# Bathroom Circuit - Feedback Please



## vtcnc (Dec 12, 2020)

Need to rewire my bathroom. Installing an exhaust fan and putting in a proper GFCI breaker at the panel.

My plan is to feed the GFCI outlet and then protect the downstream devices off the load side of the GFCI.

Also, I'm using a double switch, single pole in a single gang box. One switch will feed the light, the other will feed the fan.

I've attached my Crayola circuit plan. I absolutely have to draw them up this way, I am not an electrician but have done enough wiring to know what I'm doing safely. This is the second time I will be working with 3 wire circuits (have done a 3 way switch circuit - but it was a long time ago). This diagram is the only way I can feel confident I know that I have a shot at getting it right the first time.

Would anybody be willing to take a look and provide feedback?



Thanks,
Bryan


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## pontiac428 (Dec 12, 2020)

Your circuit is fine.  You do not need more than one GFCI in the circuit, either use the one at the panel period or use the single gang outlet and send the downstream to the light and fan without the redundant and expensive GFCI breaker..

Edit: NEC does not require GFCI for hard-wired connections like lamps and bathroom fans.  That means you only need it at the outlets, by either the breaker or a GFCI outlet (not both).


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## RJSakowski (Dec 12, 2020)

I wired my half bath with a GFIC.  The circuit includes the duplex outlet, the lights and an exhaust fan.  On rare occasions, the GFIC will trip when the fan is turned on which plunges the windowless room into darkness.  The fan switch is near the toilet and it is a common practice to turn it on after sitting down so tripping the GFIC creates an embarrassing situation.  There is no need for GFIC protection for the lighting circuit and it would be better to wire it in ahead of the GFIC ( one of these days, I'm going to change that).

The potential situation reminds me of the high school drafting class that I had.  The instructor was talking about outhouse design and he told us that you should always design the door to open to tyhe inside.  This was because on hot days, you could leave the door ajar to allow some cool and refreshing air to circulate through the structure.  If the door opened to the inside, you could easily slam it shut if you someone approached but if it opened to the outside, you were at the mercy of the approaching person.


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## Aukai (Dec 12, 2020)

My bathrooms, and the single outlet my garage was built with had the GFCI at the panel. This is just a little story on that since you made me think about it. I ran an extension cord from my 1 outlet to the boat with a Skill saw, and diamond blade to cut the boat deck. It tripped the GFCI 3 times, so I got the 4" grinder with the cut off blade, and it took 2 hrs instead of 20 min. Then my wife came out, and was going to the store to buy a new hair dryer, hers cut 3 times while she was drying her hair.


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## Asm109 (Dec 12, 2020)

GFCI's are prone to popping at various inconvenient times.  Pushing a button on an outlet in the room is WAAAAAY more convenient than taking a trip out the breaker box to push the button.


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## vtcnc (Dec 12, 2020)

@pontiac428 - thanks! 

I read that about the GFCI. Is it o.k. to have them both? I don't see any reason why it couldn't.


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## vtcnc (Dec 12, 2020)

OK, this is all good feedback. I will reroute so the light and fan are unprotected. I don't want this thing nuisance tripping. The existing GFCI that is there doesn't have this problem with hair dryers, so I won't introduce a new variable.


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## markba633csi (Dec 12, 2020)

Agreed, and it will simplify things a bit
-Mark


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## 682bear (Dec 14, 2020)

Once upon a time... my company had decided they could save energy by installing motion detector light switches in the bathrooms. When you walk in, the lights come on...

For a while, it was very common to walk into the bathroom, the lights come on, then you hear a muffled 'thank you' from one of the stalls...

It didn't take long for someone to take a ball peen hammer to all of the motion sensors... they replaced them with regular switches.

Point well made, I would say...

-Bear


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## vtcnc (Dec 14, 2020)

Got the light and outlet wired up yesterday. Will get the fan installed today. 

Old knob and tube wiring is a real pain the keister. Some of the less than desirable craftsmanship I saw yesterday gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I took everyone's advice here and went with a regular 20A duplex outlet fed by a GFCI breaker. Tested out perfectly! Feeling very confident about my wiring skills - but I'm not so confident as to wire something up without sketching it out first and mapping all of the feeds and returns.


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## pontiac428 (Dec 14, 2020)

It might be time to hone those skills and tackle the knob-and-tube wiring in the house... That stuff's got to go.  When the PO did the retrofit for my house, they just dropped romex from the attic down the walls.  Simple.  By the time you are done, you'll be ready to join the sparky crew.  Does your insurance company know about that wiring?


