Lighting, Light Fixtures, Ceiling and Exhaust Fans - Electrical Help For Ceiling Fan

I am wanting to put a ceiling fan in the bedroom, but the light switch controls one of the sockets in my room. I pulled the face plate off of the switch and there is only one black wire and white wire hooked up to it the ground is just dangling. I know this is the wires that controls the outlet. so i removed the face plate from the outlet and it has three groups of wires hooked up to it. well it has one black wire hooked up on one side of it, two white wires on the other side, then it has two black wires and one white wire twisted together and three ground wires twisted together. my question is, How can I run my wire from the ceiling fan to the switch and be able to control the fan with the switch? Can I make the outlet independent? Which wires are for what?

I am lost on this one, someone please help me.

One half of the receptacle is controlled by the switch. If you will notice on the hot side of the receptacle, there used to be a metal tab between the screw connections. It is broken off when you wire half of it for switch control.
Here may be a solution. Leave the receptacle switch controlled. If you can access the attic above where you will be installing the fan, install one with a remote control for the light and fan, and hard wire it without a wall switch, and mount your remote control carrier on the wall next to the switch. That way, you will always have the accessibility of the receptacle being useful for a table lamp, and the ceiling fan/light will be controlled by the remote.

so where do i hook up the wire for the fan? to the receptacle or the outlet? i believe the power wire is coming from the outlet, but i am just not for sure. I like your idea, i just need more detail?

Familyman, I did a drawing, thought not a great one, to show the answer to our original question. It is posted here:
http://members.cox.net/jwhite480/SwRecLt.jpg

If I am understanding what you are saying correctly the top drawing shows what you have existing. I believe that the recepticle is not half switched, but entirely switched as shown. To be sure you can use a table lamp to see if both the top and bottom of the recepticle turn on and off with the switch.

The bottom drawing shows one way to do what you are asking about.

I hope this helps.

thank you jwhite. this helps out a lot. i am understanding what is going on a lot better now.

if there are any more helpful hints out there, please do share. thanks

I do have one more small bit of advice.

Instead of getting involved with when you do, or do not need to run a ground pig tail from the grounds in your box, to either a switch or recepticle, it is just a better idea to always install one.

Just wrap it around the green screw that is installed on the yoke, or device mounting bracket. Just be carefull when you tuck the wires back into the box so that the bare wire does not contact any of the other screw terminals on the device.

I am trying to do this with out removing any walls....if it is possible. Is it ok to splice the wire going to the switch and make two wires going to two switches, so that the one switch still controls the plug, while the other switch will control the ceiling fan that I am installing? will that be ok to do?

You don't have enough wires in the switch box.

You could loose the switched rec, renconfigure the rec box and run a wire from sw. to fan. Then the sw. would operate fan only.

You also could run a 3/wire from rec to sw. then 2- wire from sw. to fan.

Or just a 2-wire from rec. to fan and use a remote.

None of these options would require "removing " walls.

what do you mean 3 wire and 2 wire? I pigtailed the wire coming from the outlet to the switch and added another switch, that way, the switch that controlled the outlet would still be connected. Then I ran the pigtail to another switch and a wire from the ceiling fan to the switch. Now I have two switches. When I turned power back on, the light worked by pull chain only and the fan did not work, the switch to the outlet worked as well. When I pulled the chain for the fan, it controlled the light that is plugged into the outlet. The directions say that if you want to control the light with the switch, you need a blue wire connecting the switch to the light. I have never heard of that. Where do I go from here? From the switch I have a black wire, a white wire and a ground connected to (from the fan) a black wire, a white wire and a ground. Now there is a blue wire from the fan that I dont know what to do with. I actually attached it to the ground and that configuration seems to be the only way I can get the light to atleast come on. I dont understand.

You do not have enough wires between the recepticle and the switch to do what you are saying.

By 2/wire and 3/ wire we are talking about how many conductors are in a cable. A two wire would be black white and ground, a 3/wire would be black red white and ground.

Your fan/light combo has the ablility to be controlled by seperate switches for the fan and light. They both share the neutral wire, there is a black wire for the fan and a blue wire for the light kit comming out of the fan ready to be hooked to the house wiring.

To do this you need a 3/wire from the switch to the ceiling box where the fan is mounted.