Sorry that last sentence contained a typo. It should have said the switches have only black and WHITE wires running to them!

you should have two blacks and two whites coming from the ceiling. Hopefully you can see the black and white that go with each other. Turn only one switch on, using a tester see which black wire is hot. The hot one goes with the turned on switch. Wire that one to either the black fan wire or the blue light wire, your choice.

How many wires are in the switch box and at the ceiling?

I'll take a wild guess here and say someone wired this so that the white and black at the ceiling are the two switched hots and the bare ground is being used as a neutral.

This is an unsafe setup and should be corrected.

You will need 3 conductor (plus ground) cable from the switches to the ceiling to correctly wire this.

Yeah, there are only 3 wires coming from the ceiling. We even checked from the attic and there's just one cable coming from that side of the switch box.

We had a feeling there was something botched with the wiring. We're not sure if the fan was put in by the builder (house is only 4 yrs old) or the first owner. One sort of odd thing though is that those particular switches are really hard to click over. I have no idea if that is relevant at all, but they're different from all the other ones in the house.

The old fan was identical to the ones that are inside though so I know that in and of itself wasn't particularly safe. The patio is roofed, but obviously it still gets quite damp under there.

Is there are way to safely wire the fan without totally redoing it? I wouldn't mind having to use the chain for the fan if we could just switch the light on from inside. We've done lots of simple wiring things around the house over the years (switching out outlets and installing lights etc.), but I'm not sure about running new wires.

TIA!

You should be able to wire this so one switch will turn on the fan/light and then each component can be controlled by the pull chains.
Describe the wires present in the switch box and we can go from there.

That switch box actually contains 3 switches. One "normal" one is a control for the family room fan and the patio fan switches are horizontally stacked one on top of the other next to it. The patio fan switches are one unit and it says something on it about 15A each and UL listed.

On the left side of the patio switches there is a black wire going to the top switch and white going to the bottom one. On the right side both the top and bottom wires appear to be black. I can see a ground wire in the twisted mess behind the switches, but as far as I can tell it's not connected to the patio switches at all.

I can trip the breaker and pull it all out to look closer if that's not enough info. There are a bunch of wire nuts connecting who knows what back there and it's all covered with plaster stuff (texture I guess) so I am thinking that the wiring is original to the builder.

Thanks so much for your help so far!

Ok, I was curious and decided to go ahead and pull it out...

Along with the black wires from the wall, there is a short black wire that goes from switch to switch on the right hand side.

The ground wire from the cable that goes to the switches is just all twisted up with a wire nut. I think the ground wire from the cable that goes out of the box on that side is connected to it.

There are ground, black and red wires connected to the switch for the family room fan. They come from a different cable that enters on that side of the switch box.

I hope my terminology is ok and this makes at least a little sense!

Is there also a bundle of white wires fastened with a wire nut, maybe only two?

connect the white that used to go to fan switch to the other 3 white wires. Connect the black that feads the double switch to a regular light switch. Connect the black that goes with the white wire to the fan to the other side of the switch. at the fan blue and black will go to the black wire coming out of the ceiling and white to white. The ground will now only be for grounding the fan.

***connect the white that used to go to fan switch to the other 3 white wires. Connect the black that feads the double switch to a regular light switch. Connect the black that goes with the white wire to the fan to the other side of the switch. at the fan blue and black will go to the black wire coming out of the ceiling and white to white. The ground will now only be for grounding the fan.***

That will give us just one switch inside to power the fan and light...correct? I'm betting now that there was just a single switch to the light outside and the fan and double switch was added later.

Out of curiosity, what exactly is unsafe about the other set-up? Not that I don't want it done correctly, but obviously someone thought it was ok to do.

**I'll take a wild guess here and say someone wired this so that the white and black at the ceiling are the two switched hots and the bare ground is being used as a neutral.**

Apparently that's exactly what was done. DH wired it up "wrong" just to see and it appears to work perfectly. I'm just glad that fan looked so ugly because otherwise we'd probably never have discovered it.

