That $15 ceiling fan took me 4 hours to install

Picked up a cheap fan from Lowe's because the old one was making a grinding noise. Thought it would be a quick swap, an hour tops. The wiring was color coded wrong on the box, so I spent 2 hours just figuring out why the light wouldn't turn off. Four hours later and three trips to my phone for YouTube, I got it running. Anyone else run into fan wiring that's just backwards from the instructions?

3 comments

3 Comments

corap216h agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, my friend Sarah tried the same thing and her light switch ended up controlling the neighbor's porch light for a week.

foster.tessa19h ago

My buddy Dave bought the exact same fan and spent his whole Saturday fighting with it. He ended up having to rewire the whole thing from scratch because the color codes didn't match the diagram at all. The instructions said black to black but his fan had a red wire where the black was supposed to be. He still jokes about it being a $15 lesson in not trusting cheap hardware manuals.

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adams.uma19h ago

Dave probably just skipped reading the manual and guessed on the wiring. Following the diagram step by step usually works fine even with cheaper stuff. Most issues with these fans come from rushing through the setup.