I have a combo heat light - exhaust fan in my master bathroom that when you turn on the switch for the heat light it will not come on untill you turn on the switch for the exhaust fan and same thing happens when you turn on the exhaust fan, the fan will not come on till you turn on the switch for the heat light.
Any clues, sounds like there might be a loose connection some where...
Any chance of a make/model? Has it always done that, or has something changed? Does the light/fan come on at full intensity or dim and slow?
Put another way, the fan switch turns it all on & off; the light switch is only operational when the fan is on.
It might hvae been on purpose, but ... sort of kloodgy, I think.
HTH,
Pop
Tell us about the switches too. Are they wall switches or switches right on the unit. If they are wall switches, it sounds like they may be wired 'in series', which is a little ridiculous.
Or, one of the switches is in the neutral (white in USA) wire. Bill Kaszeta Photovoltaic Resources Int'l Tempe Arizona USA snipped-for-privacy@pvri-removethis.biz
And in either condition, I am assuming (you didn't say) that both loads run. If so, they are almost certainly in series, and, there is only one wire running up to both loads. Could it be that "someone" added this appliance and doesn't realize that it needs two more wires to work properly? (If it was a replacement for a single device).
The switch for these things usually has a common hot terminal. You probably have the hot wire on the load terminal for the exhaust fan. Alot of the time guys will wire these up with two 12-2 cables and remark one of the whites. Its real easy to mess up if you don't mark both ends at rough-in. Turn off the power and switch those two wires and see if that doesn't clear things up.
I think the suggestion to check the directions on the model is a good one. I have two circa 1985 Nutone exhaust/heat lamp fixtures in my place. The directions on the light switch indicate that the fan must run to use the heat feature. Probably helps dissipate heat from the fixture which heats up by means of coils, not an infra red lamp. Now it should be possible to use exhaust without the heat feature.
Janet K.
Well, what is bothering me is that some time ago, it was simple, flip the one switch and the heat lamp would come on (by itself) or flip the other (by itself) and the exhaust fan would come on alone or I could flip both on and have both running at the same time, now for some reason, you have to flip both switches on to get either to operate.
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