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At least we keep getting warm enough days to melt most of the snow before we get pummeled again this year.

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I suppose that's something. I forgot how miserable winter could be. That's bc I left when I was 20-ish, and didn't have to work/ drive/ run errands in it very much, and it was still fun.

Good luck at your friend's house. I hope the project goes smoothly!

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construction attached, which means that I found out in 2 minutes that there was no way to take it out from inside the nice clean bathroom and I needed to go in the attic. He'd also not bought a replacement fan for existing construction, so in order not to damage the ceiling both the removal and the installation would all need to be done in the attic.

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Had to unscrew the old one by hand because of all of the things in the way of the drill at the angle the screws were set in. Not a fun or easy task to do when leverage is terrible up against a sun roof window and there's so much insulation you can't even see where the joists are.

The fan was also tied into a light over the shower with Romex, and my friend didn't even mention before I'd reinstalled everything that the light had stopped working about half a year ago. So when I was back down and we installed the light it didn't work. My voltage tester came up with nothing.

But the weird thing was that all of the slack in the attic on that romex wasn't present when I pulled at the Romex from the hole for the new shower light or from inside the fan mount... What the hell?

So I had to go back up.

And then I discovered it was two lines of romex that went down into the insulation and through a small hole in wood.


I asked my friend if there was an outlet or a switch over the toilet, since that's the location that it seemed to be going down. He said "neither, but there's a reset button here". I didn't even know what he was talking about, but I said does it look like an outlet? and he said it did.

I said that's it. I'm coming down, we need to open that.

He'd already taken the cover off by the time I came down, but he didn't need to. It was a GFCI box, but without plugs. I'd never even seen one of these before

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construction attached, which means that I found out in 2 minutes that there was no way to take it out from inside the nice clean bathroom and I needed to go in the attic. He'd also not bought a replacement fan for existing construction, so in order not to damage the ceiling both the removal and the installation would all need to be done in the attic.

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and in the attic I went for the next 90 minutes, literally swimming in insulation.

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Had to unscrew the old one by hand because of all of the things in the way of the drill at the angle the screws were set in. Not a fun or easy task to do when leverage is terrible up against a sun roof window and there's so much insulation you can't even see where the joists are.

The fan was also tied into a light over the shower with Romex, and my friend didn't even mention before I'd reinstalled everything that the light had stopped working about half a year ago. So when I was back down and we installed the light it didn't work. My voltage tester came up with nothing.

But the weird thing was that all of the slack in the attic on that romex wasn't present when I pulled at the Romex from the hole for the new shower light or from inside the fan mount... What the hell?

So I had to go back up.

And then I discovered it was two lines of romex that went down into the insulation and through a small hole in wood.


I asked my friend if there was an outlet or a switch over the toilet, since that's the location that it seemed to be going down. He said "neither, but there's a reset button here". I didn't even know what he was talking about, but I said does it look like an outlet? and he said it did.

I said that's it. I'm coming down, we need to open that.

He'd already taken the cover off by the time I came down, but he didn't need to. It was a GFCI box, but without plugs. I'd never even seen one of these before

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But they installed them in all 3 of his bathrooms over the toilets, I'm sure as a safety measure in case something went wrong with the light over the shower

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(and the fact that they SHOULD NOT HAVE USED ROMEX FOR THIS JOB).

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His daughter hasn't had a light in her shower for half a year now because they didn't know to hit the RESET button.

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After that, installed the new light, got the fan back in and the cover on and it's all as good as new.


Got free pizza tonight, my buddy is taking me to an all you can eat buffet next week at the Hard Rock, and his wife was so thrilled on the phone when he showed her what I did she said she's making dinner for me when she gets back in town. She's a damn good cook, so I'm looking forward to it. I just as convinced she's working magic in the kitchen as she's convinced I was when I did the job tonight.

My buddy also said that any time I need his truck to pick up anything I need for my house he's just a call away.

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OG = "Original Gangster". Slang.

In this case, I meant that it was a fan that was meant for original construction. It had "wings" on the side that gets attached to a joist which the screws went through, so there was no way to get to it without busting out the ceiling or doing it from the attic.

I haven't done a ton of these, but every time I have the screws or nails were put into the box inside the fan housing, so once you removed them it came right out of the ceiling. This was new for me.

The fan he bought to replace it had the wings too, so that had to be installed from the attic as well.

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construction attached, which means that I found out in 2 minutes that there was no way to take it out from inside the nice clean bathroom and I needed to go in the attic. He'd also not bought a replacement fan for existing construction, so in order not to damage the ceiling both the removal and the installation would all need to be done in the attic.

