I need to trace my doorbell wires down into my basement

jkeuning · Feb 17, 2012

I have a 100 year old house with front and back door doorbells. These things are wired and the wires disappear into the walls and run down to the basement. The basement ceiling is totally open to the main floor joists. I can see wires running everywhere but I cannot ID which are the doorbells.

Is there something I can hook to the wires at the button and then walk around the basement testing wires to determine what is what?

Like a circuit snooper or breaker finder or whatever.

Yoyizit · Feb 17, 2012

A battery at the button end and a voltmeter at each disconnected wire pair in the basement.

Or an incand. bulb at the button end and a ohmmeter at each disconnected wire pair. The cold resistance of a 60W bulb should be about 18 ohms but you may have to add the chime resistance.

Or a helper pushing the button and an ohmmeter detecting the contact closures.

rrolleston · Feb 17, 2012

Look for something like this around your breaker panel.

dougp23 · Feb 18, 2012

What rrolleston said. Yo will find a transformer near your panel, sometimes attached to the side of it even. Other times mounted to the plywood nearby.

If for some reason, you want to be able to identify the wires in the ceiling, you could use a tone generator, I guess.

I need to trace my doorbell wires down into my basement

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