Remote Ceiling Fan Installation

The newly designed ceiling fans now have remote controls that come with them. Installing these new fans can be tricky. It would be wise to have someone help you when it comes time to secure the wiring, and secure the fan to the ceiling. As most ceiling fans are centered in a room, you can either measure with a tape measure to find the center or use string from opposite corners to locate it. Once the center has been found, mark it.

Multiple fans in a room will require even adjustments between them. Two fans will need double the distance between them than what they are from the walls. This allows for even airflow.

Before you start cutting out a huge hole in the ceiling, drill a small hole through the sheetrock or wood. Go up into the attic to locate the hole, and determine the distance from the closest junction box.

You will need enough wire to go from there to where you are going to wire up the new ceiling fan. Should you want a switch in case the remote is temporarily lost, you will also need that much more wire going across the ceiling and down into the wall.

Having a switch will require more wiring since you will need to attach wire from an existing junction box all the way to the switch. The other side of the switch will have wiring from it to the new junction box for the remote ceiling fan.

Make sure you buy wiring specifically for the ceiling fan. This is usually four wires with insulation in colors of white, black, blue and green. The green may be substituted for yellow or some other color.

White is your neutral wire, black is the hot wire, blue is for the light, and green is for grounding. Have your wire laid out, but not wired up yet. There is still another step that is more crucial to your ceiling fan installation.

Go back to where you drilled the hole in the ceiling. Look at the direction the ceiling joists are running so that you can make a junction box support between the two closest joists. If you have no idea how to do this, consult your local hardware store for advice.

Explain in detail the weight of the fan, how the ceiling joists run, and ask them what would be the best method of securing the ceiling fan from falling. Hopefully when you drilled the hole it was not into a ceiling joist.

You cannot cut a section out to have it centered. The tiny drilled hole in the ceiling then needs to be made large enough to access the junction box. It does not need to be any larger.

Once you have the junction box secured into the ceiling, you can then run the wire through from the attic. WITH THE ELECTRICITY OFF, attach the wiring to the closest junction box and down to the switch.

The next step will be to run wire from the switch to the new remote ceiling fan. Have someone hold the ceiling fan while you wire it up, otherwise you will need a support hook to keep from dropping it.

Should you choose to install a light onto the ceiling fan, secure the fan to the ceiling first. Remove the plate for the light fixture. You are now ready to wire up the light fixture.

As soon as that is done, have a screwdriver and screws handy to secure the new light fixture to the remote ceiling fan. Assuming this the only remote ceiling fan, you will not need to adjust the DIP switches before securing the fan to the ceiling.

If it is not your only remote ceiling fan, hopefully you changed the pattern for the DIP switches so you are not turning off all the remote fans at once. Turn the electricity back on, and check to see that the fan is working properly as well as the light.

Should there be any issues, turn the electricity back off and make adjustments. Never test the fan without it being secured to the ceiling. This would cause serious injury to yourself and anyone else standing nearby.

Hopefully all goes well, and you will have your remote ceiling fan up and working.