doorbell

[Eric]

My house was built in 1996, i bought it in 2003. Its a nice place and today i replaced the doorbell button with a decorative thing my wife bought. Well, when i took off the old button i had about 1 inch of wire sticking out. There is no more in the wall because the fools who wired it ran the wire between the siding and the plywood sheathing. I got it done but... This got me to looking around a little closer at the rest of the house. They really skimped on the outlets too. Why not put telephone and electrical near where any possible head of the bed will go (usually only two walls will be reasonable for bed layout), and on both sides so you can have night stands where you want? Or how about cable tv on the opposite walls? During contruction this is so easy and cheap to do, but most places i see are so poorly planned electrically it just amazes me. Most are just barely code and a lot are not. Eric

[John Grabowski]

Builders want low bids from their sub-contractors. In order for the subs to make a decent profit they resort to minimum standards and less experienced workers who work cheaper. It is a boom for contractors like me who do a lot of repair work. The only way to get it done right and well is to personally oversee the design and build of your home.

I'm working with a builder right now on his own new home. He doesn't use me on his projects for other people because I am too expensive, but for his own home he doesn't want anyone else to do the electrical work but me and is not overly concerned about my price.

[Mark Lloyd]

and computer network too

[hallerb]

people want low price, code is ONLY concerned with safety....

Plus standards change sometimes FAST.

If building a new home or have walls open smart folks run empty conduit to blank covered boxes.

That way new cables can be fished easily as needed

[Edwin Pawlowski]

The electrician I use at work does not do residential for the reasons you describe. All the builders want is cheap. The few houses he will do are generally high end where people want things done right. Same goes with plumbing.

Adding all the little niceties that "should" be done, the cost will go up $2000+ on even a modest home.

[mgkelson]

. . .

Welcome to the club Eric. I had that problem last year and had to pull one board of the cedar siding off plus I have the problem that the solid wire that they use must be extremely cheap or something. Two bends, with your hands, of about 90-degrees and it breaks. I've had problems for years with it. Depending on the weather, sometimes my doorbell works and sometimes it doesn't.

I have tracked down breaks inside the insulation and fixed it about 3 times, but the problem keeps coming back. To make matters worse, the transformer, for some unknown reason is located under the sheet-rocked ceiling in the basement. Why they put it there instead of in the attic is anybody's guess.

Someday, I'm going to start from scratch and completely rewire the doorbell. Right now it's working, though, and I keep putting it off because it's going to be a nasty job.

[mcfriendly]

Do a search for "Wireless Doorbells" - lots of good choices and less expensive than the time it takes to find the problem.

[David Nebenzahl]

mcfriendly spake thus:

Except that it is possible that one of your neighbors might have one that uses the same frequency, resulting in your doorbell ringing when someone pushes their button. These are generally cheap looking and sounding pieces of crap anyhow; real (hard-wired) doorbells are much better.

[hallerb]

Wires too short in boxes?:(

i HAVE ABANDONED BOXES FOR THIS REASON, REMOVE AND DISCARD RECEPTABLE

Install new box nearby and run new lines.......

my dad had a nightmare he had a rental home where the tenant had to be evicted, 5 months not paying rent......

the idiot tenant stole all the switches and receptables and cut off the wire too short, he had to rewire the entire home.

tenant also stole all the copper plumbing, so he replaced it with all plastic..... no resale value....

[mm]

My ex-girlfriend and her ex-husband built a new house in an expensive neighborhood, using the builder who build the two model homes at the start of the quarter mile road. They chose blueprints and then could make modifications, like a smaller dining room and a bigger kitchen, and 10 foot ceiling in the basement so he could lift weights.

She thinks this is what ruined her marriage (but I think it was her.)

Every day after work (they met at work and worked together) they would go see the house and the contractors made one mistake after another (unlike the model homes which were well made, he told me)

The examples I remember is that they made the power room door open inwards, so that the door was between the toilet and the sink, and one could not shut the door to get from the toilet to the sink, unless one was ready to leave the room. They later made the door open outwards.

And the entryway had its tile down in half the area when they put down the baseboard. Where the tile was, the baseboard went down to the tile, and where the tile wasn't the baseboard was put down to the subfloor.

Every time they found a problem the guy would get upset, but she never cared. This would be enormously annoying (she did it to me too.) but he also told me of many other ways she annoyed him. Her first husband said it was the greatest day of his life the day his divorce from her was final. There was no adultery on anyone's part, just her being annoying.