We finished a bathroom renovation in Feilding recently where the owners were redoing both bathrooms and the separate toilet at the same time. It’s a good example of what the electrical side of a bathroom reno actually involves, because there’s a lot more to it than swapping a light.
Here’s what we did and why, in case you’re planning something similar.
What the job covered
Two bathrooms and a toilet room, all stripped back to the framing as part of the renovation:
- New warm white downlights through both bathrooms and the toilet
- Light and fan switches in black to match the new fittings
- RCD protected power points beside each new vanity
- Power run in for the heated towel rails
- LED mirrors wired in and mounted in both bathrooms
- Extract fans in both bathrooms with ducting and external vents
- A sensor light installed on the far side of the garage while we were on site
- Everything tested and certified
Do the electrical work before the linings go on
The single biggest thing with a bathroom reno is timing. Once the gib is on and the tiling is done, every cable you forgot becomes a wall you have to open up again.
We’d rather come through while the framing is open, run everything you’ll want in five years as well as what you want now, and be done. Extra cables at that stage cost very little. The same cable after the tiler has been is a much bigger job and a much bigger bill.
So if you’re planning a bathroom, get your sparky in early to walk through it with you. Not when the vanity’s ready to go in.
Lighting: warm white, and enough of it
Bathrooms are one of the rooms people most often get wrong on lighting. Too few downlights and you get shadows exactly where you need to see. Cool white light makes a nice bathroom look clinical and makes everyone look tired in the mirror.
On this job we used warm white downlights, laid out so the light falls across the space rather than straight down in one spot. The switches went in black to match the tapware and the rest of the fittings, which is a small thing that makes the finished room look considered rather than assembled.
LED mirrors are worth mentioning too. They need a supply run to them and a proper fixing, so they have to be planned in. They’re not something you add on the last day.
Power beside the vanity, and why it’s RCD protected
Every bathroom wants a power point by the vanity. Hair dryers, shavers, electric toothbrushes, straighteners. Without one you get extension leads run in from the hallway, which is exactly what you don’t want in a wet room.
Those outlets are RCD protected. An RCD watches the current flowing out and the current coming back, and if some of it goes missing, which is what happens when it’s travelling through a person, it cuts the power in well under a second. In a room with water and bare feet, that’s not a nice-to-have.
Heated towel rails also need their own supply run in. People often assume they plug in. Most don’t.
Ventilation is the part people skimp on, and it’s the part that matters
This was the biggest single item on the job, and for good reason.
A bathroom fan has one purpose: get the moisture out of the house. A surprising number of them don’t. They get installed with no ducting at all, or with ducting that stops in the ceiling space, which means every shower is quietly pumping warm wet air into your roof cavity. That’s how you end up with mould in the ceiling, damp insulation that stops insulating, and in the worst cases rotting framing.
Both fans on this job were ducted properly and vented out through the exterior wall. The air leaves the building. That’s the whole point.
If you’ve got a fan that runs but your mirror still fogs up and stays fogged, or you’re getting mould in the corners of the ceiling, there’s a fair chance it isn’t ducted to the outside. It’s worth getting someone to put their head in the ceiling space and look.
What it cost, roughly
Every bathroom is different, so treat this as a guide rather than a price. This job came to just over $6,000 plus GST across two bathrooms, the toilet room, and the garage sensor. That covered all the lighting, switching, power, mirror installs, both ventilation systems with ducting, and the testing and certification.
A single bathroom with lighting, a vanity outlet and a properly ducted fan sits a long way below that. The way to find out what yours would be is to have us come and look at it.
Getting it certified
Every job we do gets tested and certified, and you get the paperwork. In a bathroom that matters more than most rooms, because of the zones rules around where fittings can go in relation to the bath and shower. Anyone can screw a light into a ceiling. Whether it’s legal and safe where they’ve put it is a different question.
If you’re selling the house later, or making an insurance claim, that certificate is the thing that says the work was done properly.
Thinking about a bathroom reno?
If you’re planning a bathroom in Feilding, Palmerston North or anywhere across the Manawatū, get us in before the linings go on and we’ll walk through it with you. We’ll tell you what you need, what you don’t, and what you’ll wish you’d run while the walls were open.
Have a look at what’s involved with bathroom and laundry fans, or get a free quote and we’ll come and have a look.