How to Replace a Doorbell _ Ask This Old House

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign So today we're going to meet with a homeowner that has a hardwired doorbell in place that doesn't operate anymore now we know they have the button at the front door but the other components seem to be missing so what we want to do is give them a hand trying to find some of the existing wires and see if we can possibly reconnect what might have been there a little more complicated than you actually might think but the homeowner wants to have this doorbell working and we're going to do everything we can to make that happen hi Heath hey Mike nice to meet you you too so I'm guessing from the fact that I had to knock that this is the doorbell you wrote it about yeah exactly um we've been here for about two years there was a button here when we first moved in that we tried to play with to see if it would work and the whole thing fell off so we're just really hoping to get a working doorbell set up okay so we want to get the system back up and running yeah uh roughly how old is the house do you know it was built in the 1940s 1940s okay and we can look at this and we can see that that wiring kind of shows that age it's fairly brittle um so there were three major components that go into the doorbell system like this uh the first one being the doorbell button which we have so at least we know the system was in place the second one is going to be the chime so can we go inside and take a look and see if we can find a chime yeah absolutely okay so we couldn't find the chime upstairs all right Meg would you mind showing me the electrical panel first right over here we've got the panel here all right perfect so what we're looking for is component number three the Transformer and I brought one with me so we can kind of get an idea of what we're going to try and Chase down in this basement so it looks something like this and what this does is it takes the 120 volt power from the panel somewhere in the system and converts it to 16 volts to power the doorbell uh normally we'd see it somewhere around the panel so I might see this you know bolted up here or down bottom but I'm not seeing anything here or any trace of wiring so let's take a look at some of the junction boxes and other things in the basement it may be mounted somewhere in there okay foreign all right well we've looked for the chime we couldn't find that we've looked for the Transformer we couldn't find that and we don't see any of the wiring that's associated with this doorbell downstairs anyway but we know we had one because we have the button outside so I've got one last thing I want to try and I want to take a toner and I want to put the unit outside on the wire and what this is going to let us do is send a signal through that existing wire and maybe we'll get lucky and try and find the location of it I'm going to try and hear that tone that's hopefully going through that wire oh there we go that's a good sign so it sounds like the wire ends up somewhere up here probably with the old chime location was all right all right so since we located the existing wire somewhere up there that's actually a pretty good spot for a chime and it kind of makes sense what do you think I think it's a good central location uh and what I'd like to do is line it up with the top of this molding as well put it right there all right Meg so what I want to do now is locate the stud so we can find out what the hollow Bay is for getting our wires into okay so one of the easiest ways to do that if we get lucky is using just a magnet so I'm hoping to catch one of the drywall screws or one of the nails that's holding the drywall in place foreign there's one I'm just gonna give it a light pencil mark and that makes sense the Box will be attached here and let's come over here great so that's a second one and anything else shouldn't be anything else in the middle and we'll just double check the measurement see if that makes sense and that's about 16 inches apart it's about what we expected so now we have a stud here a stud here looks like an open Bay in between so I want to take this plate off next and see what's behind here let's take a look all right so we know we're contending with this we know what our Bay is so now we're down to how we have to get there so the first thing we have is we know the chime is going up top and we know the wire is up top so what I'd like to do first I want to make the hole up there and see if we get lucky and we can find this wire so Meg I have some good news we found a wire right let's see if we can get it out of there and it looks like the same wire we have outside we just don't know if it's the button or if it's the old power wire would you mind passing me the pair of red-handled pliers right there strip this end up and then in the back of the bag in the small pouch yeah there's a meter right there all right so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the meter in continuity and I do that we can hear a beep if something's touching or closed okay so I have the two wires nothing there you want to go outside just touch the two wires outside together and we'll see if it's this one by any chance and just let me know when they're touching all right so we have some good news that is the uh doorbell button wire all right thing so now we want to see if we get lucky we want to see if it's actually loose it was loose pulling down from the top but we want to see if we can actually tie the wire on outside push that through and try and pull that up okay so what I want to do is take this new wire tie it onto the existing wire it hopefully use this as a pull to pull that up and I'm going to gently try and tape it onto this once we do that I'm going to have you feed it and try and gently push it in while I try and pull it up all right feel like it's moving at all no foreign yeah the wire is pretty brittle I'm afraid it's probably not going to budge okay looking in here all of our wiring at that switch box goes up there's nothing that goes down so we can see that this whole interior stud is clean no wiring so what I'd like to try before we put a hole in the drywall I'm going to drill a 5 8 inch hole here that's the size for a standard doorbell button if it were recessed and I'm going to take a skinny bit and go and angle through the stud and I only feel comfortable doing that because we know there are no wires there good I'm gonna take this fish I'm gonna try and push this through so if you want to go open the ladder and see if you can see it out of that hole okay and we'll try and catch it all right I got it all right you want to pull that out a couple of feet okay oh look at that great all right so next we'll tie the wire on and pull that back down okay put that through there just fold it over then I'm gonna give it one thin layer of tape just gonna gently feed that while I pull this down okay great all right I've got that on my end all right let's make a little Loop and back in here we'll just cut a little extra off there and we'll just make a little Loop so it doesn't go anywhere so I think Meg that was the hard part all right so what I'm going to do next I'm going to head to the basement and we'll drill and we'll do it again all right once I locate the correct Bay in the basement directly below the chime I'll drill a hole to run a wire from the new chime to the new Transformer okay Heath I got it all right Meg so I've got the wire taped onto the fish if you want to go ahead and just take it up Matt the white wire yeah another foot keep going that's good so now we're down to the three components that we talked about originally so we have the button outside the chime that's going to go here in the Transformer so while we're set up here I think we'll just go ahead and get the chime in place and then work on the other two sounds good all right to mount the chime to the wall I'll drill holes for the anchors and then set the anchors into the wall foreign next I'll take the screws and attach the chime to the wall in those anchors to wire the chime I'll take the wire that comes from the Transformer and attach it to the Transformer terminal and the wire that comes from the button at the front door and attached to the front door terminal all right so now that the chime is in it's time to go ahead and install the button so what I'm going to do is I'm going to have you strip the jacket up first and then we'll strip the individual conductors all right so next we're going to slide this into place all right now the button's all set chime's all set I'll go downstairs make up the Transformer and then we'll test it out all right the Transformer lowers the voltage to make the doorbell safer to work all right so the final step is done so we've done a lot of work today we've installed all new wiring for the doorbell we've installed the new main components all three of them we've done the new button the new chime and the new Transformer so everything should be done and operational so if you want to do the honors yeah sounds awesome great so we have an actual real functioning doorbell real power if you ever want to change the button to something else you always have that option yeah so I think you're pretty good all right thank you so much no problem glad to help so I'm just going to go inside and clean up and be on our way all right thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every Home Improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the Subscribe button to make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed\n"