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Subject - Chime tester
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John A. Peters
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Find the bad splice
There is a company that makes something called an extend-a-chime. It has a little transmitter unit that you attach behind the existing doorbell and a companion receiver unit that you plug into a wall outlet. One of the advantages with this unit is you can move the noisemaker to any plug outlet in the house. Also because the noisemaker is AC powered there are no batteries to run down either on the transmitter or the receiver.
They sell extra chime noisemaker units in case you want to have several chimes around the house.
I found out that some models of the chimes units make a chime sound as soon as you plug them into the power. This makes a great tool when you're troubleshooting a dead outlet. You plug the chime into the dead outlet and then go around the building wiggling splices and tightening wire nuts until you hear the chime. This is much better than stationing somebody to watch the a light and give you a shout when the light comes on. Sometimes your helper is distracted or starts reading a funny book or comic book and you loose the effectiveness of knowing exactly which splices was the one that caused of the lost hot or lost neutral.
Now you can go around and pop off the cover plates, and poke at the wire nuts with an insulated screwdriver. If the chime does not sound, move on to the next outlet. Usually just nudging the bad splice will cause the power to go to the chime and you will say "Ah hah!"
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RSB
| not bad
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kbsparky
| Just installed one of those remote chime units today. This newer model does not sound off when initially plugged in, like the older ones did.
I'll have to keep looking for an old FASCO unit <shrug>.
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Wirenutz
| I've used my Ideal Voltage drop meter to assess this sort of thing for years, but i like the simplicity of the d-bell John
~W~
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blackrd
| good idea. Is the fasco still on the market, or a diffrent brand available? I have never seen one of these units in the chime area in HD
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John A. Peters
| The model to look for is #RC3703A and I am still on the trail of where to get it.
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