Replacing a Bathroom extractor fan?

[Quickblood]

I bought an replacement Bathroom extractor fan for one that broke recently. I'd hoped it'd be simple (red to red black to black etc.) but it wasn't. I had two blue wires and a brown one. Anyway I thought I'd experiment and put both blue wires in (Permanent live and Neutral no idea which was which), turned the power back on and switched on the bathroom lights and it works.

Does that mean everything is ok and I can just put a bit of insulation tape of the brown wire and fix everything up there or have I potentially caused some horrendous danger that I don't quite understand?

 

[riveralt]

I bought an replacement Bathroom extractor fan for one that broke recently. I'd hoped it'd be simple (red to red black to black etc.) but it wasn't. I had two blue wires and a brown one. Anyway I thought I'd experiment and put both blue wires in (Permanent live and Neutral no idea which was which), turned the power back on and switched on the bathroom lights and it works.

Does that mean everything is ok and I can just put a bit of insulation tape of the brown wire and fix everything up there or have I potentially caused some horrendous danger that I don't quite understand?

Did your fingers tingle, your heart fibrilate and did you get that distinct smell of burning flesh (when you touched the brown wire)

No well then you were lucky - normally you would have either brown (red) to permanent live) and blue (black) to neutral - for a timed fan you may have red/blue and yellow wires or brown/black/grey wires. Since none of these comibinations match what you say you have - you can perhaps see why you are lucky. You cannot leave the brown wire hanging around (even with insulation on it)

Firstly, what type of extractor fan have you replaced - was it a timed fan (one which runs after the light is switched off?) - or was it one that turned on and off with the light switch?
Did you replace like for like?

You really need to establish which is the live conductor - which is the neutral conductor and which is the switch live conductor (for a timed fan only)

Again where a timed fan has been replaced by a non time fan and the wiring colours follows convention, then the live brown and the switched live (either black or grey) go in the permanent live terminal and the neutral (either black or grey) goes in the neutral terminal.

You will need to examine your ceiling rose to establish which conductors go from the ceiling rose to the fan - photographs of both would be a good start.

 

[Quickblood]

I didn't touch any wires when the power was on. I replaced a fan with an overrun timer with a basic one both come on when the lights do it's just the new one goes off immediately when the lights do.

From the instructions it doesn’t need to be earthed as it's double insulated so do I really need to do a lot of investigating. I think that's way beyond me we don't have a ceiling rose just a load of recessed lights.
It's beginning to sound like I need to get an electrician in.