How to FIX a REALLY BAD Ceiling Fan Installation

[Music] [Applause] all righty guys i'm hanging from a fan bracket but just because it's strong doesn't mean it's right let's get into it hey gang it's paula setback welcome back to our channel we're still in the rough electric face here gang we thought we were all done but i had a sneaky suspicion that the ceiling fans in the bedrooms weren't installed properly and these little medallions are one of the reasons i had that suspicion we kind of felt like these were hiding something and boy were they ever follow me up on the ladder and let's show you what we found check it out gang kind of a mess right here isn't it now we have a 4x4 right here that goes from a joist about here to a joist here it is nailed to that joist with some big old framing nails so whoever did this gets an a for effort on the strength side you saw me hanging from it so it's very strong in fact there are three screws right here attaching the bracket to that four by four but there are some other issues as well obviously the drywall is a mess it looks like they just used a hammer boom right there see that made the hole a little bit bigger and in order to make room for the 4x4 they pulled down the junction box there is no junction box right here so these wires we're just laying in there and you see that little shiner right there if we ever had an arc that arc this is all paper and you got this wood it's a fire hazard that's why this has to be in a junction box so we're going to rip all this down and fix it to support a modern fan so now that we know what we're up against let's head over into the corner bedroom and i'm going to show you what we're after all right gang we're in the corner bedroom each bedroom in this house there's three of them is going to get a ceiling fan with a light kit and we're going to have additional lighting with dimmable four inch leds in the corners of the rooms you've seen us do that before so let's take a look right here i've already done this one i've repaired the drywall i've removed the 4x4 block i've installed a fan rated box for the fan and i've brought a new 14 3 cable so we have a switch leg for the light and a switch leg for the fan let's come over here to the wall since we have two switches now i need a bigger box because we got the fan to turn on and the light on the fan and those leds i need three switches so i put in a double gang box i'm gonna have a stacked switch for the fan and the light kit and a dimmer for the leds you could put in a three game box here and have three separate switches i think three gangs kind of overkill sometimes sometimes it works but i love these boxes and i haven't seen them in a three gang version so that's what we're gonna do so now that we've shown you our end goal for each bedroom let's show you how we got there and the first thing we got to do gang is turn off the power and the first thing we got first thing we got to do gang turn off the power all right so it's 10a 10a boom all right now that the power's off i know the receptacles are the same circuit as the switch we can get started and our first step is to cut out this drywall so we can make a nice clean patch all right gang we're ready to cut this drywall but i need to find out where to cut my patch first so i have a joist right here i can see it and i've got one right here where the stud buddy magnet is on the drywall nail but what i need is the edge of the joist so i'm going to use this little screwdriver and i'm going to poke through until i find the edge see how it went through i'm not there yet so i'm going to move that direction towards the magnet there now i hit the joists i'm gonna come back halfway and see if i'm on the edge there we go so now i know the edge is right here between those two holes and i need to find the edge because i want to come back three-quarter so we have a nailer for our drywall patch here and here that way i don't have to put any blocking so let me come over here find the edge again and that'll give us a nice straight line so if i know this is the edge of the stud i came back three quarter this way and that's my cut line and i put a mark let's do this one and then we'll make our two marks here square to those and we'll be ready to cut this drywall out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what [Music] [Music] all right we had to upgrade [Music] how many nails you see three one two three four i see four right they missed four oh five one two three four five five six seven eight nine ten whoo no wonder we needed that big boy all right that's why that was so strong ten nails in sheer all right this is done i think we head over here now start working on the box so we can run our new cable [Music] so [Music] um [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so we've got the crimp connectors here we've got a crimp connector here on the grounds one on the hot and that's one on the neutral and it's just got a cap over it and i don't want to cut these wires in other words i want to cut it right there i want to save as much wire as i can on the length side because i need as much wire as i can so here's how i remove them i'm just going to flatten that with our linemen pliers and now you can see i can snip off either the left hand side or the right hand side with my alignments and we'll snip off the edge of the fitting see that now i've cut it in half longitudinally without cutting the wires and now just come right off and i've saved the wires we'll untwist them and then we'll do the hot and the neutral i've got all the crimp connectors off and i marked these two right here these two blacks those are my hots one's hot coming in the other's hot is going out to downstream device probably the receptacle on this wall so that'll indicate to me that those go together in our new box and the lone black one here that's our switch leg going up to the ceiling this box is ready to come out put a flat bladed screwdriver in here and i'm just going to pry it away from the stud a little bit so i can cut the nails actually