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Started By
Message
H&G electricians: can I do this
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:18 pm
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:18 pm
I'll try to keep it brief. Our master bathroom is tiny, so two people utilizing the space can become annoying. I'd like to mount a toothbrush/skincare organizer to our next to our GFCI so that our single sink vanity isn't being overloaded. We have two electric toothbrushes, a water flosser, hair dryer and hair straightener. Ideally, we would want to leave the two toothbrushes and flosser plugged in at all times.
My concern is this: my GFCI outlet is only two plugs. I am seeing that there are surge protector adapters that will add up to six plugs. We will never need all plugs used. Flosser will only be powered on when used and the toothbrush chargers shouldn't give off much energy usage at all, even when they're charging a recently used toothbrush. Is it actually safe to plug in an adapter to these GFCI outlets?
This is what I would use to store the toothbrushes:
This is the closest to what I'm seeing for adapters:
Tower Manufacturing Shock Buster 15-Amp 3-Wire Grounding Duplex to Six White Gfci Standard Adapter
My concern is this: my GFCI outlet is only two plugs. I am seeing that there are surge protector adapters that will add up to six plugs. We will never need all plugs used. Flosser will only be powered on when used and the toothbrush chargers shouldn't give off much energy usage at all, even when they're charging a recently used toothbrush. Is it actually safe to plug in an adapter to these GFCI outlets?
This is what I would use to store the toothbrushes:
This is the closest to what I'm seeing for adapters:
Tower Manufacturing Shock Buster 15-Amp 3-Wire Grounding Duplex to Six White Gfci Standard Adapter
This post was edited on 4/16/24 at 1:25 pm
7
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:28 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
Not a licensed electrician, but yea that's fine to do. Won't hurt anything and the GFCI will work as normal.
If you connect too much to the adapter or get it wet, then the outlet its plugged to will just trip like its designed.
Probably going to be hard to reset it with it covered up by the adapter though.
If you connect too much to the adapter or get it wet, then the outlet its plugged to will just trip like its designed.
Probably going to be hard to reset it with it covered up by the adapter though.
This post was edited on 4/16/24 at 2:05 pm
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:30 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
Oh, just saw your pic. You don't need a gfci 6 plug adapter if you are plugging into a gfci outlet.
Just get a regular 6 plug adapter.
You only really need one gfci outlet on a whole circuit for them to work and that used to be the way code was done when they first came out. But now it's required to have one next to every water source.
That way if you have the gfci on an outlet in the garage on the same circuit as a non gfci outlet in the bathroom and your wife shocks herself in the bathtub... you can't just reset the outlet in garage and start shocking her again.
But no reason to hook up a gfci to a gfci back to back like that.
Just get a regular 6 plug adapter.
You only really need one gfci outlet on a whole circuit for them to work and that used to be the way code was done when they first came out. But now it's required to have one next to every water source.
That way if you have the gfci on an outlet in the garage on the same circuit as a non gfci outlet in the bathroom and your wife shocks herself in the bathtub... you can't just reset the outlet in garage and start shocking her again.
But no reason to hook up a gfci to a gfci back to back like that.
This post was edited on 4/16/24 at 1:37 pm
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:42 pm to NATidefan
quote:
If you connect too much to the adapter or get it wet, then the outlet it plugged to will just trip like its designed
That's what I was guessing. I didn't know if adding any other types of adapters would somehow mess with the outlet itself. I'm pretty cautious when it comes to electric.
I'm also guessing that if, for some reason, too much energy is being run into the outlet, it would also shut off just like a standard GFCI outlet? As long as I don't buy some cheap Amazon adapter that can potentially blow up in my face.
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:43 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:47 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
quote:
That's what I was guessing. I didn't know if adding any other types of adapters would somehow mess with the outlet itself. I'm pretty cautious when it comes to electric.
No, if you did use the gfci 6 plug adapter it would be like you were just hooking up another gfci outlet in parrellel further down the circuit. Which is what you would want to do if you were installing another outlet on the other side of the sink, etc.
But in this case theres no need to hook up a gfci adapter straight to a gfci outlet. does you no good.
This post was edited on 4/16/24 at 1:48 pm
Posted on 4/16/24 at 1:52 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
quote:
I'm also guessing that if, for some reason, too much energy is being run into the outlet, it would also shut off just like a standard GFCI outlet? As long as I don't buy some cheap Amazon adapter that can potentially blow up in my face.
Yes. Actually the adapter cheapness won't really matter in that case.
The outlet will trip cause too much current is being drawn through it. Doesn't matter if that current is running through an adapter to 5 hair dryers or from the outlet to something that pulls as many amps as 5 hair dryers.
Your breaker will trip it too if the gfci outlet fails.
