On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:27:40 -0500, Nate Nagel
wrote:

Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:05:17 -0500, Nate Nagel
wrote:


Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 10 Nov 2006 08:05:00 -0800, "Viewer" wrote:



Hi Joe,

Yes, you can. I did it at my house and its fairly easy. You are correct
that you should be using 14-3 as you need the two seperately switched
hots (1 for light, 1 for fan). Also you will need two half-height
switches so that you can have 2 switches in 1 wall box. It gets a bit
cramped in th ebox but patience pprevails.

I did 2 and the first (including running the wiring in the walls and up
to the ceiling too about 3 hous and the second time it took barely an
hour.

Good luck!



Lowe's does have switches like that. They're available with 2 or 3
switches and fit in a single 1-gang box. One terminal of the switches
is common.

Similar question: does anyone make a switch for a ceiling fan without a
light switch? I have a two gang box that used to contain a light switch
and a receptacle and I want to get rid of the receptacle (there's
another one down near the floor; I'm sure there was a reason for putting
it there but I don't see it and it looks silly.) Am thinking of putting
a ceiling fan in the kitchen anyway so this would kill two birds with
one stone and save me from having to patch the wall.

nate


Is the problem what to put in the other side of that box?

yup, that's exactly the problem.

I'd leave
the receptacle. It doesn't hurt anything and you may want it there
someday. If you don't want to look at it (I don't see why, but some
people are strange that way), you could put some tape (in your
preferred color) over it, or cover it with wallpaper.

I find receptacles at switch-height desirable. They're easier to reach
when you want to plug something in temporarily, and are less often
hidden behind things like the lower outlets often are.

As to the switch being fan-only, most fan/light combinations have
separate hot wires for fan and light (should be black for fan, blue
for light), so there's no problem wiring it the way you want.

You could also install 2 switches, separate ones for fan and light.
what I would do is leave the receptacle, and install a 2-switch unit
for light and fan.


The problem is that the easiest way to rewire things on separate
circuits the way I'd want it would be to feed the circuit from elsewhere
(because currently the feed comes up from below, but is 14 AWG and is
connected to the 20A clothes washer receptacle in the basement... yeah,
I need to fix that) and leave the 3-wire cable going to the ceiling box
as a switch leg, so there'd be no neutral (or ground, for that matter -
but since there's only one other receptacle on the whole circuit, it's
not such a huge issue) available. Otherwise, to provide a receptacle,
I'd have to pull a 14/2 up from below past a box that's directly below
it that also has a receptacle in it. *THAT* receptacle I wanted to turn
into a 20A recep. for the microwave which sits on a cart next to this
whole area. I'm not sure how good my wire fishing skills are; I don't
have a whole lot of patience for things like that...

What I was thinking was a variable speed switch for the fan would be
nice, but most of the ones I've seen are combination fan and light
switches that fit in a single gang box.

nate

I think I've seen fan-only once, but may be mistaken. Maybe use a
combination, and don't connect the light part?