Because showering in the dark is unpleasant (thank you Sandy for that experience), I went with a shower light/fan, even though I will not be utilizing the exhaust feature for this non-permanent shower.
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- This 50 cfm fan was the cheapest exhaust/light combo my local home depot had. I’m only exhausting a shower, so the cfm is more than 3x more than I actually need. I wanted to install the light now, prior to installing the ceiling, since I have a few more things to run, such as the temp ducting. Until then, it’ll just serve as a gfci’d light over my shower.
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- I needed the help of a couple quick grip clamps to get this installed, though I could have just held it up, it only weighs a couple pounds at most (empty). Taking all of the components out prior to install is necessary since you have to access everything inside of the housing.
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- I started my wiring from the fan to where I needed to go. In retrospect, I may need to up this to 12 gage wire, I used 14. It’s a single branch off of my basements lighting circuit, isolated by a leviton gfci.
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- Nothing special, it’s simple. I suppose I could point out the hole pattern for the fan, it’s fairly straight forward.
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- Wiring the unit is straight forward: blue goes with black, white goes with white, green with ground.
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- I added a GFCI in the lighting circuit branch I created off the main lighting circuit. Here it is, wired from the fan, just viewed from the other side of the beam that I would drill through.
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- The fan installation is really easy, it slips in and has 1 screw. It also uses a 2 prong plug and grounds itself to the case.
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- Grill, I installed the grill. It’s okay if you didn’t get the joke, that means you’re part of the 99% of people in this world who doesn’t follow league of legends. Anyway, the grill is crooked since I don’t have the ceiling in. I have enough space to install the grill even with the ceiling in, since I accounted for that in step 2.
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- So this is what the fan grill will need to look like. I decided to correct this for the time being.
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- Since I didn’t want the grill to hang sideways, I just ended up drilling a 3/16 hole.
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- So yeah, one more screw will hold this one in place without any issues.
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- 60W. Simple as that. Suprisingly hard to fine this bulb though, it’ll be with the kitchen light bulbs if you didn’t already find them next to where you bought your light.
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- The cover isn’t anything to write home about, the unit is pretty normal overall. There are plenty of nice things about this unit, such as it’s rigid construction and ease of install. I had this whole thing installed in 1 hour.
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- The GFCI was easy to wire, just follow the instructions that came with the device and that are stamped onto the device. After that, make sure your wire nuts are sized correctly. Here, I used red nuts that can handle 4 14 gage wires.
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- Don’t run wires under beams, just do it right and drill in accordance with your local building code. Otherwise, the middle of a beam won’t compromise the structural integrity (small hole, not 6″).
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- This wasn’t as exciting as wiring my hot water heater, since this is about 52 amps less demanding. Either way, I have my light over my shower and it’s fairly quiet, which was expected for a 50 cfm fan.
