wiring a ceiling fan - help

[fyfin]

I've read an old posting about this and I'm more confused than ever. I bought 2 ceiling fans with lights to replace 1 old fan and one normal light fitting. The wiring on the fan showed white as Neutral, Black as live and blue as Light. I assumed that was switched live. When I took the light down there were 2 wires coming out of the ceiling black and red. I had to assume that black was live and red was neutral although it could have been the other way round. I connected the black to blue and black together and the red to white. Everything works fine except I had bought some led gu10s which it takes 3 and every one failed inside an hour or so. However I bought 3 from a different source and they're working fine. Could it have been a polarity or compatibility issue I wonder.
Anyway that's not my problem - I took down the old fan with light fitting and I'm now presented with a black, blue and light grey wire, well actually 2 blues and 2 blacks and just one grey. The twos are joined together. No earth in sight of course. So the sort of obvious thing would be to connect blue to blue, black to black and light grey to white but I'm just not sure that is right. When I took the other one down I'm fairly sure it was only connected to the blue and black as it only had 2 wires. I should have made a note but it was bloody heavy so struggling to get it down etc.
Any ideas welcomed before I put it up.
I dont have a multi tester but when I touch the grey wire my little electric screwdriver lights up as it does when I touch the black but nothing on the blue.

[gerryh]

Unfortunately not everyone one follows the standard wire colour coding here in Spain.
I believe that, in theory, it should be "blue is neutral, pale grey is a switched live, a constant live is black"
Was the new ceiling fan bought from a Chinese shop?
Anybody's guess as to what colour coding they use.
I would suggest getting a competent electrician in to check the colour codes used in the main switch box and check that the cables are connected as they should be.
I know what I would do but I would certainly not write or advise it on a public forum.
Cheers
Gerry

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

We we had a holiday home in Spain, our next door neighbour bought a ceiling fan/light. It had three wires. He took the old light, which had two wires down and twisted them to to two of the ones on the fan, covering them with insulation tape. It worked but I told he it needed earthing ( a lot of it was metal). He didn't seem to care. Death trap.

[fyfin]

Thank you Gerry - I did see your comment from years ago but I was confused as the fan I bought, and it wasn't cheap from a major ferreteria here, had blue , white and black wires. However, although not terribly reliable I know, I deduced from using those crappy little screwdrivers that detect voltage, that the light grey from the ceiling is indeed the switched live, so had to be connected to the blue on the fan marked "light" and the blue from the ceiling which was neutral had to be connected to the white (could have been a very light grey) on the fan.

The good news is that I did this and everything works as it should. Both fans rotate the way they should for summer / winter and all new led lights are working fine so far.

The big mystery still is how the other leds I purchased fro the same ferreteria as the fans, all malfunctioned. What I didn't say earlier was that I bought 7 of them , 3 for each fan and a spare and all 7 failed. I can't believe they would all fail so it had to be something else like an incompatibility issue but I have bought many leds over the years and the only ones that would fail eventually were the cheap Chinese ones in the early days. Since then I replaced 45 bulbs in the corridors of the apartment block, 22 led tubes in the garage and not one failure and that was over a year ago, probably two. The house and apartment re full of leds all going strong. So this is really weird. I know if I take them back they won't replace them so I have out it down to one of those things.
On the plus side my wife is very pleased, although not happy about the dust as we are having a bathroom conversion done at the same time , bath out and walk-in shower in it's place. Also some mutterings about maybe we should replace the furniture in the lounge with something lighter. My response of " but you liked it when we bought it new a year and a half ago" seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Oh well, so long as it's not self assembly.