My ceiling fan stopped working many months ago. I had somebody looked at it and they couldn't figure out what was wrong so I bough a new one today. When I dismounted the old one I found this strange wiring setup as shown in the image below. I'm no electrician, and this is my first time installing a fan, but it's still puzzling.
Why are there four lines? You can see three at the top of the box and one coming in at the bottom.
Why are all the hot lines connected together?
Why was one neutral line being used as the live line? The terrible thing is I can't remember which one it was.
This is connected to only one wall switch. The previous fan was controlled by a remote. Is it possible that more than one switch was used to control the fan before the remote was installed on the previous fan? There are no other switches in the house which could be used. Perhaps they were removed.