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## vtcnc (Dec 14, 2020)

pontiac428 said:


> It might be time to hone those skills and tackle the knob-and-tube wiring in the house... That stuff's got to go.  When the PO did the retrofit for my house, they just dropped romex from the attic down the walls.  Simple.  By the time you are done, you'll be ready to join the sparky crew.  Does your insurance company know about that wiring?


Dropping ROMEX...that's basically the approach. The only surprises are firebreaks and the occasional, "Let's jog over 3" through this oak stud instead of just going through the attic floor." I know that the good ol' days was a time where things were built to last, but some of the things I've found have me scratching my head. My 15 year old and I are just staring at each other trying to figure out what to do and then I abruptly break out the 1" spade bit and go to town. Feeding is a lot easier that way.

Vermont is a funny place. I remember the GFCI outlet that I just replaced was installed after our pre-closing "inspection" because it wasn't to code. That was 20 years ago. Nevermind that it was fed from an ungrounded fusebox and I watched the inspector stick a GFCI tester in the newly installed outlet and gave it the thumbs up. Insurance company was good to go!

Last year we had a 200 amp service installed. We then wired the furnace, water heater, washer, drier and 60A 240V feeder to the garage subpanel. Once I install the fan today in the bathroom, I'll start on the 3 upstairs bedrooms and then the kitchen will be next.

The only problem I can see at this point is dropping from the attic through the exterior walls is going to be impossible. I see evidence of 2" holes around the perimeter - blown in insulation from the Vermont efficiency incentives and winterization plans back in the 80s and 90s. So, I will pick an interior wall for each room, drop-in and feed through the base boards internally and then patch up from there.


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## brino (Dec 14, 2020)

682bear said:


> Once upon a time... my company had decided they could save energy by installing motion detector light switches in the bathrooms. When you walk in, the lights come on...For a while, it was very common to walk into the bathroom, the lights come on, then you hear a muffled 'thank you' from one of the stalls.



Detecting motions, but not "movements"!  
-brino


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## pontiac428 (Dec 14, 2020)

Luckily, my house wiring was done before the blown-in insulation.  I'm glad I was out of the picture for all of it.  I did rewire my panel and fix a few things.  I just feel bad for my house-hunting friends.  If they like a house with knob-and-tube, they're on the hook for bringing it up to code with the property transfer (because the sellers say it's as-is).  It is a scary system to consider when thinking about fire, corrosion, and electric shock.  It's also amazing to see the scheme working for 70+ years without incident, so who knows.  I can say that my favorite hand hold when taking the narrow stairs to the basement is an old tube run... I wouldn't have been able to use it that way in the past!


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## vtcnc (Dec 14, 2020)

brino said:


> Detecting motions, but not "movements"!
> -brino


we need a "gross" emoji.


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## Aukai (Dec 14, 2020)

Don't we have a guy for that?


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## Aukai (Dec 15, 2020)




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## graham-xrf (Dec 15, 2020)

RJSakowski said:


> The potential situation reminds me of the high school drafting class that I had.  The instructor was talking about outhouse design and he told us that you should always design the door to open to tyhe inside.  This was because on hot days, you could leave the door ajar to allow some cool and refreshing air to circulate through the structure.  If the door opened to the inside, you could easily slam it shut if you someone approached but if it opened to the outside, you were at the mercy of the approaching person.


The psychology that allows one to "feel OK" in a room design is real. These principles are embedded in cultural prescriptive principles like Feng Shui.

Similar subtleties teach stuff like do not have a direct entrance to a bathroom facility from any kitchen. It should be from a neutral access space, like a hall, and even then, no direct view to the toilet.

Nobody will feel OK in a bed set in a room with the pillow side towards the door.
I have no idea who first figured this stuff out, but I think it's been known for centuries.


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## sdelivery (Dec 15, 2020)

Knob and tube can be some of the safest wiring because the conductors are usually on either side of the joists but the old wiring is generally twisted together and the insulation is garbage. 
I replace it when I can.


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## RJSakowski (Dec 15, 2020)

graham-xrf said:


> The psychology that allows one to "feel OK" in a room design is real. These principles are embedded in cultural prescriptive principles like Feng Shui.
> 
> Nobody will feel OK in a bed set in a room with the pillow side towards the door.


That's interesting as I have owned several homes where the pillow side towards the door was the only option.  Come to think of it, at least three of the bedrooms that I slept in in the UK had that same configuration.  When you have a small room with a fireplace on the outside wall it can be your only option.