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have helped replace a number of light fixtures in the original construction and addition and they have all had ceiling mounted brackets. The new fixtures have holes that match up to the old brackets, and altho it is a pita to find the old holes with the new screws (we turn the new screws in a little into the old bracket, attach long twist ties to help us find the head end of the, screw so we can poke it thru the insulation that's part of the new fixture and thread it thru the new fixture bracket) it's always been a ceiling job. Clearly something I don't understand about this fan!

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Have you ever replaced an exhaust fan in the bathroom? This isn't a ceiling fan and/or light fixture. There's a metal box that's almost a cube shape that is mounted to the joist above the ceiling and a plastic tube coming out that needs to be attached to the exhaust pipe out of the house and taped up.

Here's a picture of a similar one:


Even if this wasn't an new construction unit, I would have had to go up to put the new fan in because Uncle Bob didn't leave any slack on the flex conduit or the flex exhaust pipe, so there would have been no way to attach them first before screwing the box into the joist.

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and in the attic I went for the next 90 minutes, literally swimming in insulation.

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Fiberglass??? Oh dear!

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Yup. Fun!

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Had to unscrew the old one by hand because of all of the things in the way of the drill at the angle the screws were set in. Not a fun or easy task to do when leverage is terrible up against a sun roof window and there's so much insulation you can't even see where the joists are.

The fan was also tied into a light over the shower with Romex, and my friend didn't even mention before I'd reinstalled everything that the light had stopped working about half a year ago. So when I was back down and we installed the light it didn't work. My voltage tester came up with nothing.

But the weird thing was that all of the slack in the attic on that romex wasn't present when I pulled at the Romex from the hole for the new shower light or from inside the fan mount... What the hell?

So I had to go back up.

And then I discovered it was two lines of romex that went down into the insulation and through a small hole in wood.


I asked my friend if there was an outlet or a switch over the toilet, since that's the location that it seemed to be going down. He said "neither, but there's a reset button here". I didn't even know what he was talking about, but I said does it look like an outlet? and he said it did.

I said that's it. I'm coming down, we need to open that.

He'd already taken the cover off by the time I came down, but he didn't need to. It was a GFCI box, but without plugs. I'd never even seen one of these before

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Never seen THAT b4 eirher!!

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Apparently, they're called "blank face" GFCI.



Unless the price of GFCI outlets have gone up, these are all stupid expensive at around $20 each. When I bought the regular GFCI outlets last year they were around $15, and I was able to buy a 4 pack for only $30. What a ripoff. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense to put plugs above the toilet literally right next to the tile to the shower, but wow.

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But they installed them in all 3 of his bathrooms over the toilets, I'm sure as a safety measure in case something went wrong with the light over the shower

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It's code. Any electrical fixture/outlet with him n 5' (6'?) of water has to be protected with GFI

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That applies to lights overhead in the shower? I guess that makes sense. Every house I ever was in didn't have one, but it's not a bad idea and I'm sure they do it on all new construction.

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(and the fact that they SHOULD NOT HAVE USED ROMEX FOR THIS JOB).

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Uh just OOC, why not? What should they have used? For the few electric installs I helped with, we used 14- or 12_gage. Wire (load depending) in conduit, but that sounds like overkill for the application.

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Well I grew up in Crook County, IL. I've never seen a place that takes code more seriously than they do, and any time I've ever done any work I always do it up to their standard even if the code in another area is lax.

In CC, it's illegal to use Romex anywhere inside of your house. You can use it in your garage, but only if the garage is detached from the house and a certain amount of feet from it.

It's probably safe over the long haul as long as you're not putting too much of a load on it and it was wired up right. But the problem with Romex is that it IS by far the easiest way to do things and that means that any dummy with a few tools and brain cells can get a light or outlet working without having to bend conduit or even use flex conduit and make the attachements.

The problem is that by nature it's not grounded to the earth ground like your hard pipe or flex conduit would be just by making the connections to the existing wiring. I'm sure you know, but that third bare wire in there is earth ground, and you don't even want to know the scary stuff I've seen under the drywall.

The worst thing I'd ever seen done by Uncle Bob wasn't even using Romex. He added a plug outlet close to the ground in the bathroom by tying it in to the outlet that was on the other side in the bedroom by popping out a slug in the back of each of the outlets. Rather than do the more difficult and correct thing to tie them together and cut a small piece of conduit with connectors, he used a rubber tube that I think was a cut length of garden hose to pull the wire through. So an outlet 12" from the floor in a bathroom just feet away from the walk in shower had no earth ground.

:(

Short of putting in hard pipe that can easily have new wire run through it if need be at a later date, the correct thing to do in this case would have just been to drill a bigger hole in the top plate where the Romex was fed through so they could drop some flexible conduit down there and run all the wires through to maintain a legitimate earth ground without making use of the janky extra ground wire in the Romex.

