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Comment by mixmastamyk | Hacker News Reader

Power outlets are not allowed near water basins here and so are not installed into the wall near the toilet. Most often there’s only one outlet near the sink with a circuit breaker on an opposite wall.

Heated is not necessary in California and more complexity means more likely to break, so YMMV.

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You certainly can put a GFCI outlet adjacent a toilet, sink or in any other wet space.

Please don't spread electrical code myths.

And yet most apartments don't have an outlet near the toilet.

I have lived in close to a dozen places built over the entire second half of the 20th century and into the 2010s and never had a bathroom with more than 6 feet between the toilet and an outlet.

My master bathroom in a 2016 build has a separate toilet room, and only one outlet that is definitely more than six feet away, it would also require drilling a hole somewhere.

Weird. That’s certainly not common in apartments.

I don’t think separate toilet rooms are very common in the states at all.

Separate sink, bathroom+toilet rooms here.

Yeah, NEC only requires 1 outlet within 3 feet of each sink in a bathroom, and 2 sinks 6' apart could share 1 outlet. Bathrooms are the really the only place where the NFPA hasn't extended the required number of outlets, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that changed in an upcoming revision. At the very least I wouldn't be shocked to see a NEC requirement for an outlet within 3' of each toilet in the next decade.

In my downstairs bathroom, I do indeed have a power outlet within 6 feet of the toilet, but until I added a second, closer outlet, plugging in my bidet required running an extension cord along the back of the counter, behind the sink, to reach the original outlet. Not the most attractive setup, and probably not the safest either.

In my old apartment, the master bedroom had the toilet in a separate room from the sink, with no power outlet at all.

Yeah my current setup requires an extension cord and it’s definitely a hassle. It doesn’t look great and it is another thing to clean.

That’s exactly what I’m talking about, so thanks for confirming the ‘myth’. If you think the average person knows that acronym you’re mistaken. It’s an additional circuit breaker built into the outlet, as I said.

Should have said ‘normal’ power outlets not allowed to avoid this subthread however.

Current code in many/most places in the US requires GFCI plugs in a lot of places that may be exposed to water. I would think an educated homeowner (though possibly not apartment dweller) would be familiar with whether they knew what the acronym stood for or not.

Umm, GFCI isn't an arcane thing, they've been around and required in bathrooms since the 70s [0]. People may not know the acronym, but they 100% are familiar with the outlets with the two little buttons that you sometimes have to reset. Local jurisdictions may have delayed adoption, so your city might not have required them right away but it was national code in 1975 for bathrooms.

They also don't have a circuit breaker built in, they perform a completely different function from a circuit breaker. And have been required in at least some portion of a property since the early 70s under the NEC, expanding over time to include anywhere where exposure to water is a possibility.

Even if we look at a super old version of the NEC, in 1965 I don't see anything that would prohibit installing an outlet near a toilet. I'm referencing a PDF of the 1965 version, but I don't have a shareable link.

I'm posting this not to shame you, but to point out that you have some misunderstandings of what is electrical code and so other members don't see your first confident statement and take it as fact. Plus, you can't tell if an outlet is GFCIs protected or not just by looking at it, even the very early ones could protect downstream outlets and at since the late 00's GFCIs combination breakers have been common. An outlet may look like a normal outlet and be GFCIs protected, I would wager that most of the kitchens you have been in have had GFCIs outlets.

[0] https://www.howtolookatahouse.com/Blog/Entries/2018/7/when-w...

You’ve added electrical jargon.

Forget one word in your post and the GFCI lobby comes out in full force; noted.

In your location.

A little confused; unless your sentence about California is unrelated to your first paragraph, that doesn't make sense. I live in California and I have outlets near my bathroom sinks, but there are no circuit breakers in the room. (The outlets are GFCI.)

I've definitely seen homes here with outlets near the toilet as well, with no extra safety devices beyond GFCI.

(And a quick search suggests that building code requires an outlet within 3 feet of every wash basin.)

If you are not talking about California, then... bummer; that level of restriction seems entirely unnecessary for safety.

GFCI is another circuit breaker. Approx. no one knows this acronym. So if you know electrical jargon you certainly know this.

As mentioned in this thread I forgot the word ‘normal’ as in standard outlets are not allowed.

As already posted, GFCIs are required, they cost ten bucks and take about five minutes to install.

Tearing through the walls to install an outlet, priceless.

I haven't seen a relatively modern house that didn't have an outlet within a few feet of the toilet area in a while.

NIMBYs haven't allowed enough new builds to meet demand for decades.

That statement is so broad as to be impossible to even debate.

There are thousands of new houses going up where I live. Maybe there aren't where you are. Who cares?

There are millions of new people to house. 10,000 babies born per day in the US.

"Just buy a new house for your powered toilet" is not a useful argument. Most of us are going to have to deal with the older place we live in, that doesn't have power near the toilet, and/or spouse says no to an extension cord.

As I wrote originally, the "bum gun" is a lot more practical in these situations.

Seriously. Nobody said "buy a new house".

Adding an outlet is a few minutes worth of work. It's not "buy a new house", that's about as ridiculous a straw man as I have ever heard of.

Use an extension cord? That’s what I do

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