it's coming out pretty easy i think i can just pull it all the way out jordan there we go if it weren't that easy you can just get a blade in there and cut these two nails and it comes right out or you can just break them out they're very brittle and you can break them out with a pair of pliers pull the top two out we're done all right now that that old single gang box is out of the way we've got our original wiring here it's going to be much easier to run our new cable into this opening from the attic so let's head in the attic with our new 14 3 we'll feed it through the top plates and pull it out right here then we'll be ready to install that new two gang box [Music] i'm following the old switch leg back to our top plate so i can see where it goes in the wall i don't want to disturb this insulation too much stuff drives me crazy [Music] there we go right there [Music] right that was pretty easy let's head back downstairs and pull that cable through that new hole we made to wire up that box all right let's find that cable oh got lucky there it is pull it out a little bit all right we're ready to put our cables through the box it's much easier to open these clamps with a screwdriver first rather than relying on the cables to try to do it so i've got three at the top one two three and gonna have one at the bottom and then always make sure your box is oriented right in other words this one we're going to use these to match to the stud if i put it that way i'd have to change it so the box goes in that direction start pushing these cables through and get this box mounted all right all the wires are through from each cable i've got the neutral hot and the ground all through there so now i'm going to shove the box back and finish pulling them through so the sheathing is coming through the integral clamp on the box it's one of my pet peeves is when the sheathing does not come into the box let's push this box back fasten it to the stud and finish up our wiring okay okay all right guys i have all four cables pulled through the integral clamp so i've got sheathing showing so that's good that's what i want uh this is almost the perfect box but i wish somebody would make a box that had a clamp right here that you could tighten with a screwdriver from right here in other words instead of these pieces of plastic that are acting as a clamp maybe a mechanical clamp that you tighten with a screwdriver that would make it a whole lot easier to pull these wires through but now that they're through it's time to wire it up one more tip i want to tell you about whenever you have your alignments in a box always be aware of where your cutting edges are you don't want to be grabbing a wire and then have a wire end up in here and cutting a wire not that i've ever done that but you need to watch out for that all right let's wire up this box all right first thing i do i pull up all my hots and neutrals out of the way like that bend all these up bend those down so in the middle i'm left with my foregrounds here are the three original short ones and this is the long one that's left from the 14 3 so we're going to leave it long we're going to twist all four together right here use a grounding wire nut tie them all together and this pigtail will be used to ground our two switches or to bond our two switches that's really the way the right word you but you're bonding them to the ground you're not grounding them all right let's get it done i'm just going to cut these short see how it's a little long i'm just going to cut that short so those three are the same fold it back all right gang see how that wire broke right there so it was fatigued from the previous connection a lot of times on a job every one of them will do that on me so i know at that point that the electrician was probably the new guy and maybe he was using diamonds to strip his wires and they broke there so on a job like that i'll just cut them all back i was trying not to cut these back on this project because these are so short anyway but since that broke i'm just gonna strip it back it'll be a little shorter but it'll be okay there we go all right gang almost done we got our ground right here with a grounding pigtail so we can bond our two new switches to the ground our neutrals are all folded up in the back here's our hots with a pigtail that's on the bottom so up on the top this is our switch leg for our leds it was the original switch leg for the center light fixture in the room the fan we took down i'm going to repurpose it and use it for the leds and we'll use the black and the red the one we just ran for our fan and the light kit on the fan so i'm gonna take these two fold them in the box these two i'm gonna put on a switch so we can hang a temporary light in here because you know we're gonna be working at night in here right gang all right let's get this box finished then we'll get back up in the ceiling and mount the fan bracket [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right cool let's find the center of the room project it on here cut our hole for our new fan box so how we're going to find the center of this room there are a few ways we can take a chalk line make an x on the ceiling x marks a spot it all gets painted anyway that would be easy but i got to pull out two ladders in my chalk line i don't want to do that so we're going to measure from the floor and project it up so i just threw a scrap of drywall down about in the middle of the room and the width of the room this way is about 166 inches so i'm just going to pull a measurement 84 off of each wall 84 is right there and 84 is right there now the middle of that is the middle of the room that way i don't have to do any fancy math i mean if this were a metric tape it'd be easy right but that's the middle of the room that way now let's do it this way and get it perfect all right the width here is about 136 half of that is 65 plus 3 68. let's put those marks on our piece of drywall and get the center going this way all right there's 68 there and 68 there so that's the middle the