On May 17, 8:20 pm, Jeff Wisnia wrote:
From your writings I'm not sure you know enough about what you are
doing to find the fault, but with the breaker for that circuit off, open
up the switch box for the switch controlling power to that fan and see
if you can spot where the white wire coming down from the fan's junction
box connects, and whether maybe that connection sprung loose from a
poorly installed wirenut or something.

There is no switch that this circuit is connected to. It's a straight
circuit.

What I *will* check is the connections in the junction box itself, I
guess. Both the white and black wires are connected to other white
and black wires in the box. I guess that connection may have come
loose. All of this is some pretty old wiring, though; I don't know
how it could have come disconnected, and at least by eye it looks like
it's still got a solid connection.

Maybe if you are lucky you can have the new electrician reconnect your
old fan, see it run fine, and return the new fan to the place you bought
it for credit.

Well, luckily I wanted to replace the old fan anyway; this just gave
me an excuse. It was one of those ugly $50 fans, it was too small for
the room and it's probably 25 years old. So I'll keep the new fan
regardless.

I guess I'll see if I can't figure out where/if the white wire is
disconnected. And maybe I'll buy a voltmeter. Let's say I test the
black wire to the box and the white wire to the box, and the latter is
extremely low voltage - just enough to light up my neon. Could that
be ok? You can tell I know very little about electrical stuff - I
know to turn off a circuit while working on it, I know how to follow
instructions that say "connect the white wire to the white wire", but
beyond that, I'm probably pretty lost.

I probably should have been clearer about what my earlier electrician
did (I was in a hurry while writing) - he actually didn't touch this
circuit before the fan died, which is what's weird about it. He was
up in the ceiling in another room, and it was right after that that
the fan died, but I verified by testing the breakers that he was on a
whole other circuit. So I don't know what he could have done that
would have affected this, but I thought it was a little suspicious.

He *did* originally move that ceiling fan from another room into the
living room, but that was like a year ago and it worked fine all
through the previous summer. So he *has* touched that circuit in the
past, but he thought it must have been coincidence that the fan died
right after he was at my house the last time, and I was inclined to
agree after testing which circuits he was actually working on. But
now I'm not so sure.

Bottom line question I guess is, if I buy a voltmeter and it turns out
the white wire voltage is there but extremely low, should I go ahead
and connect the fan? Or should I call in a new electrician regardless
of anything? I have enough skills to turn breakers on and off and to
test exposed wires, but no way am I going to be able to go digging
around my house myself trying to figure out where a bunch of stray
voltage is coming from.

Thanks...