, and ~110 to neutral...) (not all that surprising cause there is only 1 romex ran to the switch, so the supply / and switch wire must be ran to the fixture (which I cant see because my house was remodled in the 80's by someone really anal who only dropped the wires and the bracket the fan hangs off through the acoustic ceiling tiles. He also most likely added the switch wire, as the fan was probably controlled in the past only by the pull cords...)

Thus the dimmer was wired incorrectly with the white hot wire going to neutral white wire on dimmer...

The house has voltage on ground when read on ALMOST any outlet in the house. It tends to vary throughout the day, and depending on rainfall.... I really need to call an electrician about it, but I'm always scared ill get someone out on one of the days it goes away... Ive also shut off every breaker in the only circuit panel for the house and still had voltage on the ground... so I somewhat wonder if its coming from one of the 3 phase ac units wiring boxes, theyre somewhat of a mess 50's wye 3 phase wiring..

[SteveNielsen]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Yes, that indeed is a major house wiring fault, probably at the panel. A hot ground is of course very bad. I'd be afraid too.

[cashkennedy]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

On the other hand, the installation instructions on the dimmer are very wishy washy on how to wire it, with the black and red wire from the dimmer going to whatever you want basically. since it just interrupts the hot, and doesn't really need a neutral per say.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Forget the dimmer right now, you've got a house wiring problem that needs to be fixed first.

[rhomanski]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Sounds like someone didn't know the standards for house wiring. Check this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_wiring . You have the power and ground reversed it sounds like. Black should be hot and white should be ground.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Determine which circuits have the problem then isolate it, turn it off at the breaker for that ckt and leave it off until the problem is fixed. Then visually check the wiring of each outlet on the circuit with the problem. One has phase and neutral reversed and the voltage drop is from the safety ground completing the circuit back to the panel where neutral and ground are bonded to the panel, the voltage is dropped due to the resistance of the wiring. It's a pretty dangerous situation actually, it could start a fire if the wires and/or connections get hot enough.

[kc8adu]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

time to fix that high neutral NOW!
i have seen the results and its not pretty.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Light fixtures are also a good suspect, many have the neutral tied to ground through the socket mounting. Same goes for that fan fixture esp if it has lamps because of how sockets are mounted and would also explain why the dimmer popped.

[Longbow]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Great example of illogical troubleshooting. Go back to the beginning. The first event was that your pull chain broke off. Until then, (we are guessing) there was no problem with the fan.

I had a ceiling fan that I replaced the pull cord switch (zing ear) because the chain broke inside of it, after that it never sped up properly and ran at maybe 1/3 the proper speed at best

Is this a multi-speed fan? Is there a circuit board inside the fan to control the speed via the pull switch? Some fans actually use the pull chain switch to control the speed. Do you have one of those fans? If so, the pull "switch" isn't really a simple switch. It is unlikely that your house wiring failed just at the same moment your pull switch broke, so a little more thought is required here.

Eventually we redid the room and all the outlets and the handyperson stupidly installed a regular lights dimmer instead of a notched distinct speed fan dimmer, it totally stopped functioning (button wouldn't click when depressed)

completely normal if you install a light dimmer into a fan circuit.

a few weeks later. I already knew only a fool puts a light dimmer on a fan, so I bought a proper fan dimmer and installed it. The fan operated fine for a few minutes, but then I pulled the speed control cord

clue. The "speed control cord" you refer to is the one that broke...and was replaced by a simple on-off switch. Or, does the fan have one cord for on-off and a second one for speed control?

I took everything apart reconfirmed it was all wired right. Then decided to take the whole fan off the ceiling to clean it / inspect it further. Well it appears the ground to the case is snapped (hidden by the decorative molding). Does it seem reasonable that just the ground being snapped ever since I changed the pull switch is causing the speed issues and fried the proper dimmer?

No, it doesn't. The ground wire is there for electrical safety. It connects the metal fan housing back to the service panel ground.

To make matters more confusing my house often has about 50v between ground and neutral , (60v between hot and ground)

You may in fact have some home wiring problems. The first place I would put my meter is on the fan input itself. Getting the full mains voltage on the input? Or only 60 volts as you say?

The fan itself does not care what you call the wires as long as the mains voltage appears on the input wires. The actual ground wire is not part of the fan motor or speed control. The second fact you should note here is that it is pointless to go about the house measuring neutral and ground voltages with a 10Megohm bench multimeter. With that input impedance you can measure 60 volts on anything to anything else. Maybe even more. Of course you should tend to the mis-wiring in the house. But then we come back to the broken pull chain. It was, after all, working OK before the chain broke...as you say.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

You're right longbow, it hasn't been completely logical, and I assumed he was having the hot neutral before the fan issue came about. Re-reading the thread he indicates at the switch wiring the white reads hot to ground. There should be no connection of the white neutral to the pull-chain switch at all, but it's not clear if he's saying there is.

With the fan and switch completely disconnected is there still hot neutral anywhere?

[keeney123]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

I would make sure I had a good earth ground and that ground should have less than one ohm from the rod in the earth to the inside of you panel.
http://www.fluke.com/fluke/vnen/solutions/earthground/

[kaboom]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

time to fix that high neutral NOW!
i have seen the results and its not pretty.

Maybe.... I'd think if it were actually an open neutral, lots of stuff would've blown already.

This sounds like "mobile home" with four-wire feeder from yard pole, and the floating neutral bus is isolated from the panel can/EGC/GEC. Or a four-wire feeder was NOT run.

In this case, a true gnd fault would bring the metal(?) siding of the building up to 120V, as there's no return path (ECGs not bonded to neutral) back to the transformer to operate the bkrs.

OP, open the main panel and look for that main bonding jumper, before someone is killed! Any subpanel fed from the main must have a four wire feeder with EGC!

[delaware74b]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Cash - It sounds like you have what is called a 'switch loop' going from the fan to the wall control. If you have only 1 piece of Romex in the wall box and at least 2 pieces of Romex in the ceiling fan box, then you need to research the connections more. A properly installed switch loop will have the white taped or marked with black at both ends to denote it being a hot wire as shown in the attachment. This method has been in use for many years until 2011 NEC (National Electrical Code) was written. It has been effectively banned with the requirement of a neutral conductor at every switch location except where a conduit is run to the box or it is an old work box.

Post a picture of the wiring in the ceiling box and the switch box. Also, show which wires were connected to the fan.

It also sounds like you have a problem in your house and service wiring with a bad ground and/or bad neutral. You should have less than 5 volts between neutral and ground (except for the switch loop whites, those will be 120 volts). You should also have 120 volts (nominal) between a hot and neutral or ground.

[Longbow]

Re: ceiling fan blowing fan dimmer

Cash - It sounds like you have what is called a 'switch loop' going from the fan to the wall control. If you have only 1 piece of Romex in the wall box and at least 2 pieces of Romex in the ceiling fan box, then you need to research the connections more.

Not sure what your point is here. Naturally there will be a switch loop, because the wall box houses a dedicated fan control. How else could you arrange this? I understand your comment about marking the white wire, but it will not change the actual connections to the fan control.

Without more specifics from the OP, it is hard to keep guessing about it. I will note that the purpose of a fan controller-dimmer is to start the fan at full voltage, then ramp down to the set position. Unlike a light bulb, the fan motor will not start at a partial voltage, and the motor may overheat if the blades are stalled. However in this case it sounds like the fan problem happened before any of the new wiring was done. Give me the facts.