So I am installing a ceiling fan in a receptacle that is already wired to have independent switches for the Fan and the Light.
I bought a Windward IV Fan from Homedepot which brings a remote control module which I would still want to keep, however my goal is to also integrate the independent operation of the fan into the hub.
The problem lies in the fact that the module only has two wires, one for Line and one for Load which later distribute the power into a plug made up of three wires. These three wires power the light, fan and neutral.
Please see a crude drawing of the module below. I have two questions:
Would tapping into the module's harness work, instead of wiring the two IN wires to the receptacle I would essentially splice the harness and tie those together with the outlet.
If this is indeed possible to retain independent control of both fan and light, would the GE Fan switch be able to send commands to the Fan in order to provide speed settings? (i.e. Low, Mid, High)?
My knowledge on electronics is basic, so while I think this is possible I am not entirely certain. I'm trying to avoid having yet another hub to control the fans and I'm also trying to avoid loosing the remote control capability that the fan comes with.
I think your going to have the same issue I had with the Hunter Fan my wife bought for our bedroom. I told her to just get whatever she wanted as the last time I bought a fan, remotes were not really a thing for fans. Did not consider that having a built in remote would take away the ability to use the wall switches. On my Hunter it did. The hunter wiring showed the wiring for a separate light and fan switch. If you turned off the fan switch, however, you killed power to both the fan and light. So you could only control the light with the switch while the Fan was powered on. You could only change the speed via the remote, so my fan controller would not work. The power switch had to be a simple on/off switch, the fan would not work with a fan controller. I thought I had to be missing something in the instructions so I called and spoke with Hunter support and they verified that is how it worked. and there was no other option.
I looked at the manual for your fan online and I think you may have the same issue. I could be wrong, however.
I ended up hardwiring the Fan and using Zooz ZEN34's in place of the switches and I control the fan and light with a Bond Hub.
That's definitely what I am going through but my question is, can we bypass the issue by wiring the power directly to the fan module's output.
If I tap into the module's harness, instead of the wire's input wires. Would it power the module and the fan? Or just the fan?
My receptacle has wires for two switches so it wouldn't be too difficult to use some wire-taps for the light wire, fan wire and neutral. I'm just not sure if that'll work.
The problem is going to be that the remote module is going to mess with the power output to adjust the fan speed and dimming. Not sure what would happen if you then tied a separate fan speed and dimmer into those same lines and both the switches and module were trying to make separate adjustments, probably nothing good. If you totally abandon the module then you could cut the harness and just wire wall switches directly to it. You would then need a zigbee or z-wave remote if you wanted a remote.
For one of my fans which had an older add on remote module in it, it also was wired to have in wall controls but they had been rewired when the module was added by prior owner. I decided to rewire it again so the lights are getting fed by the wall switch directly (bypassed the remote module). Then I wired the module hot and left the fan speed controlled by the remote. I added a Bond Hub so I can connect that to HE and control the fan speed and lights with a z-wave remote (or the lights can be controlled by the wall switch).
Another newer fan that has an integrated remote, and only one wall switch I again connected to the Bond Hub for the fan speed. I put smart bulbs in the light since the dimming with the module is horrendous, we always leave them powered and leave the old dumb switch on to power the module. This fan is now mainly controlled by Alexa but I could add a smart remote for it also. When you do the Bond Hub route you basically have to abandon the included remote or things will get out of sync.
Thanks Jeff, so technically speaking we could abandon the module, use a ge fan switch and a z-wave remote and that would work without the need of adding a Bond Hub to the mix. Is that accurate?
Yes I think that would work as long as the fan is AC and not a DC motor. Forgot to ask about that. If it is DC you probably need to keep the module in there.
A Zooz ZEN37 would work for a remote. There is also an Aeotec one that is more of a puck style and I think "Hank" makes one too. The one I have is "NodOn" and works good, I think it might be discontented though. I have a ZEN37 I got in order to make a driver for Zooz and I think that one is going to be setup for the second fan eventually.
EDIT: Also for the lights on the fan, does it take standard bulbs or is it an integrated LED? If it is LED there is a chance that included module has a built in LED driver and the line coming out is not 120v AC anymore, could be 12 or 24 VDC
New tech fans are way more complicated than old fans
Luckily they’re regular bulbs so I think it should work.
The module has an AC in, which is why I think I may be able to bypass that by just tapping to the three wire harness that goes from the module to the fan and just ignore the two input wires.
