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My house is pre-wired for an attic fan. In the hallway, I have two small electrical boxes separated by a stud and 2" of drywall. In the attic, I have one 14-2 romex line which drops down into a left electrical box. The right box has a hot black wire coming in and another black wire going out and into the left box. I installed the on/off switch on the right box and just wired together the two black wires on the left box. Now I have hot all the way to the attic.
Why did they use two boxes since I don't have a way to control the speed of the two speed motor since it's only a 4-2 line going into attic?
The attic fan I installed is two speeds, so I just hooked the red (low speed) to the black wire in the attic. Seems like I need a 14-3 going from the attic to the left electrical box with a high low switch in left box and on/off in right box?
It all works but I have no high speed.
Is there a way to get the high and low working without running a new 14-3 line to attic?
I don't know what fan you have in the attic, but I assume you could just run a dimmer switch in place of the normal switch. Of course, if your fan truly has a low speed red wire and a high speed hot, you would need to run a 14-3 wire and it sounds like you would need a special switch made by the company that makes your fan. Typically, a red wire and black wire is for two separate hot leads (different circuits) like when you have a light and fan combo.
Not a wizard, but...
Pre-fab house?
My memory is a little dated but the right box is intended to be the fan on/off switch. The left box is the fan speed selector. Somewhere in the attic, not necessarily in plain sight or even near the fan, is going to be another wire, probably a 14-2.
The right switch should be a single pole single throw switch. It controlled power to the left switch, which should be 3-way switch. The black wire going into the left box would have connected to the center (common) terminal on the 3-way. The wires going to the attic would have been connected to the switched terminals and the fan speed controls wires, so down/off was low speed, and up/on was high speed. The wire you are unaware of in the attic would be the common return for the fan and the power for the power shutter (if you have that option, probably not).
Not the way a real electrician does it, but common in mobile homes, double wides, and many manufactured homes like Wausau Homes out of Lafayette Indiana, where I worked as an electrical assembler 35 years ago for about a year.
Hope that helps.
"...the street finds its own uses for things"
Brain fart - way too many years...
The single black (hot) wire going into the right box has a common sibling in the attic somewhere. It comes from its circuit box as a 2-wire romex but only the hot wire goes down the wall. The common (white) wire just stops and is taped off, probably under the insulation. That needs to go to the fan common.
"...the street finds its own uses for things"
Long story short, no ypu need a 3-wire. The good news might be that you can use the 2-wire as a snake to pull the 3-wire down from the attic, but that may not work if they've stapled anything. Going by AJ's assumption of a manufactured home, they may not have.
And for the love of all that's holy, *do not* wire things as he said they ised to! Now I understand why we hav so many codes - just to keep people from wiring like that! Scary... (yeah it will work, but there's all sorts of bad juju happening when ypu start separating hots and neutrals into different cables?...)
The nig question is: is the attic fan and switchbox separated by only a single ceiling? If so, it's stupid easy to snake a wall and run the proper 3-wire. I'd be glad to walk you through it so that things are nice, neat, safe, and up to code!
- Jeff
No I don't live in a pre fab house but it was built in the mid 80's during a construction boom so who knows what they did.
I installed the attic fan virtually right above where the two electrical boxes are located in the hallway, so the drop down of a new 14/3 wire from the motor into the left box would be a short run and I do have a high/low switch I could use in the left box. Yes, all the existing wires have been stapled so I can't use the current 14/2 from the attic to the left box to pull the new 14/3. Plus there are actually two 14-2 wires going down a 1" hole from the attic. I'm not sure what the other one is, if it's hot or not, or even where it goes but it leads away from the attic fan.
I think for now, I'll just run it on the low speed using only the red wire. I'm not sure I have enough NFA in the attic to properly vent the fan if it was on high. That and there is a foot of blown insulation in the attic that makes identify all the wires and where they go a pain and it's probably 130 degrees in the attic.
While it works half ass now, running a new wire sounds like a project for another day.
What's "YPU"?
YPU is what happens when my po e and my thumbs fight... it is supposed to be "You"...
I agree with running a new wire some other day. I've been in plenty of attics in the summertime... nothing fun about it.
- Jeff