So how hard is it to do?
I know that The Medway Handyman (AKA Doorbell Dave) has successfully installed two of them with money changing hands and today whilst wiring a boiler up the customer offered me £10 to fit a wireless doorbell that they had bought 6 months ago and not managed to install!
Easy to do: whether it has a tone that is loud enough and intrusive enough for you to notice when you are upstairs replying to uk.d-i-y is quite another matter. We have ours set to a 'barking dog', as the other tune type sounds just didn't get heard, but the 'dog' often doesn't get heard either. Ours did come with a pocket receiver for when you are in the garden, but the indoor receiver soon packed up, so that has now become the indoor one.
Moral, try before you buy - which is not so easy in these days of the impregnable vacuum pack!
S
I installed one for my elderly mother a couple of years ago. Don't remember the make but it came from B&Q. Several comments: The range of the bell-push 'transmitter' seemed pitifully short and nothing like what they claimed. They cautioned against possible signals from a neighbouring bell setting it off*. Fat chance! Concrete walls and embedded metal doorframes attenuate the signal and reduce the range even further. If there's metal reinforcing in the door frame, don't mount it there. The volume from her 'bell' is ridiculously quiet, with no obvious way of adjusting it. And she's rather deaf! Whenever I visit, I just bang on the door; much more effective.
*IIRC there was a sub-miniature switch system on the back for selecting different channels to avoid this problem. Transmitter and receiver had both to be set to the same channel.
Brilliant! I got one for about £3 on eBay and its really good. Two sounders and one bell push. I often work well away from my front door and now I don't miss deliveries. The tunes are vile though, so I finished up with bing-bong that I used to make fun of. Hi ho.
Peter Scott
In message , Chris Hogg writes
You need one of these then
What size batteries do they take though? ;-)
PPK9
Generally a waste of time unless you live in a bedsit. They're simply not loud enough for the average house where people listen to the radio, etc.
We have a wireless "bell" unit and 2 senders (Not buttons but units designed to work with exsiting buttons - ie. 2 wires from the button into the internal sender unit)
Bell has 2 different chimes so we can tell if it's front or back door.
We specifically went for the loudest 'bell' unit we could find, and it's loud. Almost too loud if you're right next to it. Good for our big, rambling Devon town-house, however, it would be trivial to fit a 2nd 'bell' unit if we needed to - the senders are one-way radio devices, so can be picked up by any number of bell units tuned to the senders code.
Gordon
I also have a sender which is connected to our normal door bell. We use the receiver when we are in the garden. Signal works well through the length of the brick built house and to the end of the 45 foot garden, so pretty good. As an aside, it is Friedland and so is our wireless intruder alarm. I found by accident that, if you use the same four digit code on each, pressing the door bell makes the indoor alarm respond as well (same sound - bing, bong -, not continuous alarm and not the external siren).
So two lots of batteries to go flat?
So you've got one that can drive an external non battery bell? Most can't.
It's not that big a deal...
No... By "bell unit", I'm meaning one of the new fangled electronic door-bell types that have a speaker rather than a mechanical bell, so 2 identical 'bells' listening to the same sender(s).
For example: One of these:
but yes, 2 (or more) sets of batteries to replace every year.
Gordon
Two decent proper bells will cover most houses - even with the radio on. For a lot less money and hassle than those things.
Speakers are horribly inefficient devices.
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
I am slightly hard of hearing, VERY if my wife is to be believed, so when I was looking for a new door bell I fitted a sound bomb at the top of the stairs wired in to the bell circuit, I kept the bell in the lounge. Now I can hear it all over the house and most of the garden,
100' back garden. Also the person calling can hear it and get positive feedback that it's working.Similar to
Not exactly subtle, but effective.
I would only have one that plugs into the mains. Some have a 13a socket so you don't lose a socket. If it is battery operated then surely it is like having a radio turned on
24/7 waiting for a signal (to make it ring).*shrug*
It works for us.
Gordon
Yes, but the current drain is much less (unless people ring the doorbell continuously). We get about 18 months out of a couple of AA Duracells in our Friedland one.
Not quite. The art of low-power electroics is quite good these days. So the only thing running will be the reciever and once that gets the code, it can 'wake-up' the amplifier, etc. and play the tune...
Gordon
I have a 6" Gent bell (mains powered) which can interface to the phone ringer or the wake-up alarm and it comfortably covers most of the block of flats :-)
Friedland are wimpy by comparison, and Byron you might as well rattle a dried lentil in an empty coke can.
Owain
Sounds good.
Indeed. An underdome bell is about the loudest standard door bell - those ding dongs and warbly things near useless unless you live in silence.
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