bathroom circuit requirement

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charlie b

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Lockport, IL
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
The code-writing difficulty here is trying to make a single sentence be grammatically correct in both a singular and a plural context at the same time, and to achieve this with a minimum of words. It is easy enough to do this with two sentences or to do it with many extra words. Here are some examples:

  • . . . be provided to supply one receptacle outlet in any single bathroom or multiple receptacle outlets in one or more bathrooms.
  • . . . be provided to supply the receptacle outlet(s) in one or more bathrooms.

Keep in mind that the intent is that if there is a receptacle outlet in a bathroom, then,

  • It must be on a 20 amp circuit, and
  • That circuit can supply nothing other than bathroom receptacle outlets, unless
  • You meet the exception that allows more than receptacles in the same bathroom, but nothing outside that single bathroom, to share a 20 amp circuit.

I believe the idea comes from this scenario:

  • You are in one bathroom of three that share the same circuit for the receptacles.
  • Someone in each of the other two bathrooms is running hair dryers and curling irons.
  • That overloads the receptacle circuit, and you thereby lose power to the small radio you had plugged into your bathroom’s receptacle.
  • This is inconvenient to you, in that you don’t know why your radio quit working.
  • But it would have been “scary inconvenient" if this also caused your bathroom’s lights to go out.
  • On the other hand, if the receptacles, lights, heater, fan, and whatever else shares a circuit in one bathroom, but that circuit supplies nothing outside that bathroom, then when the lights go out it will be because of the hair dryer and curling iron you had plugged in. In other words, this loss of lights is your own fault. Inconvenient, yes. Scary inconvenient, probably not.
 

480sparky

Senior Member
Location
Iowegia
If one is required to supply 'a' receptacle with the 20a bath circuit, then we'd all need to install these:

Simplex_zps456d55d0.jpg




Installing these:

gfci-receptacle.jpg


Would, technically, be a violation.
 
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