Electrical – Can Two Bathroom Fans Share a Power Source?

electrical

I have a bathroom on my main floor with three switches: lights, fan and heat lamp. I am replacing the fan and do not need the heat lamp, however when I wired the two switches I want to use, the white wire on the fan side is hot and blew the circuit. I disconnected it, and now the lights do not work and the bathroom fan UPSTAIRS is not working. I really do not want to rewire my bathrooms, does anyone know why they would be wired this way? How can I keep the existing wiring and get my fans working?
Thanks,
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Best Answer

Sorry if this don't help but if your asking why are both on 1 circuit, that's because they can be. A bathroom circut for lighting can be top all lighting in both bathrooms that do NOT include a heater. A 3 in 1 fan, heat, light must have it's own dedicated circuit

If this isn't answered by mid day tomorrow, I'll help. If it is, I'll delete this answer. Just sone questions. To assist others and myself later.

  1. What gauge wire is being used?
  2. What size breaker is it?
  3. Have you tested the lines with the breaker off to verify that all lines are dead?
  4. How certain are you of which lines are main supply lines?

Lines cannot be randomly spliced in the walls like your diagram suggests. I would personally use a 12/3 and use the 3rd hot line as a bypass through the switch, lights, and to the next switch. So what you think is upstream could be downstream.

Testing would entail disconnecting all lines, safely cap them, turn on breaker, test lines, turn off breaker, connect the verigied hot line to the next line directly and cap them, turn on breaker, test all lines to verify what line is what and that it isn't spliced randomly, and repeat till you have a definite diagram.

... this may just be me... but please also clean up diagram as power in, number of lines, and where you want things. The "whatwass" and "what will be" party makes it hard to follow.

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