I've probably spent about 25 total hours now looking for the goddamn doorbell transformer. Slab house built in early 70's. My attic access door is absurdly far away from my actual doorbell button, and they're both extremely far away from the door chime. It takes forever to crawl through the attic and dig through 2 feet of blow in insulation and come up empty over and over again - and it might not even be there anyway, could be mounted on an internal stud.
Is there any way to more methodically find it without just guessing and checking? I don't want to start ripping out drywall if I don't even have a hint of where it might be.
Check water heater and garage.
If it never worked it might have been removed before you bought it
At some point it's easier to run a new one
Thanks, I've already checked. It's definitely not anywhere near the water heater closet.
Slab foundation no basement, attic only and it's a huge pain to crawl through and overfilled with insulation. Nightmare.
check the utility area where your furnace or water heater are. You're trying way too hard. It could be wireless, check the dong
I've always found them in the basement, unfinished side in the ceiling
Why do you need to find it?
It won't hurt anything if left alone, and if your doorbell isn't working just replace it.
Get an electrical toner you absolute mong
Never seen a transformer more than 10 feet away from the bell
>could be mounted on an internal stud
Highly illegal but anything's possible.
i have but it was in a commercial building setting and it was across the lobby near a rear entrance security room
in all the houses I lived in they were located 20 to 50 feet away.
Check your 24 VAC furnace transformer, it may be slaved off that. Otherwise, buy a wire toner tracer. Disconnect the doorbell, hook up the signal generator, and use the induced receiver to find where the wires go. You may have to shut the power off to use it.
Just disconnect the existing one and install a new one where you want. If you cant find it it's not like it's taking up room you're going to miss.
more than meets the eye
That’s what the bullshit hanging in my garage does. It’s 2023, why the frick are they so bulky?
>why the frick are they so bulky?
because idiot transformer size is based on voltage and current requirement.
current year is not relevant.
that is wrong in a general case since it also depends on frequency. ever heard of SMPS? only linear power supplies need bulky transformers. the correct answer is doorbell needs 24V 60Hz AC.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Newhouse-Hardware-Wired-16-Volt-AC-10-Volt-A-Doorbell-Transformer-for-Wired-Door-Chimes-UL-Class-2-Certified-16TR/206973663
yes? that's what i am saying. if you have a common AC chime, it needs 60Hz AC so you have to use a bulky 60Hz transformer. if you had an electronic DC chime, you could get away with a much smaller transformer / SMPS.
My house was built in the 70s. It's in the wall outside the box connected to the basement light switch (upstairs) directly under the bell on the opposite side of the wall.
Kinda a moron place to put it and probably doesn't help you at all.
Get one of these.
my old house had it in a broom closet in the hall, current house it is next to the water heater.
Has someone wired out to the telephone line? Pervious owner in parents did, it's 36v-48v so worked buuut broadband cut anytime the doorbell rang. Not what I expected to power the doorbell but can't argue with results.
doorbell transformers are 16V
you couldn't wire a telephone connection to a door bell because the ring voltage is 90v.
>the government don't want you to know this but there's free voltage in your phone line
I'm not saying it was a good idea but the pervious owner did and it was there. Prolly only an issue if you completed the circuit while the phone was ringing, otherwise you'll get it at the rest voltage or the higher connected line voltage. Doorbell was an old clapper & magnet, too high voltage would just slam it harder.
Also eurogay who used to work in telco here and I don't remember shit being 90v but not like I'm digging out manuals for a job I don't work anymore... About 10 years after I did that fix job, learning about the voltage on phone lines explained a lot.
Pretty sure shit like this is why you lot have doorbell transformers.
Yeah, it was 90v for a neon bulb to light up when it rings.
They could probably only find the extra load with a loop test.
attempting to use the phone line for power will get a visit from the phone company to find out why you are pulling more than a few milliamps.
Just wire 110v straight through the doorbell button. It doesn't have to ring, you'll just hear the scream and know somebody is at the door.
>I'm not saying it was a good idea
Somewhere I read that the phone company can see excessive draw and will investigate.
