Bathroom Fan Timers

It’s the usual story: I have an idea for a home improvement, I get the necessary things, it ends up being more work than expected and finally I prevail.

In this case, I was thinking about how our bathroom fans kept getting left on. Particularly in the cat bathroom (on the main floor) where it’s always warm because of the straight shot from the furnace in the basement. Initially I was going to just install one, but Tammy suggested that I do all three bathroom fans at the same time.

So off I went to Home Depot this morning, and picked up a two-pack of 30 minute timers and one 60 minute timer. Then I came home and got to work. Tammy was helping me with the circuit breakers, keeping me safe. ❤️

I started in the cat bathroom (closest to the tools in the garage when I needed to get one). It wasn’t too hard, but when I got Tammy to turn the power back on, there was no life from the timer. The bathroom light still worked, but the little LED on the timer didn’t light up and pressing the buttons did nothing. I fought with it for a while, trying to figure out how I could have messed up hot, neutral, ground and the line to the fan. Tammy suggested that I try in another bathroom, so I moved up to the ensuite and wired that up. No dice. I was really starting to get depressed.

Then I tried a different timer: I’d bought three, after all. I wired it up and lo and behold! It worked. I did some more experimenting, and eventually figured out that the one timer was dead, kaput. It was an ex-timer. And Murphy’s Law said that it would be the first one I was trying.

I wired up the kids’ bathroom just fine, and then went to Home Depot and returned the two-pack (of course the non-functioning one was part of a two-pack) and got a replacement. We had lunch and then I got to work. No more problems. All the timers worked on the first try. Amazing what skills I have when the parts actually work.