1. So my master bathroom shower will have a glass wall. Should the glass go all the way up to the ceiling or stop short so there is some room for ventillation?

2. Instead of a regular shower (which is the subject of question 1 above), I am considering installing a steam shower. Does anyone think that is worth it? I've never had one, but it sounds pretty cool.

Does it have a door or just an opening? Mine just has an opening instead of a door so it went all the way to the top

Christmas lights. We just bought a house this year and decided to go with icicle lights across the front. When renting, we never used icicle lights and didn’t have as long of a roofline so this year, we’re using 7 strands. The package says not to plug in more than 4 in a series. I told my wife that was probably just a suggestion and all 7 should be fine. Plugged them in and they were on about 4 hours before a fuse blew in the first strand. Lesson is: I’m no electrician and follow the directions on the box.

That being said, if we’re having to use two extension cords in different outlets on opposing sides of the house (3 lines on the right side, 4 on the left) just for one roofline of lights, is that normal? Am I missing an easier way of doing this? How do people do more elaborate light displays if just one straight roofline is such a pain?

It will have a door.

maybe the moisture or something on outdoor lights is an issue cause we usually get a 12-14' tree here, at least 20 strands all plugged in series into one extension, been doing that for years and never had an issue. if you note the fan blade right above the top, trees usually go past that

We’ve never had problems with tree lights, either. I don’t know if outdoor outlets are different than indoor or maybe it’s the brand of icicle lights we bought. Since we never had problems with the tree lights, I figured 7 strands outdoor should be fine but it wasn’t. Weird.

There's a fair amount of "it depends" here and I've never put up xmas lights on a house, but...

If xmas lights are some weird thing where they are AC and in series instead of parallel, then voltage drop may be the issue.

If they are in parallel, I doubt they really draw that much current and the problem is that the wires in the strings are very small.

In neither case would it be a problem if all the strings went to the same outlet in your house via a power-strip.

Again, I don't know the specifics and the actual draw from these lights, but I don't see how they can altogether be even 10 amps.

Anyway, one outlet on your house shouldn't have more than about 12amps running continuously on it and that's about 1400 watts. Each bulb is rated in watts and add them all up and don't put more than about that on one circuit. (the circuit is 15 or 20amps, but you don't want to run at max continuously. (in electrician terms continuously is 3 hours or more))

well you cant have each one start from the same power strip or you'd have 8 feet of very bright gutter and nothing more. havent bothered with the outside since i was very little, but even then never ran into problems putting them all together, since the end of a strand has an outlet to add the next, so on..

If each string starts at the same power strip they are all at the same voltage and would be the same brightness imo. The only way they have different brightness is if they are at different voltages because they strung in series.

I don't know how the outlets on at the end of the xmas light strings are wired, but each outlet in a powerstrip, like all correctly done things in the AC world are in parallel.

i understood what you are saying, but if they each start from the same point, they cant light up any further than the last one

Sorry, yeah. He would still need some extension cords.

As long as the door doesn't go all of the way to the ceiling, it shouldn't matter whether your wall does or not.

Yeah, so I'm thinking of having both the door and the wall go all the way up.

I imagine this will cause some ventilation issues in the shower. Would those be remedied by actually putting an exhaust fan in the shower and/or tiling the ceiling.

What's the general feeling on tiling the ceiling of a shower? Setting aside cost, the main downside I can think of is that it seems like it can look weird if done poorly. But I assume it can look good and it avoids the problem of moisture accumulation on the ceiling and associated issues.

Tile, mortar and grout are not water or moisture proof. If you're going to have steam and/or a non-vented shower you'll need full waterproofing in the entire enclosure behind the tile, including ceiling. It usually stops somewhere around 6' up for a normal shower. It would be very important for your tile setter to understand what's going on, and there are a lot of not very good tile setters out there who wouldn't.

If you have an exhaust vent in the shower it would defeat the purpose of having a steam shower. You'll also probably burn up the motor because it won't be able to draw enough air to run the way it's intended.