They don't give a shit. If you're lucky it'll show up an off hook line (<600ohm) and that will cause a howler and then line shut off. If you setup something to clear the fault and then draw it again repeatedly like 5or 10 times, yeah that might raise an alarm in the switch.
This wouldn't make the doorbell ring anyway. It would go 'dunk' once. Phone battery is DC. You'd have to push the button, and ring the phone at same time.
>They don't give a shit.
OH YES THEY DO.
hell when you were only allowed one phone in your house they sure found out when I added a second one.
and yes they will either send someone out or disconnect you.
We have literally thousands of line shorted out at anytime in my office so I don't think anyone cares anymore.
Back in the 70s when you were charged monthly per phone or per jack? Sure.
If you had some device to suck power through a dead short, the switch would treat you like an off hook line. It would send a howler for a minute and then cut battery to you until you took your short off. If you made a little arguing to automate sulking that 50ma down the line and then shutting off repeatedly.... yes I think that would put your line in alarm and probably knock you out of service until a tech looked at you
Telco was former state body sold to a private body. Most of the techs were referred to as having 'the civil service rot' about there work ethic, if it was noticed someone probably thought 'someone should do something about that, not my job'.
If it was an old enough line to exchange monitoring was really just massive/constant overloads or overheat.
There's a significant difference in monitoring and giving a frick.
Unless run at the time the button pressed I assume it would just show an open drop point, like half the lines did. Usually it was a bad 3rd party socket, so would be ignored.
>loop test
>half the loops are open cos incompetent
>Why we sending techs on useless jobs guyz?
Never work in large telco
I definitely experience the "not my problem" problem when I had DSL. Being DSL, it was really shitty, but one morning it was randomly not working *gasp*. I spent three hours on tech support before they finally sent somebody. I was at work when the tech came out. He called me and accused me of tampering with the wiring in their box. He said that a couple of the wires were reversed, and that since nobody had been out, it had to be me. I didn't want to yell at this moron while I was at work, so I verified that it was working and got off the phone. I guarantee that it was backwards from the beginning, and that somebody was doing work upstream and noticed backwards wires and decided to fix it without thinking about what might happen. When I finally cancelled they tried to make me return their modem, even though I had bought it outright.
tldr; frick the phone company Black folk
What a load of shit. Dsl isn't polarity sensitive. It doesn't even need battery
>Dsl isn't polarity sensitive
RJ11 has two pairs, they could be incorrectly intermixed, rather than just one pair having its 'polarity' swapped.
OP, if you're even still here, you can trace AC lines from a few inches away and thru drywall with a properly oriented magnet, which will gently vibrate at 60hz (when the doorbell button is held down).
I wear one on my hand ( https://supermagnetman.com/collections/magnetic-wedding-rings ) which has a lot of sensitivity right near the knuckle, and I've used it to trace 120V lines under load before.
I'm still here yea, still reading, I haven't found it yet. This sounds stupid but I took a detour to build some shitty catwalks in the attic so I can actually maneuver around better. They'll be useful for another project later anyway.
The line trace doesn't help much because I already know where the line is. It makes a fairly large loop from my button, to my chime that covers like two thirds of my house. It's a 60-70 foot crawl from the only drop door to the chime location, another 20 or 30 to the doorbell button, including a large section over top my living room that has high-ish angled ceilings. All the rafter ties are at like 30 degree angles, there is nothing flat to step on. There is a shit ton of old pink corning fiberglass underneath the blow in cellulose insulation.
On the plus side, there is no rot, animals, termites, bugs, or water damage anywhere up there. The blow in looks completely pristine and undisturbed except where I'm trying to dig. So I guess that's something.
>I already know where the line is
Obviously you don't.
Is it plugged in next to your garage door opener? Sometimes AC transformers are encased like a wall wart.
Look in your electrical panel
its probably in the laundry room or laundry closet mounted on the wall by the ceiling
It's behind the chime.
Not every doorbell has a transformer, many of them are wired directly to the chime.
>I've probably spent about 25 total hours now
no you haven't
Ok. if it isn't inside your electrical panel it could be in a box behind the chime, or mounted to the attic light box.
It's in the coat closet nearest your front door. Look inside above the door frame. You're welcome