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Moving wall switch

I took out a 9 foot patio door and am installing a 6 foot French door. I need to move my light switch closer to the now narrower door.

Last year I ran a new circuit to my bathroom. The only thing on it is one outlet. (I added an outlet on a different circuit so my daughter and wife could use their hairdryers at the same time.

Could I just run from this circuit to my new switch? The only thing that will be on this switch will be two porch lights.

Or, can you not run off of a bathroom circuit even if I only have one outlet on it?

Reply to
stryped1
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NEC 210.11(C)(3) specifies that the GFCI outlet in the bathrooms have to be on a separate 20-amp circuit. Under the exception, the GFCI outlet is allowed to share it's circuit with the lighting and fan only if that circuit feeds only that one bathroom.

Reply to
Rich.

Can I ask what the reasoning is behind the code?

Reply to
stryped1

One can only guess, but I suspect it's to eliminate the chances of the bathroom being plunged into darkness while someone is in the shower or sitting on the commode.

Reply to
Rich.

That would make far more sense than NFPA uses. The result of the current code is exactly the opposite. Putting the hair dryer and the overhead light on the same circuit is perfectly legal, you just can't put the hair dryer on the same circuit as the light in the hall closet.

Reply to
gfretwell

The actual reason for this rule is to prevent the hair dryer from plunging other parts of the home into darkness. That is a very common occurrence in homes were multiple hair dryers are used at the same time of the day. Lim iting a circuit shared with non basin receptacle loads to the single bathro om means that only the one bathroom is affected.

When the circuit serves multiple basin receptacles then only basin receptac les are affected and no room is darkened by the outage.

Best practice is to provide the basin receptacle with a dedicated circuit b ut as that is not necessary to provide electrical safety it is beyond the s cope of the NEC.

-- Tom

Reply to
Tom Horne

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