Actually, the one bedroom that I felt uncomfortable in was a hotel room in Naples where there was an ugly nude on the wall opposite the head of the bed. What a sight to wake up to each morning!


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## vtcnc (Dec 15, 2020)

sdelivery said:


> Knob and tube can be some of the safest wiring because the conductors are usually on either side of the joists but the old wiring is generally twisted together and the insulation is garbage.
> I replace it when I can.


I have only found two instances where things appeared to be unsafe. The first was the light fixture that was added to the bathroom at some point in the distant past. A single run of 14ga romex was spliced into the two wire system - which appeared to be the location of a previous light fixture. The splice was very dicey. I could see a bare wire. So this was a modern botched job that I found, not the original work.

The second was the two wire system fed through the back wall of the house, under the porch and into a pipe that then was buried a few inches under the ground to a pedastal light fixture in the middle of the defunct rose garden. That entire branch was cut out from inside in the basement and taped off. I found that one when we moved in over 20 years ago. The light fixture was this past weekend.

It has only been since I wired my shop two years ago now that I gained the confidence to "figure out" the wiring plan for the house. That and YouTube of course. Once I had some practice in and could visualize what needed to be done in videos and on paper, it was simply a matter of having a couple of easy wins under my belt to tackle the harder problem of re-wiring the bathroom.

EDIT: I should add the other major delay in rewiring the house was the cost of having a contractor do it. We were getting quotes anywhere between $12K-25K about 10 years ago.


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## RJSakowski (Dec 15, 2020)

My house was built around 1910 and wasn't electrified.  Rural electrification didn't happen until the 1950's so all the knob and tube  was old technology.  When our house initially wired, it was dine with BX cable salvaged from from a UW Madison retrofit.  A two wire overhead line from the barn with ground furnished by a galvanized pip from same.  The galvanized pipe was eventually replaced by polyethylene which left an earth ground as the only return.  This caused an interesting situation with unbalanced loads with voltages of as much as 40 volts between the house ground and earth ground. 

The house was serviced by a 60 amp fuse box with a minimal number of runs.  The BX cable was probably 30 years old when it was installed and by the time I acquired the property the fabric covered rubber insulation was cracking, brittle, and falling off.  Eventually, I have replaced all of the old wiring with Romex although there is one feature of the BX that I did like;  it's mouse proof.


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## vtcnc (Dec 15, 2020)

RJSakowski said:


> My house was built around 191 and wasn't electrified.  Rural electrification didn't happen until the 1950's so all the knob and tube  was old technology.  When our house initially wired, it was dine with BX cable salvaged from from a UW Madison retrofit.  A two wire overhead line from the barn with ground furnished by a galvanized pip from same.  The galvanized pipe was eventually replaced by polyethylene which left an earth ground as the only return.  This caused an interesting situation with unbalanced loads with voltages of as much as 40 volts between the house ground and earth ground.
> 
> The house was serviced by a 60 amp fuse box with a minimal number of runs.  The BX cable was probably 30 years old when it was installed and by the time I acquired the property the fabric covered rubber insulation was cracking, brittle, and falling off.  Eventually, I have replaced all of the old wiring with Romex although there is one feature of the BX that I did like;  it's mouse proof.


Yes, we have had no mouse problems to speak of. Our previous service was 60 amp fuse box as well. Our house was built in 1926 in the prominent railroad city, St. Albans, Vermont at the time - on the route from Montreal to Burlington and then on to Boston or New York. I imagine that it was electrified at that time but I could be wrong. We have always wondered if it was original or added at a later date.


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## pontiac428 (Dec 15, 2020)

Naples makes me uncomfortable for other reasons!


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## brino (Dec 15, 2020)

vtcnc said:


> we need a "gross" emoji.



Hey, my comment was about the word play between two expressions of dynamics: #1) motions and #2) movements.

If your mind lowered it to the bathroom humour of actually detecting number two, then that's on you!


-brino


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## Aukai (Dec 16, 2020)

My daughter is buying her first home in Oakland, built in 1921 with a mix if 2 prong and 3 prong receptacles. There is a 200 amp service panel, and there is no signs of old type wiring. I'm having her bring in an electrical contractor to figure out about getting it to code.


