DOOR BELL SAGA - PART II

[clare]

I didn't write that ----

[clare]

And some of them even have a licence saying they are one!

[bob_villain]

The contractor here in town has apprentices that may be called in to a job. They don't have to be under direct supervision either. As long as they wor k under a certified electrician. I have gotten my share of hacks...and have complained (when I had to call in electricians for institutional work).

[Ralph Mowery]

Those licenses don't mean much around here. We did not need to be licensed at work, but some got their license to do outside work. There was one that had to take the test 3 times. I would not hire him to change a battery in a one cell flashlight.

[clare]

A bit like one mechanic I hired years back.

I said he wasn't a fast mechanic, but he wasn't a slow mechanic either

- he was just a half fast mechanic.

[hrhofmann]

Kate,

If you can trace a wire with two actual copper conductors from either the b ell itself or from the doorbell pushbutton back to the vicinity of the fuse /circuit breaker box, that would lead you to the transformer. The transfor mer may be mounted on the top/bottom/sides of the fuse box, or may be mount ed on a 4 inch square electrical box. The transformer is about 2 inches sq uare, and the wire with the two conductors from the doorbell or pushbutton most likely will terminate on 2 screws that are part of the transformer its elf.

[clare]

The problem was he wasn't "good" "Half Fast" = "Half-Assed"

[Tekkie®]

[e-mail] posted for all of us...

A nut turner-after you told him which nut...

[Tekkie®]

Oren posted for all of us...

Good Fast Cheap Pick two...

[clare]

even worse than that. A nut stripper after you showed him which nut.

[clare]

Slow, useless and expensive - you can have all 3 at once.

After I let him go he used me as a reference (give you a ckue how clueless he was?) and I told the prospective employer "I can in all honestly say, you can consider yourself lucky if you can get the man to work for you"

He didn't get the job.

[Ralph Mowery]

I worked at a plant that ran 24/7 as an electrician with a mechanic as trouble shooters at night and week ends. The mechanic was not too good at finding a problem , but could strip down and rebuild almost anything. He had been there much longer than I had. Not too many wanted to work with him. It took me about a year to learn how to tell the problem with his equipment. After that I enjoyed working with him. Many times we would work together on problems. I would tell him what I thought the problem was and he would take out the bad parts and replace them at a fast pace. Repaired a lot that the day crew would leave for us and the two of us got a good reputation of the ones to call for problems.

[Don Y]

No good deed goes unpunished! :>

I was project manager for a subcontracted defense dept project at one of my first jobs: Get the production line up and running, then move on to REAL engineering.

I would get a panicked call from Manufacturing every 8-12 weeks. "We seem to have a quality problem! We can't get ANY of the systems we've built, working!"

(WTF??)

Didn't take long to realize that the guy responsible for testing them would simply swap boards until he had a system that passed all the tests. Then ship the completed unit.

Leaving any "bad" boards in his "collection".

Until the only boards that remained were ALL bad boards (regardless of how severe/insignificant the particular problems may have been).

"No, you don't have a MANUFACTURING problem. Failure rates are exactly what they should be! You have a TEST problem! And, HIS NAME is..."

Of course, they never wanted to deal with that "problem" and would just cajole me into getting the remaining systems up and running (so they wouldn't incur performance penalties).

Then, the problem would repeat a couple of months later.

I wonder what they did after I left the firm? :>

[Robert Green]

Worked as a QC chief for a major photofinisher (remember them?) fresh out of college. We ran start up and shut down tests each day to determine whether we needed to tweak the color developer or color bleach based on the test. One machine on the line baffled us. It would seem to go out of whack at night when the line was shut down. Turns out that to be helpful, the tech running that machine did the start up and shut down tests at the same time each morning to save effort and turned in the night test as if she had just done it. She didn't have any clue as to WHY we tested and so didn't even understand why what she did was wrong!

[Tekkie®]

[e-mail] posted for all of us...

You got me there!

[Tony Hwang]

How about getting rid of exams at school then? How about unlicensed doctors, lawyers, pilots, skippers? Where do we draw the line?

[Tony Hwang]

You told that? I told fire me if you can, and I got 3 raises in one year from him..., LOL!

[TomR]

You didn't ruffle any feathers as far as I am concerned or could see.

It may or may not be easy to find out where the transformer is located depending on the layout and type of house that you have. For example, if you happen to have a house with a basement that is not finished and has open ceilings and an electric panel in the basement, you can probably easily find the transformer and the doorbell wiring. That's because so most of the electrical wiring circuits are visible just by looking at the ceiling and the electric panel. And, if that is what you have, you can probably look under the front door area in the basement (unless the front door is over a porch that is not over the basement area) and you may see thinner doorbell wires coming into the basement under near the door area. You can usually follow them back to a transformer.

If you Google "doorbell transformer" and then click on Google Images, you'll see lots of photos of doorbell transformers. Some of the photos show the transformers attached to the side of an electrical junction box. Often the transformer is attached to a junction box, and the 110-volt power to the transformer is coming from inside the box. Coming off of the transformer are the smaller low voltage doorbell wires.

If you happen to have the above situation, and you can see the transformer and doorbell wires, then installing a whole new doorbell system will be easy since all of the wires are visible. Then the handyman/woman, an electrician, or you (if you are feeling brave) can just switch out the components of the old doorbell system with the new one using all of the existing wiring. It eliminates having to run any new wires.

Or, since you said you were able to contact the manufacturer of your doorbell system, you may be able to try to buy another replacement doorbell switch that is made by the same manufacturer and try using that and see how long it lasts.

[Stormin Mormon]

Hired another repair guy to do what you used to do?