Before I go set up an account on yet another forum (they are great though), I figured I'd see if the handy bunch here has any opinion on this.
My house was built about 6 years ago and at the beginning of the summer I noticed my door bell went dead when a delivery guy had to knock. I took a look and noticed the plunger for the bell mechanism was somewhat melted, and it couldn't move anymore. I chalked it up to cheap Chinese components and just switched the wire over to the other chime (theoretically for the back door). That worked for another couple months before it quit again. Same issue. Melted plunger. I happened to mention this to one of the guys at work and he told me about how he came home to find his door bell smoking one day. I came home and disconnected everything.
I figured the first place to look was the transformer. I checked it with the multimeter and it read about 5 volts. The unit was supposed to be 16v. Figure I might have found the problem.
So I just bought a new transformer and bell mechanism and just finished wiring it all up. It works, but when I checked the transformer voltage, I am getting a reading of 22v on a 16v unit.
I am admittedly a novice on this (as I am at just about everything "handy"), but I am wondering if this a problem. I had my doubts about these cheap Chinese transformers, but I couldn't find anything else online or in B&M stores. Do I have another bad transformer? Or are these kind of variances normal? Could there be another problem? I'm going to be cursing this home builder again if I need to call an electrician for a door bell in a 6 year old home. My parents have been in their home for 25 years and haven't had to replace door bell transformers. Thanks for the advice as always.
My house was built about 6 years ago and at the beginning of the summer I noticed my door bell went dead when a delivery guy had to knock. I took a look and noticed the plunger for the bell mechanism was somewhat melted, and it couldn't move anymore. I chalked it up to cheap Chinese components and just switched the wire over to the other chime (theoretically for the back door). That worked for another couple months before it quit again. Same issue. Melted plunger. I happened to mention this to one of the guys at work and he told me about how he came home to find his door bell smoking one day. I came home and disconnected everything.
I figured the first place to look was the transformer. I checked it with the multimeter and it read about 5 volts. The unit was supposed to be 16v. Figure I might have found the problem.
So I just bought a new transformer and bell mechanism and just finished wiring it all up. It works, but when I checked the transformer voltage, I am getting a reading of 22v on a 16v unit.
I am admittedly a novice on this (as I am at just about everything "handy"), but I am wondering if this a problem. I had my doubts about these cheap Chinese transformers, but I couldn't find anything else online or in B&M stores. Do I have another bad transformer? Or are these kind of variances normal? Could there be another problem? I'm going to be cursing this home builder again if I need to call an electrician for a door bell in a 6 year old home. My parents have been in their home for 25 years and haven't had to replace door bell transformers. Thanks for the advice as always.