Thanks so much!

---Out of curiosity, what exactly is unsafe about the other set-up? Not that I don't want it done correctly, but obviously someone thought it was ok to do.---

It works but its not ok. The uninsulated ground winds up at the same place in the main circuit box as the white insulated neutral. However, on the way to the main circuit box the ground picks up grounds from other receptacles, switches and appliances and if used to carry electricity can energize them.

ok i have 2 switches on the wall...one for the fan that also controls the speeds, turn it and it will change from high med low or off. the other turns the lights on and off. i put the blue and the black wires from the fan to the black one from the ceiling (only 3 wires from ceiling - black, white, ground) as the ceiling fan instructions say. i got it all set up turned it on but now only the fan switch works. the light switch controls nothing. so i turn the fan onto HIGH and the light will turn on, but in order to have both fan and light on i have to use the pull switch to get the light off which i really don't want to - i liked having 2 switches. so normel said that both the white and black from the ceiling are hot? so i can connect the blue wiring (from the fan) to the white out of the ceiling? please help!!!!

well took it apart and put the blue from the fan to the white and nothing.....fan worked but no lights at all. i don't understand. 3 wires coming out of ceiling 4 from fan. instructions show blue and black from fan to black from ceiling. the old fan was installed that way - i think.....didn't see anything too crazy. any help on how to get back to 2 switches would be great. thanks.

"any help on how to get back to 2 switches would be great."

With three wires,black, white and ground, it is not possible to use two switches. Read the entire thread and you will see that that was the conclusion on the other fan/light.

i had both switches working before with the exact same wiring set up.....i didn't install that fan/light but both the light and fan were controlled by different switches on the wall....how was it possible before then?

Thanks for the reply.

Here, I'll summarize and answer at the same time - but the answer isn't going to be the one you want.

The old wiring was INCORRECT and DANGEROUS. DO NOT try to recreate it.

You CANNOT have the fan and light switched seperately using the existing configuration. You NEED to run a new cable, live with a single switch, or eliminate the switch altogether and control both the light and the fan via the pullchains.

Running new wires is no more difficult than any other electrical work. Go grab a roll of 12/3, route one end to the switch box and the other end to the fan.

The only other SAFE solution would be a remote control of some sort - either something wireless, or some X10-like solution.

how was it possible before then?: illegally and unsafely, that's how, and it would be irresponsible for any of us to tell you how it was done. Nobody is denying that it worked - it's just not safe. I just removed a very similar configuration from a house I'm working on.

DON'T DO IT.

Run 12/3
Remote control
Live with one switch
Use pull-chains

Four options.

Another option would be to use a wireless fan/light control switch that would control the fan and light separately. This allows you to switch both the fan speeds and dim lights. IÂve installed close to 50 of these in where instead of running 3 wire w/ground to the Fan location from the switch to replace the 2 wire w/ground.

At the switch location you just connect the black (Hot) to the black going up to the fan (this makes it hot all the time at the fan location for the receiver). White to whites and ground with grounds.

At the fan just follow directions from the package. Wireless receiver black to black for power to the receiver, white to white, blue to fan blue and black to fan black.
The only drawback IÂve had with these is the size of the receiver. Sometimes itÂs tough to fit it on certain fans as it doesnÂt really fit in the boxes. It basically needs to fit in the canopy of the fan.

As others have said what you had was UNSAFE and could potentially hurt someone or worse.

Full Disclosure:
I'm not a fan of home cheapo but I do like this switch. Nor do I work for Hampton Bay nor do I own stock in either company.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hampton Bay Wireless Ceiling Fan Remote Control

Does anyone know how to wire a ceiling fan w/light to 2 switches and one outlet? One switch and one outlet are on one wall and the other switch is on a different wall, but both work the same outlet. The fan/light have 1 black (fan motor), 1 white, 1 blue (light), 1 green.