Bathroom Project Days 6-8

Martin Luther King weekend was spent carrying out our electrical plan.

First this old switch/receptacle is disconnected and the circuit is re-wired to skip the bathroom.

Power from the panel is coming in from the top left, and is simply spliced with the branch going to the adjacent room (out the bottom of the box) and the hallway light branch (out the upper right). This junction box will be covered up and live behind the drywall.

Here I cut the hole for the bathroom fan vent.

Looks good!
A little black roof cement and some roofing nails finish the job. It rained the next day, and we were able to see that it stayed dry inside.
Here's the empty fan box mounted to the ceiling. A flexible duct connects the box to the roof vent. The fan assembly snaps inside the box.
Next the can light over the shower is installed. This recessed light is "IC" which means "insulation contact" - it's designed to not start a fire if it's covered with ceiling insulation.

Now the vanity light is mounted. This is connected to the shower light in series so they both turn on with the flip of a switch. (It'll look nicer with the pretty bulb globes attached)

The switch on the right is for the lights, an the one of the left is for the fan. The black wires are existing wiring from the panel and the hallway light.Next the GFCI receptable is installed about 1' from the sink. It's rated for 20A, so bring on those power hungry hair dryers!

Now is the part that made me the most nervous - working inside the panel. For safety, we turned the entire house off. However, the power feed coming from outside is still hot. After some research, we learned the proper precautions and everything went smoothly, although Cendy secretly had 911 on speed dial in case something happened.

The bottom right breaker is a special 15A GFCI circuit breaker. It is required by code to have the shower light GFCI protected. This is one way to accomplish that, and we're protecting the fan and vanity light while we're at it. About 3 slots up from the new breaker was an unused existing 20A circuit breaker that I used for the new GFCI receptacle in the bathroom.

We were still nervous as we prepared to test the fixtures...
IT'S ALIVE!!!

And the receptacle works too! That orange contraption tests the wiring in receptacles.

The last accomplishment for the weekend was insulating the fan duct. This prevents condensation around the duct when warm bathroom air runs through a cold attic.