New bathroom electrical circuit making me CRAZY!!

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Casey81

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We are doing a bathroom remodel. The old bathroom tapped into the existing circuit through a wall plug to power the vanity light and an oulet. The exisiting circuit is on a 15amp fuse and powers 5 wall outlets and 4 overhead lights. We spliced into the circuit, in a junction box, 4 ways. I connected all neutral wires, hot wires and ground wires (pigtailed to grounding screw). We are using 14/2 Romex as is used previously. We led one wire from this junction to a GFCI which worked fine. We led the other 3 wires into a switch box and connected 3 switches - 2 dimmers (single-pole) and 1 regular switch. We ran a wire from the first Halo recessed pot light (neutral to neutral, hot to hot, gound to ground) and connected it to the dimmer switch (neutral to neutral. hot to hot hot to hot and ground to ground to pigtail and grounding screw.) NO LUCK! I followed all the diagrams exactly to no avail. All I know is that my tester shows current running to where I have wired it but it wont work. I pressed TEST on the GFCI and it cut power to all the other wires. HELP!!!!!!! I know I'm missing something but can't for the life of me figure out what!
Thanks in advance,
Casey
 

Casey81

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To create the new circuit in the junction box I took the wire that the previous owners had leading to their vantity light and outlet and spliced it 4 ways in a junction box. (It begins by coming out of the master bedroom outlet)
 

hj

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From your somewhat convoluted description, I get the impression that if the GFCI turns off ALL the power, it is not wired correctly. Your description of the problem with the lights is also impossible with a properly wired circuit. A side issue, is that the 15 amp circuit is, or can be, seriously overloaded.
 

Jadnashua

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Also, since you're remodeling, you should bring the bathroom wiring up to code which requires a 20A dedicated circuit. The only place that circuit can go is another bathroom, (at least it used to), and that's a bad idea.

A GFCI has line and load leads (at least most do - all have line inputs, some do not have load outputs). Anything on the line side of the GFCI should not be disrupted if you trip the GFCI, only those things connected to its load leads.

Keep in mind if there are any switches in these circuits, the white/black hot/neutral designation may no longer apply. You're supposed to mark a switched lead, but that may not have happened, especially since it wasn't up to code in the first place.
 
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