Jumping an outlet to another

Question

I have a 1927 Tudor, and I'm having my 2nd floor bathroom renovated currently. My house still has some knob and tube, most of which is on the first floor, and a few spots on the 2nd floor.

One of those spots is in the 2nd floor bathroom that's being renovated. That bathroom has the following electrical components:

1. light fixture above the sink and its corresponding switch

2. medicine cabinet outlet

3. ventilation switch

4. another outlet on the wall that's close to the medicine cabinet

1-3 appears to all be on modern wiring, but 4 appears to connect to knob and tube.

One of the ideas I had was rather than updating that wiring from the bathroom to the electrical panel in the basement, can we just jump it to #2, the medicine cabinet outlet, which is already on modern wiring? Is this safe to do?

Answer 1

Yes, that should be safe to do. A couple of caveats:

• Modern relative to 1927 knob & tube could mean with (typically 1960s or later) or without ground. If it does not have ground then you may have a code issue with adding new ungrounded receptacles to the circuit.
• Any new bathroom receptacles must be GFCI-protected. If the circuit is already protected (either at the breaker or at the medicine cabinet receptacle or someplace in between) then the new receptacle can share that protection. If not then you could add GFCI protection by adding a new GFCI/receptacle, but far preferable is to protect the existing receptacle as well, either by replacing the breaker with a GFCI/breaker or by replacing the medicine cabinet receptacle with a GFCI/receptacle.