Lighting, Light Fixtures, Ceiling and Exhaust Fans - Wiring Ceiling Fan into an exisiting light fixture

Here is the situation I have:

I have a black, white, and bare wiring coming from the ceiling. When we removed the existing light, the bare wire was not grounded, but rather coiled on itself.

I have a black, black and white, white, and green coming from the fan. There is also a green ground coming from the ceiling plate that came with the fan.

The switch on the wall has three different switches that each control a different light. There are no dimmers on the switch.

I connected the fan as follows:
Black from ceiling--->black, black & white
White from ceiling--->white
Bare from ceiling--->green from fan and green from ceiling plate

After doing this, we tripped the circuit breaker. We rewired to double check that the wires were making good contact and tried again and yet again tripped the circuit breaker. We just can't figure out if our wiring is somehow incorrect or there is another problem, i.e. the fan motor doesn't work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

-Mark

What is the mfg and model of the fan?

What do the directions say the black and white wire is for?

Does your fan have a light kit installed? Does it have the ability to add one?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but we can be more helpfull with a bit more information.

I don't have the model of the fan with me right now, but it is a Hunter, five blade fan with the 4 light fixture. I believe it may be the Coastal Breeze.

What do the directions say the black and white wire is for? It says that the black and white wire can be combined with the black wire if you want the fan and light to be on the same switch. It gives the option to wire the black and white to the black and white in the ceiling for a separate light/separate fan switch, but there was no black and white from the ceiling.

Does your fan have a light kit installed? Does it have the ability to add one? Yes.

This wont be fun with a ceiling fan, but the first thing I would do is try disconnecting the two parts of the fan one at a time.

Leave the white and ground wires attached and disconnect the light wire first, to see if the fan is working. Next try the lights but not the fan.

I suspect a bad lightbulb, or bulb socket, or the connections at the light kit are not quite right. Those little wirenuts fall off easy.

One other thing comes to mind, that is if you have not installed the blades yet, there is a shipping stopper that will hold the fan from spinning. If the fan was turned on and the shipping block were still installed this could overload the breaker.

Usually the shipping block has to be removed in order to install the blades.

Please post back and let us know what does and doesnt work, and we can take this up from there.

Jeff

I have tried using only black to black and leaving off the black/white and it still trips the circuit breaker. Could it be a wattage issue? I wouldn't think the fan would draw enough to trip the circuit but I don't know.

I did remove the shipping blocks that were on the fan blade screws.

When I flip the switch to turn the fan/light on, the circuit immediately trips...there is no delay or anything. Also, if I flip another switch on the same wall plate, it also trips the circuit breaker.

Thanks for your help!

Is that a standard wall switch? Is it three seperate switches side by side? What other lights does it control?

The switch is a single wall panel with three individual switches. The three switches control the closet light, hall light, and fan/ light. It appears to be standard, no dimmers or anything like that.

sorry for the long delay. :) I had to sleep last night.

You say that since this light change all three switches trip the breaker. Or any one of them.

Ok i like a challenge. You mentioned that the ground wire was not hooked up like it is supposed to be. Did you try unhooking it and see what happens. Even try a test lamp from the ground to the neutral at the light box.

Did you try unhooking the fan/light completely and see if the problem is still there? Did you try just the light kit, but not the Fan?

The next step is to do the above, and then post back. Also you need to discribe all the wires in the light box, not just the ones that were hooked to the light. Example one cable with a black white and green, black hooked to x white hooked to y ground coiled up. ect.

Do the same for the switch box. Include discribing the switches.

If you can do a rough pencil drawing, scan it and upload to photobucket.com it would be a great help. Be more concernedd with acuracy than producing a professioinal looking drawing.

We will find an answer. It may just take some time.

Well, we discovered the issue, and it wasn't anything we discussed previously. Apparently when putting in the first mounting screw, the end of the screw hit one of the black wires coming from the outlet box...which tripped the breaker everytime we used it. We reset the screw in a different location, and everything works as planned.

Thanks so much for your help!