room in that direction here's the middle room in the other direction x marks the spot let's grab our dot laser and project that up to the ceiling and just from looking at it i think that other fan was favoring this side of the room 100 so we're probably not even going to be on the patch it's going to be right on the joist so we'll have to decide which side to go on all right let me grab the dot laser oh we'll clear the joists let's put it right there bud cool that'll make the patch a little easier without a box in the middle of it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right again we've got our new opening drilled in the ceiling right where we want it so it's time to head in the attic here's the fan support box we're going to use it's very important that your boxes that hold up your ceiling fans are rated to hold up a ceiling fan and it's going to stay on there just like this ceiling fan rated something like that comes with all the hardware comes with the screws the connector for the cable and even a ground screw let's head in the attic with our tools and go get this thing installed all right gang back in the attic here's our patch we made from downstairs here's our new 14-3 cable we ran and our new opening for our fans should be under this strong back but speaking of strong back look what they did they cut it in order to get in that 4x4 block and check it out over here here's the pieces they cut out here's the end of their 4x4 i guess they did it all right up here they performed major surgery right here so uh not the end of the world i'll probably put some pieces up here just to strengthen this but it's pretty solid so let me go ahead and see if i can find our opening there it is that's gonna be super convenient to work on right under this strong back let me get this stuff out of my way all right here's our bracket it's adjustable 16 inches to 24 inch on center framing so these little tabs are made to sit between the dry wall and the ceiling joist but it's no problem i could break them off but i can just tap that with a hammer and that tab is going to slide right under there right there let me get this i in here if you can see too well all right the box is in the hole we cut it's pretty cool the way these are designed if this part this square end is sitting on the drywall it automatically positions the box on the other side you're going to see that in a second when we go back downstairs let me get out my hammer see if we can tap these in all right that's all done last step is to put the cable through the connector and i put the connector on the box downstairs we try to do as much downstairs as we can so we're not having to fumble with things in the attic all right i'm through push through about eight inches of cable and as we work our way out of the attic i'm gonna staple this and put the insulation back head downstairs all right check it out gang got a temporary light bulb in here it's controlled by the switch on the wall so we can turn it on and off as we need it and uh remember we were in the attic and i said you can break that little tab off if you want to check it out i should have broken it off when i drove that in it knocked off this piece of drywall this drywall is pretty brittle right here it was probably cracked anyway from the hammer blows from the old uh fan installation but you know what that's not a big deal we have the perfect fix check it out look at that nobody'll ever know i'm just kidding we're going to hot with that it'll be beautiful you'll never know the mistake and speaking of hot mud and drywall and all that stuff you don't want to get mud in your box so it comes with a dust cover you can put that on there now obviously we're not going to use it because of our light but you can put that on there it'll keep out all your drywall mud your texture and your paint so all your wires don't get painted and covered with texture because you know how much the electricians love that all right gang if you made it this far in the video and you're ready to install your ceiling fan we got you covered we're going to put a link below for a really great video jordan i did on installing two ceiling fans one of them is a big fan and a cathedral ceiling and the other one is a smaller fan in a breakfast area make sure you check it out all right gang that wraps up that installation but before we go we want to take you back into the front of the house and show you a little problem that popped up that has to do with our last video let's go check it out so back in the dining room and remember that metal box we installed in our box fill video well it is right here now after we did that video the chandelier came in so i'm holding the chandelier up and my wife is talking about how great it's gonna be in here with the chandelier in the middle and the led lights on the perimeter and then i thought wait a minute led lights and a chandelier i only got one switch in here only one switch leg in the attic so what am i going to do so all i got to do gang is remove this mud ring and install a double gang mud ring it'll still fit on that box and i just have to run one more switch leg crisis averted at the stud pack house and you're adding more volume and i am and we're still within boxville i checked it out all right gang that's gonna be a wrap for the video thanks for joining us and we can see from here that your like button is attached to a 4x4 that's good and strong but there's no electrical box if those wires are now your computer's on fire now you know how to fix it get that like button secured smash it for us subscribe if you haven't already get down below in the comments ask us some questions leave us your own tips and tricks and see you on the next [Music] you

Channel: Stud Pack

Views: 625,643

Keywords: studpack, stud pack, construction, home diy, diy, renovation, ceiling fan installation, drywall patch, ceiling fan fix, how to fix a ceiling fan, how to install a fan rated box, how to install a fan box

Id: B39WiaL6_PQ

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 20 2021