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His daughter hasn't had a light in her shower for half a year now because they didn't know to hit the RESET button.

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I learned about that one early! We had an outlet in the breezeway that was dead. Finally found the GFI on the INSIDE hallway wall . Apparently they had pulled an outlet from the inside thru the wall to the outside (breezeway), but since there was water nearby they had to add a GFI.

In looking around I see the same thing living room to patio, and back bedroom to back sidewalk.

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At least yours was hidden! To be fair to my friend, not only doesn't he know a thing about electric, but I was in that bathroom about 10 minutes before I went upstairs and I didn't even notice the thing staring me right in the face above the toilet, but it really was in a place where you would never expect to see anything electrical, so my eyes must have just glossed over it 20 or so times. I can't believe it took me going back up into the attic and following the Romext trail to realize that there was something down there.

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After that, installed the new light, got the fan back in and the cover on and it's all as good as new.


Got free pizza tonight, my buddy is taking me to an all you can eat buffet next week at the Hard Rock, and his wife was so thrilled on the phone when he showed her what I did she said she's making dinner for me when she gets back in town. She's a damn good cook, so I'm looking forward to it. I just as convinced she's working magic in the kitchen as she's convinced I was when I did the job tonight.

My buddy also said that any time I need his truck to pick up anything I need for my house he's just a call away.

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Cast your bread upon the waters... but only for the right people! Sounds like you found them!

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SIX Have you ever replaced an exhaust fan in the bathroom? This isn't a ceiling fan and/or light fixture. There's a metal box that's almost a cube shape that is mounted to the joist above the ceiling and a plastic tube coming out that needs to be attached to the exhaust pipe out of the house and taped up.

Here's a picture of a similar one:


Even if this wasn't an new construction unit, I would have had to go up to put the new fan in because Uncle Bob didn't leave any slack on the flex conduit or the flex exhaust pipe, so there would have been no way to attach them first before screwing the box into the joist.

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SIX ...and in the attic I went for the next 90 minutes, literally swimming in insulation.

SIGNY: Fiberglass??? Oh dear!

SIX: Yup. Fun!

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SIX: Had to unscrew the old one by hand because of all of the things in the way of the drill at the angle the screws were set in. Not a fun or easy task to do when leverage is terrible up against a sun roof window and there's so much insulation you can't even see where the joists are.

The fan was also tied into a light over the shower with Romex, and my friend didn't even mention before I'd reinstalled everything that the light had stopped working about half a year ago. So when I was back down and we installed the light it didn't work. My voltage tester came up with nothing.

But the weird thing was that all of the slack in the attic on that romex wasn't present when I pulled at the Romex from the hole for the new shower light or from inside the fan mount... What the hell?

So I had to go back up.

And then I discovered it was two lines of romex that went down into the insulation and through a small hole in wood.

I asked my friend if there was an outlet or a switch over the toilet, since that's the location that it seemed to be going down. He said "neither, but there's a reset button here". I didn't even know what he was talking about, but I said does it look like an outlet? and he said it did.

I said that's it. I'm coming down, we need to open that.

He'd already taken the cover off by the time I came down, but he didn't need to. It was a GFCI box, but without plugs. I'd never even seen one of these before

SIGNY: Never seen THAT b4 eirher!!

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With all the new plugin bathroom doodads (toothbrushes, hair dryers, scent misters, emergency/nightlights, etc) ANY extra outlet is a good outlet! I would put a nightlight there so you can find your way around the bathroom at night without being blinded by the light.

[SIX... But they installed them in all 3 of his bathrooms over the toilets, I'm sure as a safety measure in case something went wrong with the light over the shower

SIGNY; It's code. Any electrical fixture/outlet within 5' (6'?) of water has to be protected with GFI protected

SIX; That applies to lights overhead in the shower? I guess that makes sense. Every house I ever was in didn't have one, but it's not a bad idea and I'm sure they do it on all new construction.

....SIX (and the fact that they SHOULD NOT HAVE USED ROMEX FOR THIS JOB)....

SIGNY: Uh just OOC, why not? What should they have used? For the few electric installs I helped with, we used 14- or 12_gage Wire (load depending) in conduit, but that sounds like overkill for the application.

SIX: WELL- I grew up in Crook County, IL. I've never seen a place that takes code more seriously than they do, and any time I've ever done any work I always do it up to their standard even if the code in another area is lax.

In CC, it's illegal to use Romex anywhere inside of your house. You can use it in your garage, but only if the garage is detached from the house and a certain amount of feet from it.

It's probably safe over the long haul as long as you're not putting too much of a load on it and it was wired up right. But the problem with Romex is that it IS by far the easiest way to do things and that means that any dummy with a few tools and brain cells can get a light or outlet working without having to bend conduit or even use flex conduit and make the attachements.

