Doorbell Repair for Dummies

wired doorbell button

It chaps the collective hiney of Antisocial network staffers when people who know nothing about a topic pretend to write how-to instructions. We know, of course, who to blame: the schmucks who started eHow.com, and then let every out-of-work J-school grad and "communications" major reword someone else's instructions at $15 a pop. The problem is obviously that when these greedy freelancers don't know what they're talking about, they get stuff wrong. With luck, their mistakes won't be dangerous, but who wants to depend on luck? For that matter, who wants to depend on Angely Mercado and her Hunker.com post, "How to Replace a Wired Doorbell with a Wireless Doorbell."

Mercado's intro is clue number one that she's way out of her comfort zone:

"Wired doorbells wear down over time, and their chime eventually becomes a little annoying..."

A wired doorbell is an electro-mechanical device that can fail in several ways, but "wearing down" isn't likely to be one of them. The most common reason is that the wiring running to the door has been severed, and it's nearly impossible to repair. We're with Angely on that, but some of what she says is asinine. Take, for instance:

• "Before removing the older doorbell, turn off the power that goes into it by turning off the circuit breaker in the panel box." – It'd help if you told us how to find the right breaker, since the bell isn't working... but in reality, there's no need to expend much energy on the low-voltage wires to the front door.

• "A lot of chime doorbells have an AC/DC transformer in a nearby junction box." – No, they don't: it's a stepdown transformer, not AC/DC. Oh, and all wired doorbells have a stepdown transformer.
• "If there isn't a junction box, the transformer may be directly in the beam of the door or nearby in the wall." – WTF is a "beam of [a] door"? Hint, Angely: the transformer will be out in the open somewhere, probably in the attic or basement. Sometimes it's mounted on the wall in a nearby closet.
• "After the face plate and button are removed from the wall... push the wires back into the wall. To patch the hole, it's easiest to use mesh and then cover it with plaster..." – Plaster? This moron wants you to plaster over a hole on an exterior wall? Idiot!

That's pretty much the quality of "advice" you get from freelancers like Mercado when you look for DIY tips. It's also pretty much the sort of work that earns writers like Angely the Dumbass of the Day award for all their "hard" work.  Oh yeah, and Mercado's masterpiece turns out to be a rewrite of the eHow post originally written by serial dumbass Alec Preble. It may be prettier, but it's just as stupid!

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DDIY - ELECTRICAL