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I am trying to rewire our bedroom so that a switch that currently turns on/off a receptacle will instead control a ceiling fan and leave the receptacle always hot.

Receptacle: Has 3 cables coming into the box. The outlet has a 1 hot wire and 2 neutrals attached to it. In the box there are 2 hot and 1 neutral wire nutted together.

Switch: Has a 2 conductor cable coming into the box.

I have installed the fan in the ceiling and have run a cable in the attic from the fan to the switch box. At this point I am confused as to complete the wiring of the switch and the receptacle. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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  • Could you upload a picture of the box wiring? You say "there are 2 hot and 1 neutral wire nutted together" which I interpret as there are 2 black wires and a white one nutted together because if the hot and neutral were wired together your breaker would be tripping.
    – Zach Mierzejewski
    Sep 3, 2015 at 18:26
  • I'm sorry about the confusion, there are 2 black and 1 white nutted together in the outlet box.
    – Matt
    Sep 3, 2015 at 18:29
  • It's cool. What connections are made between the 3 nutted wires and the outlet?
    – Zach Mierzejewski
    Sep 3, 2015 at 18:31
  • 2 black wires and 1 white wire are nutted together. They are not connected to the outlet. Then there are 2 white wires and 1 black wire connected to the outlet. This is all in the receptacle box.
    – Matt
    Sep 3, 2015 at 18:53
  • I know this is a lot of questions, but I have one more. You say there are 3 cables going into the box. That's good that you can identify which cable individual wires are coming from. Can you make a list of the 3 cables and then describe where each of their white and black cables terminate, please? We wouldn't want to give you bad advice.
    – Zach Mierzejewski
    Sep 3, 2015 at 19:02

1 Answer 1

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Based on your description, it sounds like your wiring is this.

enter image description here

To wire the fan, you will need to remove the switched loop and convert it to a regular wire. So in the outlet box, disconnect the neutrals and hots. Wire cap all 3 neutrals together with a pig tail to reconnect the outlet, do the same for the hots. At the switch, remove the neutral from the switch and wire cap that with the neutral to the light. Then put the hot to the light where the neutral was on the switch. Like so.

enter image description here

I did not add grounds in the picture but they should be wire capped together in each box with a ground wire to the outlet and switch.

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  • Wow, you're diagrams seem exactly like what they describe and what the correct solution should be! +1 Good reading/deduction!
    – Zach Mierzejewski
    Sep 8, 2015 at 18:44

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