The problem is that by nature it's not grounded to the earth ground like your hard pipe or flex conduit would be just by making the connections to the existing wiring. I'm sure you know, but that third bare wire in there is earth ground, and you don't even want to know the scary stuff I've seen under the drywall.

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SIX; The worst thing I'd ever seen done by Uncle Bob wasn't even using Romex. He added a plug outlet close to the ground in the bathroom by tying it in to the outlet that was on the other side in the bedroom by popping out a slug in the back of each of the outlets. Rather than do the more difficult and correct thing to tie them together and cut a small piece of conduit with connectors, he used a rubber tube that I think was a cut length of garden hose to pull the wire through. So an outlet 12" from the floor in a bathroom just feet away from the walk in shower had no earth ground.

:(

Short of putting in hard pipe that can easily have new wire run through it if need be at a later date, the correct thing to do in this case would have just been to drill a bigger hole in the top plate where the Romex was fed through so they could drop some flexible conduit down there and run all the wires through to maintain a legitimate earth ground without making use of the janky extra ground wire in the Romex.

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SIX: His daughter hasn't had a light in her shower for half a year now because they didn't know to hit the RESET button.



SIGNY: I learned about that one early! We had an outlet in the breezeway that was dead. Finally found the GFI on the INSIDE hallway wall . Apparently they had pulled an outlet from the inside thru the wall to the outside (breezeway), but since there was water nearby they had to add a GFI.

In looking around I see the same thing living room to patio, and back bedroom to back sidewalk.

SIX: At least yours was hidden! To be fair to my friend, not only doesn't he know a thing about electric, but I was in that bathroom about 10 minutes before I went upstairs and I didn't even notice the thing staring me right in the face above the toilet, but it really was in a place where you would never expect to see anything electrical, so my eyes must have just glossed over it 20 or so times. I can't believe it took me going back up into the attic and following the Romext trail to realize that there was something down there.



... SIX: After that, installed the new light, got the fan back in and the cover on and it's all as good as new.

Got free pizza tonight, my buddy is taking me to an all you can eat buffet next week at the Hard Rock, and his wife was so thrilled on the phone when he showed her what I did she said she's making dinner for me when she gets back in town. She's a damn good cook, so I'm looking forward to it. I just as convinced she's working magic in the kitchen as she's convinced I was when I did the job tonight.

My buddy also said that any time I need his truck to pick up anything I need for my house he's just a call away.



SIGNY: Cast your bread upon the waters... but only for the right people! Sounds like you found them!

SIX: YEAH ??. Sometimes it's crazy how life works out.

This is a guy I knew since First Grade. I never even hung out with him outside of school until Jr High, and then when I moved out of town I didn't see him until some of my old friends that I still hung out with were hanging out with him and it turned out that my first apartment was just one building down from his.

We hung out a lot for a few years then and we were both always throwing parties and trying to one-up each other. But he had lost his job at one point and had a ton of free time, and he started spending it with my girlfriend while I was at work. Looking back, I don't think she was lying to me when she said that it was platonic (at least for her), but I was the jealous type and ended up driving her into his arms. I went over to his place and we got in a huge fist fight, he ended up knocking her up after that and they didn't stay together long. But the funny thing is that to this day they've always remained friends and did a pretty awesome job raising his son for a mom and dad that shared custody (compared to my parents).

Until recently, I think I only saw him and met his wife one time after that. It was shortly after they had gotten married and it was at one of my other friend's weddings.


But then when I went to another friend's 40th birthday back in late 2019 and saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in ages, he came right up to me and apologized for all of that and asked me if I hated him. I said "nah man. We're good." And it turned out that he had moved out here in Indiana and was only about 6 miles from me. I probably hang out with him more than any of my other friends these days. The dude's loaded so whenever we go out and play pool or whatever he's always paying, and I love Free.

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No, never have. Seen a kitchen exhaust fan unit, but didn't see the install. Good to know,thanks!

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only if you like itchy rashes! I assume you were wearing long pants/long sleeved shirt and hop that you had a mask available

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With all the new plugin bathroom doodads (toothbrushes, hair dryers, scent misters, emergency/nightlights, etc) ANY extra outlet is a good outlet! I would put a nightlight there so you can find your way around the bathroom at night without being blinded by the light.

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Oh Jeez, I bet! We know that Uncle Bob did some re-wiring here bc we had to correct mistakes when we found them ... like one lead connected to one breaker and the other lead connected to another... no idea how THAT happened!... but there is one "ground" still, that'll give you a good tingle if you touch it, and another bare 14gage we can't figure out where it comes from/goes to.

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I guess Uncle Bob did both our houses!

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