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I recently redid all if the paint, doors and trim in a spare bedroom, and I am having trouble putting the ceiling fan back in the room. The problem is not the fan itself but the wiring. The previous owner put the fan up using raceways to get the wiring to the fan. I don't have the resources at the moment to bury the wiring in the wall, so I am stuck with the raceways for now. It looks like the original intent was to wire the fan into a 3 way circuit, but they botched it and now the lights in the room won't turn on without both switches in the on position. Both switches are 3 way switches, so that seems kind of odd but that's the least confusing "improvement" the previous owner did.

So my question is this: is it possible to wire the fan so that it is powered independently of the 3 way circuit? If so, how? If not, what would cause the switches to behave the way they do? I can provide pics of the wiring in a little bit.

ThreePhaseEel
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SrsBidness28
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    Can you post photos of the current wiring situation in the boxes? – ThreePhaseEel Nov 15 '16 at 01:18
  • My first instinct is they wired the switches in series making one switch send power to the next switch. Second, what makes you think they are three way switches? – Mister Tea Nov 15 '16 at 14:49
  • For 3 way switches to work they both do need to be 3 way. There are many examples on this site of 3 way wiring. It sounds like the the wiring was not correctly installed and if the correct numbers of conductors were run getting the right combination attached to the switch(s) should solve the problem. here is just 1 example of many found here. – Ed Beal Nov 15 '16 at 15:12

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