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I have 14 gauge wire on a 15 amp breaker. I want to add a ceiling fan, so from the switch that’s fed by 14 gauge wire. Should I continue to feed the fan with 14 gauge wire or would it be OK to feed the fan from the switch with 12 gauge wire?

isherwood
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Jerry
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  • The one thing I would caution is that it's possible that in the future someone might see the 12 gauge wire and assume it's a 20 amp circuit, so you may want to mark the wire somehow. – Michael Mior Feb 07 '24 at 20:27

1 Answers1

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You can always up size wire from the minimum required by code, therefore yes, you can do your new wiring extension with #12 on a 15A breaker. Note that when you start getting into big wires, you run into issues with connectors, but at #12 & #14 size, standard wire nuts, Wagos, etc. will all work just fine.

There is a cost associated with going with bigger wire, so unless you've got some #12 sitting around, burning a hole in your pocket, #14 would be less expensive.

There are recommendations to add a label to the panel if you have a 15A breaker with #12 wire going to it and #14 wire elsewhere in the circuit, but in your case, with just one run of #12 between switch & fan, there shouldn't be any need to worry about that. Nobody will be confused when they open the panel and see #14 going into the 15A breaker.

If your fan also has a light and they can be run from a pair of switches (as opposed to either the lights or fan being controlled by a remote) and only has one neutral at the ceiling, you'll want to run a /3 cable (black, red, white, ground) so that you're not paralleling your neutral with two separate runs of /2 cable.

FreeMan
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