this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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I'm leaning the science behind home electricity. I want to install an outlet in my bathroom for a bidet but I realized I didn't understand when and where I needed a GFI outlet. So I'm learning via a handful of books
Similarly, I want to add another outlet in the basement for my cats' automatic litter box.
I also just replaced my Nest doorbell with a "dumb" doorbell but the chime won't work. So I need to do some research on how the chimes work...
Turn off the breaker before you work on anything, if you aren't 100% positive that you've got the right breaker, turn off the main breaker, if you still aren't sure, just stop. Always do a pull test after joining two wires and apply electrical tape liberally. Be wary of aluminum wiring and even more so for knob and tube if you ever see it. You'll eventually hit a point where you realize you can get creative with the materials you use and the way you do things, don't do that. This is also about the time you'll start to feel confident in your skills as an electrician, this is when you're going to skip something basic and electrocute yourself, it will probably be minor and you'll be sore for a week and feel 10 years older. Sometimes though it's not minor, it's an electrician meme, but we all have the "Remember kids, Electricity will kill you" sticker.
If you remember all that, you're probably good to install the basement outlet, you'll probably have local building codes to adhere to, but they're usually not a major burden to comply with. For your chime, do you know if you have a doorbell transformer at all (and are you sure it's getting power if so) or where the wires on your doorbell go to?
The bidet outlet just needs to be on the load side of the GFI.
That statement presumes knowledge of GFI that I did not have - load side means nothing to a layperson
On the back of the GFI the ports will be labeled, line or load. Line goes to the breaker box, load goes to all outlets you need protected.
Load side here essentially means end of the chain. So Breaker ---- anything else ----- GFI - Bidet ----nothing else.
When you put a GFI receptical on a line there are two ways, either in series or parallel, if you do it in series then everything down stream of that outlet is protected by GFI. One thing you dont want to happen is two GFI on the same line, so if you have GFI breakers in your box dont add a GFI outlet on one.
Good luck, its easy enough to install because its the same as really any outlet, you just need to know where it is in the chain.