door bell not ringing

[mm]

You're right. It's not neon. Still, it has a fairly high resistance and the rest of what I said is true.

I didn't say 24 volts.

[Ed Pawlowski]

"mm" wrote

As posted earlier, our doorbell did not work for years. We made the kids stand outside in case someone came to the door and they would alert us. No, we did not make them stay out al the time, they came in to use the bathroom. They took turns for meals.

[mm]

But the OP doesn't even let his button come it to eat or use the bathroom.

[Dan]

The answer is ; go to Home Depot and buy a wireless doorbell!

[HeyBub]

Excellent analysis. After due consideration, it is my opinion that your problem lies with the button.

[clare]

I sincerely doubt it is a "specification" issue - the OP said it "stopped working", which would indicate it WAS working a short while ago, and nothing has been changed in the installation.

[Sjouke Burry]

Very nice solution!

Instead of checking a button once in several years, we replace it by a battery problem every few months, and waterdamaged electronics every two years........

[clare]

Perhaps the second most useless bit of "technology" feisted upon us in the last 10 years.

[Robert Green]

Agreed. It's the part that's exposed to the elements and skin oil and whatever else people have on their fingertips when they push the button. (Eeeewwwwuuuu!) It's the most likely point of failure and very easy to test. It's where I would start to look unless I knew that something had changed elsewhere in the "chain."

If that didn't improve things, I would then disassemble and clean the chime module since that's the only other moving part and could have accumulated dust and pet hair inside the mechanism. I'd probably measure the resistance of the wires at the doorbell button before I took apart the chime to see if there was a problem in the wiring.

-- Bobby G.

[Twayne]

It's one of a set of possibilities; if there is no relay, well, think hard now!