I'm going to repeat this because it's important: You need a very good tile setter to do a steam or non-vented shower. Do not cheap out, and don't let some halfwit BS you into thinking he knows what he's doing when he doesn't.

Thanks. I was hoping you'd show up.

At this point, I'm convinced I don't want a proper steam shower with the steam generator, so I don't think I need to the full water proofing. I just was thinking that having the full wall to ceiling glass would just keep the shower warmer while I'm showering. The exhaust fan wouldn't be on while showering, but I'd turn it on after to just help dry things out without the need to leave the door open after I'm done.

So does that seem like a reasonable thing to do or should I abandon the idea of fully enclosing a non-steam shower. Is the full waterproofing required if I'm never going to generate the amount of steam one gets from a steam shower.

Also if I don't fully enclose the shower, is there any advantage to tiling the ceiling. I've read that doing so is still beneficial in that case

You should still do full waterproofing if you're going to have it closed at the top. There will be a lot of condensation up there that will migrate through the grout and dampen whatever is behind it otherwise.

If you keep the door closed after the shower you're still going to be stressing out the exhaust fan and probably not exhausting as well as you should. It has to draw air from somewhere, and the gaps around the door won't be very big.

And yes, tiling the ceiling definitely helps no matter what, especially if it's a heavily used shower. Blistered paint and mildew are incredibly common when it's just drywall up there, even when everything has been vented thoroughly and correctly.

Thanks.

So, is an opening above the door only sufficient venting? Or is it better to have the entire wall not go all the way up to the ceiling.

I think the latter will look better aesthetically, but I'm just curious if the space above the door alone (say 6" and 1/3 the width of the wall) is good enough to avoid ventillation problems.

idk, I'm trying to visualize bathroom aerodynamics now. 6" doesn't seem like very much to me, but if the exhaust fan were in the shower it would probably work well.

It says each strand is rated 61.2 watts (0.51 amps). And it says not to exceed 216 watts (1.8 amps) when linked end to end. So I guess the internal fuses in the strands are just super small and weak? Replaced the fuse today and it’s all working again. Waiting for another extension cord from Amazon to come so we can split the load.

Dunno what kind of fuses you're talking about, but just don't replace them with bigger (higher rated) fuses. That's how you start fires.

Way back they had house fuses called "Edison fuses" which were the kind that you screw in like a light bulb. If they kept burning out some people would replace them with what was called a "Lincoln fuse", which was a penny.

On the male end of Christmas lights, they have a little sliding door thing. Open that up and there are a couple of little fuses inside. They provide you with extra fuses and bulbs. Fires are no bueno so we’ll be using the ones they gave us. The manual in the box says the fuses are 3 amp, 125 volt.

I am too.


So master bath where the door is only 1/3 of the shower. Would be helpful to know the dimensions. But.... I would go wall to the ceiling for the end of the shower where the shower head is and put the door and only 1 column of glass blocks at the other end only as high as the door.

However I would want ~12 inches give or take a few and then I don't think you would need an exhaust fan. If your shower is indeed this big and you crank up your water heater, you will have plenty of steam and no cold drafts.

Also, an auxiliary bathroom heater is more valuable to me than a shower with no draft whatsoever. Bump up the temp 10 or so degrees above the rest of the house and you won't even notice if there is one.

Shower is about 4 ft x 7 ft. Walls on 3 sides. Glass wall w/ door is one of the 7 ft sides.

That is a sweet sized shower! I'll keep my how many women in three joke to myself.

But I think what I recommended above should work. More knowledgeable folks may be able to confirm.

OK, so let's assume that I'm going with a shower with a glass wall and door that doesn't go all the way up to the ceiling, so the ventillation is great (maybe it stops a foot from the ceiling). And let's also assume that I put the exhaust fan outside the shower.

I will have the toilet in a water closet that is closed with a pocket door. I assume that I'll need another dedicated exhaust fan for the water closet room.

Does code require I have one? Even if not required by code, I'm assuming it's a good idea. If we didn't have one and really needed ventilation, I assume leaving the pocket door open and just running the fan would help. But it's a pretty large bathroom, so I guess a two fan setup is by far the best thing to do.