sfav8r
Senior Member
- Location
- San Francisco Bay Area
We just had an inspection for a fan/light combo we added to a commercial bathroom. The inspector said "you have a violation, the fan cannot be on the same circuit as the plug because the circuit serves two bathrooms." I said that I believed the code section he was referring to was related to residential bathrooms. He looked it up and said, yes that's true but doesn't it just make sense that you can't keep piling loads on to the circuit. If you are running a hair dryer in both bathrooms and then turn the fan on the breaker will trip.":-? (for the record the fan draws 35.9 watts) I mentioned again that this was a commercial bathroom and that I was reasonably sure that nobody at the mall would be blow drying their hair. I asked if he could give me the code section he felt we were violating. He says "you can't overload a circuit like that, read through article 210." The only way I could get him to sign it off was by removing the outlet since it wasn't required anyway.
I always make a point to be respectful of inspectors. But when I get a guy that won't give me a code section and still insists he's right I feel like my back is against the wall. What do you guys do in these situations? I know I can meet with his boss, but I don't have all day to go down to meetings at the building dept.
I should mention that this was NOT San Francisco, it was a small suburb. The only reason we were even there is because a local customer here in SF also owns a building there.
I always make a point to be respectful of inspectors. But when I get a guy that won't give me a code section and still insists he's right I feel like my back is against the wall. What do you guys do in these situations? I know I can meet with his boss, but I don't have all day to go down to meetings at the building dept.
I should mention that this was NOT San Francisco, it was a small suburb. The only reason we were even there is because a local customer here in SF also owns a building there.