If that doesn’t work and I don’t fry the fan then I’ll just try the route of discarding the module and using a Z-wave remote.
By ignore you mean you won't connect the inputs (line in) to anything? That would have the same effect as cutting the harness and removing the module totally. If you do not connect the inputs the module wont have power and the remote wont work.
Yeah that’s what I meant, and that is also what I was wondering.
Sucks that the manufacturer made these modules like this. A lot of homes come with two switches for Fan and Light independently so the alternative is to have a blank switch on all rooms with a Fan.
Yeah this is going to be the key and according to the specs for that fan it is an AC motor. So if you bypass the remote module completely it may work. That wasn't an option with mine it was all integrated inside the fan canopy. From the picture on the website it looks like you can just not hook the remote module up.
I have a GE Enbrighten Light Switch, I am getting the GE Enbrighten Fan switch for the fan line and the receptacle is already pre-wired so I just have to test it.
Trying to stick with GE since all my other switches are from their brand.
Wire the module inputs to a switch (no dimmer or fan control). All adjustments would need to be made from the remote. Switch would just cut power to whole thing, turning it all off. Most fan modules will come back at the same previous settings when restored.
Wire module hot, put a no-load smart switch or button controller in the wall box. Get a bond hub to control the fan and lights via HE. Setup rules to map the wall control to actions on the bond devices. You could still use the included remote but every time you do, the bond hub will no longer know the current state so it can get messy (that is why it is not recommended to use the included remote along with a Bond hub).
Thats the only two options I can think of.
If you add any in wall dimming or fan controls you will need to bypass the module (or use them as described in option 2).
It looks like Windward IV has an AC motor, and it takes regular E26 lightbulbs, so changing the wiring should be fairly straightforward. The bad news, I don't think there's any scenario where you gain full control of the fan/lights through HE and retain the ability to use the remote that came with the fan.
You could remove the module completely (do NOT tap into the harness without removing the module, best case scenario it just won't work), and use your smart GE lights / fan switches. For remotes, you can use Zwave/Zigbee handheld remotes/button controllers. The only downside is that you will probably lose the reverse speed.
And another approach, as @jtp10181 outlined, is to use Bond Hub, with all of its drawbacks: things will get out of sync if you use the included remote, but also things can get out of sync on their own every once in a while due to missed commands, which is a problem for lights (most fan remotes don't have separate "lights on" and "lights off" commands, they have a single "toggle lights", and commands are a 1-way street).
As a long-time Bond Hub user (I have multiple 6-speed DC motor fans so I have no choice), I would go with the "get rid of the module" approach without hesitation.
I was thinking of a third approach, which would be to wire the input of the module directly to the switch that is meant for the fan. Then splice the harness wire that goes to the light and connect it directly to the switch that is meant for the light.
The pros of this is that I keep the factory remote to control the Fan.
The cons is that the light will not be operated by the remote and instead would be on a different switch.
That is basically what I have done in my master bedroom. Assuming the switch you use for the module input would be a switch only, and not a fan controller. You would also want to cut the wire for the lights so it is disconnected totally from the module. Cap off the wire coming from the module.
My only difference is I have the module wired hot without a switch and instead of the factory remote I am using the Bond Hub and a z-wave remote. I have the remote also programmed to control the in wall dimmer so we can adjust everything from bed if needed. The old hunter remote was nothing special and very bulky so was glad to get rid of it.
I could probably just trash the old remote module and use a fan switch + dimmer but I needed the bond hub for another fan anyway so I used what I already had. Master is wired with a 3-wire so you can have two switches but the boxes are separated by a corner. I put the dimmer facing into the room, and an aux switch in the other box that faces the door (to the side of it), so I used both boxes for the lights. There is really no need to control the fan from the wall for us. I have it setup to automatically to turn the fan on medium when the lights come on at night (heading to bed) and when the lights are turned off from bed remote the fan stays on. Then the fan turns off with the lights in the AM when you use the wall switch as you are leaving the room.
You can do that, of course, but that switch can't be a GE Fan speed controller. It doesn't send any "commands", it simply introduces capacitance into the fan circuit on "medium" and "low" speeds, so chances are the module will only work when the switch is set to "high". Which kind of defeats the purpose. Basically, it needs to be a simple on/off switch, and you turn that switch off, the module, of course, will be powered off and it will stop responding to your remote.
