Installing a Ceiling Fan in an old house

[ecastro73]

HI. I live in a home that was built in the early 60's. I want to install a ceilling fan in my dining room. I've removed the old light fixture. There are only two wires. A green one and a white one. The new fan that I bought is a fan/ light combo. The new fan has a green wire for ground, a white wire for common, a black wire for the motor lead, and a red wire for the light lead. Is it possible to wire this with the existing two wires that are coming out of my ceiling? If so, how?

Thank You
Ed Castro

[Wgoodrich]

WE have a concern on what you are discribing. Wiring in the 60s included an equipment grounding system [green or bare] with that wiring system per NEC rules. Then you claim instead of the expected three wires black white and green or bare you claim only finding a green and white. Green says equipment grounding and white says grounded [aka neutral] but no hot wire. This wiriing did not and does not meet NEC minimum safety rules. Something is wrong. YOu either are missing a black hot wire or someone is using the wrong color wires for hot and you are missing the required green equipment grounding. YOu have a wild child that could be anything.

Take a tester and test between the green and white. If you get 120 volts then test from the green with a long test jumper to a known grounding source and see if that green wire is your hot wire.

To make it work if that green wire is your hot wire then connect the white wire of the fan to the white of the light box, then connecte the green to all fan wires that are not green, or white from that fan.

This should make it work. Problem is that box should be changed to a box listed to support a fan and your wiring is not meeting NEC rules for 60s era installation.

Warning if this wiring if in Europe then the color coding is quite different and the above would not be correct. Please inform us if this is not Canada or USA.

Be careful

Wg