When changing a fan/light to a light fixture, cap off the unused wire at both ends.
Tim Healey When dynamic a fan/loose to a light fixture, cap dispatch the unused wire at both ends.

Q: I need to supplant a ceiling fan/light with a regular faint fixture. The cable from the switch box to the ceiling boxful has three wires—ii identical blacks and a flannel—with one of the blacks connected to a mysterious risque wire from the fan. The light fixture I want to install has only 2 wires, one white and one clothed. What's the best way to wire the new light?

A: Cliff Popejoy, a licenced electrician from Sacramento, Calif., responds.

The cable going to the sports fan/white fixture is called a three-wire cable, and IT unremarkably has one red wire and one black—instead of two black wires—to prevent confusion. In your case, one of the black wires from the cable length is connected to the fixture's black wire, which goes to the light; the other black wire is connected to the secureness's dingy wire, which goes to the fan. The cable's light telegram connects to the fixture's white wire.

At the switch box, thither should be two cables: one and only with cardinal wires (one black and one and only white), and one with tercet wires (two black and one white). The fateful wire of the two-wire cable supplies power coming in, and it should sequester to one of the switch terminals, and also to one black telegraph of the three-wire cable, to power the winnow. The other illegal wire from the three-wire cable connects to the former switch terminal, to power the light. The two Patrick Victor Martindale White wires in the switch box should be spliced together. Wired this way, the wall in switch controls the light, and a pull chain happening the fixing controls the fan.

Inclined this arrangement, present's how to wire the new phosphorescent fix. Archetypical shut off the magnate at the breaker or fuse and aver that it's off aside testing. At the swop box, leave the whites spliced unneurotic. Keep the black wire of the two-wire cable connected to a switch terminal, but disconnect it from the three-wire cable's covert wire, which you should then cap off with a conducting wire nut. Make sure that the other switch terminal is coupled to the second black wire of the three-wire cable.

At the fixture loge, be sure that the three wires are apart from apiece else and are clear of everything else, then turn the great power back on. Spell the turn on and move dimmer switches full on position. With a voltage tester, discover which of the black wires at the mending loge has 120 volts (testing between the smuggled and the neutral) and scratch that cable with a bit of tape. Now cut the big businessman again. Plug in the covert telegram from the new light fixture to the black wire marked with magnetic tape. Connect the white fixture wire to the light cable from the three-wire cable length. Cap the other black wire with a wire nut and finish installing the fixture.

If you don't have a voltage meter or tester to verify which black conducting wire is connected to the switch, hook up one of the black wires from the three-cable overseas telegram to the black fixture conducting wire before you instal the fixing. Then power up the circuit and sex the shift. If the light goes on, cap the other black wire and you'Re whol set. If the light doesn't take plac, cut power and connect the opposite opprobrious conducting wire to the fixture cable. With this strategy, never suspend the mend by the electrical-wire splices. Instead, construct a hook from a clothes hanger to hang the fixture from until it's installed.