This post was edited on 4/16/24 at 1:54 pm
Posted on 4/16/24 at 2:20 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
Why not get a new toothbrush? I have some Chinese one on Amazon and only need to charge it once every 3 months. Not daily.
Posted on 4/16/24 at 2:23 pm to LEASTBAY
quote:
Why not get a new toothbrush? I have some Chinese one on Amazon and only need to charge it once every 3 months. Not daily.
mines manual, I don't have to charge it at all.
Posted on 4/16/24 at 2:32 pm to LEASTBAY
I'm not sure how long the Sonicare brush lasts. I'm just avoiding ever having to plug/unplug chargers and just leaving the toothbrush where I need it to stay when I'm not using it.
Posted on 4/16/24 at 5:17 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
Don't use a GFCI adapter to plug into a GFCI outlet. Use a standard adapter, the only drawback is you may have to remove it to reset or test your GFCI.
Posted on 4/16/24 at 6:32 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
The GFCI in the picture is a 15 Amp, everything inside of the bathroom is on a 20 amp circuit. Remember this, a breaker is designed for 80% load, meaning 16 amps. The hair dryer and hair Iron pull the most amps. That will be the main load items. The tooth items draw very little. The iron and dryer will give amp ratings. The main problem are those two things. Hope this helps. All bath and kitchens should be on 20 amp with GFCI.
Posted on 4/16/24 at 7:48 pm to BilbeauTBaggins
You could get a handyman or friend to just add another receptacle or two. Coming off the load side of the gfci they'd all be protected.
Posted on 4/16/24 at 8:03 pm to kengel2
quote:
Coming off the load side of the gfci they'd all be protected.
Technically, they would all be protected as long as one of them is gfci anyway.
You only need one gfci per circuit for it to sense and trip due to any issue on any outlet on the circuit.
However, code does require any outlet near a water source to be gfci for the reason I listed above.
Say you have 8 outlets and two are in the bathroom. Those two in the bathroom have to be gfci by code, but the other 6 do not if not by a water source. But they would all be gfci protected.
This post was edited on 4/16/24 at 8:05 pm
Posted on 4/17/24 at 7:49 am to NATidefan
quote:
Technically, they would all be protected as long as one of them is gfci anyway.
Not necessarily, if the installer pigtails the receptacles the ones down the line would not be protected. The next receptacles have to be connected to the load side of the GFCI receptacle. A is protected, B is not.
Posted on 4/17/24 at 8:34 am to kengel2
quote:
Not necessarily, if the installer pigtails the receptacles the ones down the line would not be protected. The next receptacles have to be connected to the load side of the GFCI receptacle. A is protected, B is not.
Ah, well learned something new. I've never wired up an outlet using the pigtail method though.
That is good to know though!
My issue at my place is that to save money the guy put all the outlets that would need gfci on one circuit with only one gfci outlet (20 year old house). So I had two bathroom outlets, three outdoor outlets, two kitchen outlets, and one garage outlet all on one circuit with one gfci.
When I moved in the inspector suggested I upgrade all the outlets next to the water sources to gfci to be up to code. So now I have 8 gfci outlets on one circuit, and when it trips I have to walk around for thirty minutes to figure out which one it was.
Plus bathrooms with hair dryers, kitchen with heating appliances, and garage and outdoor outlets with power tools and my electric smoker, etc all on the same 20 amp circuit is a trip nightmare.
I really need to look into dividing them up and putting them on two circuits, but that involves tearing the drywall I assume to get a new wire into the breaker box.
This post was edited on 4/17/24 at 8:36 am
Posted on 4/18/24 at 10:05 pm to LSUDad
quote:
The GFCI in the picture is a 15 Amp, everything inside of the bathroom is on a 20 amp circuit. Remember this, a breaker is designed for 80% load, meaning 16 amps. The hair dryer and hair Iron pull the most amps. That will be the main load items. The tooth items draw very little. The iron and dryer will give amp ratings. The main problem are those two things.
Absolutely nailed it. A standard thermal magnetic breaker in a home panel is an 80% device so it's thermal portion (overload protection) should initiate a trip if over 16A (with a time delay).
Look at the electrical data on your hair dryer and iron. If the give a wattage or a full-load amp rating that should help you determine if the outlet and upstream breaker can handle the load. Example:
720W/120V = 6 Amps
960W/120V = 8 Amps
Total load = 14 Amps
Note that a GFCI does not provide overload or short circuit protection. It has a differential current transformer (CT) that compares the amount of current coming into the hot wire to the amount of current leaving through the neutral wire. If it exceeds a certain amount, the GFCI will trip since that means current is going where it shouldn't be going (likely from water).
Hope this all helps.
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