OK,
we have a ceiling fan with light connected to a dimmer switch in one of our rooms. I had a friend over one day and we decided to replace the old fan with a new one. I took down the old fan and read the wiring details to my friend, who wrote them down. However, he is a dirty hippy and writes like a scrub, so we couldn't read it when we were trying to hook up the new fan...
So basically I had to guess at the wiring. I wired it up (see below), and when I first turned the power back on there was a loud spark/short in the fan (this doesn't happen anymore though - did I wreck something?). The dimmer switch in the wall doesn't work to operate the fan, however you can operate the fan and light manually with the pull cords on the unit. This all happened about 4 months ago, and i've been lazy so the details of why i wired it like I did are hazy.
Ideally, we would like the dimmer switch to control just the light portion of the fan, and have the fan manually operated by the pull chain (but 'always on' even with the dimmer switch off).
So here is the situation:
4 wires come out of the fan: black (hot power for fan), red (hot power for light), white (common for light and fan) and green (ground).
7 wires come out of the junction box in the ceiling: 1 yellow, 3 white, 1 black, and 2 red. In the junction box, wires enter from three sides. from the first side, 1 yellow, 1 white, and 1 red enter. from the second side, 1 white and 1 black wire enter. From the third side, 1 red and 1 white enter.
The yellow wire is connected to the green wire from the fan.
The 3 white wires in the ceiling are twisted together (looks like they've been together for a long time), and these are currently connected to the white wire from the fan.
The black and 2 red wires in the ceiling are twisted together (it looks like the 2 red wires have been connected for a long time, and that the black has been recently added), and connected to the red and black wires from the fan. i'm certain that there is a problem with something here.
So, i guess i'm wondering if anyone knows what all the wires are for in the junction box. can anyone identify which aires are for the switch, etc?
thanks