Hi, I am new to this forum. I am a Broadcast Engineer with a Journeyman's License. Most of my experience is industrial and for the last few years I have only had to deal with Coax and Cat 6 and the occasional 480 Volts that powers our transmitter. Any how, My boss came to me with switch that controls a two speed motor that in turn runs an attic fan. The fan would only run in the low setting, he had the switch wired wrong, he went on his way. He comes in the next day and says his fan caught fire. Come to find out he ran two runs of 12/2 to the fan, he used the black out of one for high and the white for neutral. In the other wire he used white for low speed instead of the black which he left unused. Well he wired it back up wrong and ended up using the wrong white and you know what happened next. Well after some head shaking, I told him please use the proper colored wire and or permanently mark the wire he is using. I told him he should not run a hot conductor in a cable without the return neutral which he was doing with the second wire, I told him this could cause the metal appliance or box to heat up. He said that the motor had been heating up and that the thermistor would open after about ten minutes. The question I have is, would there be any harm with him using both the neutrals in his two wires as the neutral for his fan? Then each wire would have a hot and a neutral. Or he could just run the proper cable, which he should have done from the get go.
Thanks
Thanks