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## Downunder Bob (Dec 16, 2020)

A few years ago I was visiting a friend in Tennessee, He asked if I could help him with some new wiring in an extension he'd put on his house. So up in the roof we go armed with screwdriver tape, pliers etc. Very soon I was introduced to American wiring. When I told him it was all over the place and wouldn't pass back home in Australia, he said it was done by an electrician and was all to code. I was horrified, and said it's just as well you guys only have 120V in fact it would be a good idea if went down to 12V .  I let him do all the connections while I just passed the tools. He managed to only black the house out 3 times while fitting one new light fixture, Still we lived, and it worked, But I bet it's not to code.

Downunder Bob.


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## vtcnc (Dec 16, 2020)

brino said:


> Hey, my comment was about the word play between two expressions of dynamics: #1) motions and #2) movements.
> 
> If your mind lowered it to the bathroom humour of actually detecting number two, then that's on you!
> 
> ...


Guilty!


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## vtcnc (Dec 16, 2020)

Downunder Bob said:


> A few years ago I was visiting a friend in Tennessee, He asked if I could help him with some new wiring in an extension he'd put on his house. So up in the roof we go armed with screwdriver tape, pliers etc. Very soon I was introduced to American wiring. When I told him it was all over the place and wouldn't pass back home in Australia, he said it was done by an electrician and was all to code. I was horrified, and said it's just as well you guys only have 120V in fact it would be a good idea if went down to 12V .  I let him do all the connections while I just passed the tools. He managed to only black the house out 3 times while fitting one new light fixture, Still we lived, and it worked, But I bet it's not to code.
> 
> Downunder Bob.


I'm not an electrician and I hear "it's to code" 100% of the time when asking about wiring. I'm not an electrician and can point out simple common sense observations that ultimately lead to the discussion about the wiring or panel not being to code.

When I had my  panel installed two years ago, the electrician sheepishly asked me if I wanted to take a look at the progress and make sure everything was the "way we wanted it". When I pointed out that the system wasn't grounded to the water pipes, he asked me how I knew that was required. Needless to say, that garnered enough respect to where he started reworking a couple of other things that his apprentice was working on.


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## vtcnc (Dec 16, 2020)

Aukai said:


> My daughter is buying her first home in Oakland, built in 1921 with a mix if 2 prong and 3 prong receptacles. There is a 200 amp service panel, and there is no signs of old type wiring. I'm having her bring in an electrical contractor to figure out about getting it to code.


I imagine that those are the ones that are really scary. An upgraded system built right over the top of the old.


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## sdelivery (Dec 16, 2020)

In my part of the country we are required to have two ground rods within six feet of each other with the first being within six feet of the panel. 
Of course the cold water pipe has to be taken to ground and requires a jumper at the meter and the hot water tank so that they cant make the water pipe run open to ground.


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## Downunder Bob (Dec 17, 2020)

When our new house was built a little over 15 years ago actually nearly 20 years now. We had a 3 phase supply fitted so we get 400VPh to Ph and 230V Ph. to N.

here in Australia our dryers are 230V single ph. The main reasons I requested 3 ph. was we have two large coolers and the swimming pool pumps, but mainly I was planning on buying a new 3ph welding machine, however by the time we moved in and I started looking around at welding machines, they had bought out the new 230V single ph. multi purpose machines, so I bought a good one of them and have not looked back.

But to get back to the point of my comment is that we no longer clamp our earth to the water pipes. That practice was discontinued over 20 years ago, I'm not sure when. We now use a long steel rod driven into the ground near the meter box and all earth connections are returned to the meter box and then to the steel rod. The steel rod is heavily copper plated to prevent corrosion. 

It is now illegal to have earthing wires clamped to water pipes, and I believe all older houses have had this changed a while back. 

I believe the concern arose because of the now widespread use of plastic water pipes. Even though mine is all fusion welded copper the new standard still holds. This caused me to have a big argument with the builders plumber, our house is all steel framed and he (the plumber) was obviously not paying attention at trade school when they were taught that copper pipes must be electrically isolated from the steel framing of the house.


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## vtcnc (Dec 17, 2020)

sdelivery said:


> In my part of the country we are required to have two ground rods within six feet of each other with the first being within six feet of the panel.
> Of course the cold water pipe has to be taken to ground and requires a jumper at the meter and the hot water tank so that they cant make the water pipe run open to ground.


Just had the transmitter on our meter upgraded yesterday by the city. Gave me a quick opportunity to triple check. Both cold water, meter and transmitter are either grounded to earth or jumpered over. Same with the water heater of course.

Aside from additional cost, I see no reason why this shouldn't be done. Unless of course EVERYTHING is plastic pipe. But that seems unlikely as far as rule and policy making would go.


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