Door Bell Help

I need some help. Mom 82 yr old Aunt who still works at the greeting card store that she has been for 58 yrs, loving every minute of it has finally admitted that she is becoming a little hard of hearing. When we go to visit she can not hear her house door bell. Is there a way to leave the original one in the living room and place additional bells in the TV room and her bedroom? The one in the living room is on the stairwell wall to the basement and I can see the wiring to the transformer with no problem. I can also gain access to the other 2 rooms without to much trouble. I just don't know if you can run three chimes in conjunction.

Thanks for your help and I hope I posted to the right place.

Doug

 

You can add more chimes to the circuit by simply wiring the additional chimes parallel to the existing chime. You will most likely need a larger transformer. Make sure that the VA (volt-amp) rating of the new transformer equals, or better yet, exceeds the total VA rating of all the chimes added together. You will probably be OK with 10 VA per chime but do the math. The existing wiring should be able to handle all three chimes.

 

Thanks Bolted Fault, but one additional question. When you say "parallel," do you mean that all the chimes should be wired directly back to the transformer?

Thanks again for your reply.

Doug

 

They don't have to be wired "directly" back to the transformer. Direct wiring is sometimes called "home run" wiring. But daisy-chaining them is good enough if you prefer, as long as they are still electrically in parallel rather than electrically in series. This means that the wire from the second chime may go through the location of the first chime, but power doesn't have to go through the first chime itself to get to the second chime. (Jeepers, I'm not even sure I could follow that! I hope you could anyway.)

 

"Nutone Catalog Index"-------"Get all the answers"------

As best I know, Nutone has a "Wire-less" Inter-Comm system which MAY include both door speakers and door-buttons. If there is an electrical supply-house that is a Nutone distributor in your area, pay a visit------------------Good Luck

 

Just posting back. Thanks for all the help. It was easier to run the new chimes as home runs. I chased theupstairs wires along the heating duct to the 2nd floor location through the attic crawl space and went to the den via phone line routing. Increased the transformer and everything works great.

Thanks again for all the help.

Doug

 

Home Depot and Manerds has a kit that allows you to add a wireless chime that can be placed any where even moved room to room there is a little module that just wires to the existing chime and the remote chime just takes 4 d battery's and its very modest priced. it makes a simple way to add a chime to an existing system without the wiring. and only takes a couple minutes to install actual installing the battery's takes longer. LOL

Adding a wired chime to an existing system will most likely over load the existing transformer and the voltage drop will be to much to allow the bell to ring so watch out as a heaver transformer or higher voltage one will only shorten the life of the bells and cost more in the long run. It can be done but you will probably have to add a second transformer to parallel the first one and this still wont overcome the voltage drop in the small bell wire. if you are lucky they ran a bigger size wire maybe an 18 awg and it wont be a problem but the wireless is the way to go.