How many times have you missed a knock on the door all because your door bell isn’t working? Many cases the door bell really does work but one a few very simple pieces of the puzzle fail or stop the whole process from happening.

The door bell system is really very simple. You have a transformer, typically located in the basement or maybe the garage. These look like a silver box with a couple of very small wires coming off the top of it. The transformer does exactly what it sounds like it does. It transforms a higher voltage power into a low voltage current that the bell needs to run.

The two wires that come from the transformer will run to the door bell it’s self…or the part that actually does the ringing. Usually the white wire gets tied to one of the screws on the door bell while the other will get tied to another wire that goes to the door bell button. The one single wire that you see running from one point to the other has two wires inside of the outer jacket. One wire will carry the current to the button and the other will carry it back. This means that at the door bell you will have to tie both wires one to each screw on the button.

So one screw has power the other does not. When the button is pressed the power flows through the button and onto the other wire. This will then be carried onto the bell it’s self and make it ring.
So if any of that made any since to you then you will understand that there really are only two parts that could go wrong with this equation. The assumption is that nothing has changed with the wiring…meaning you didn’t have any other work done recently. If you have then perhaps the wires might have been damaged at some point in the circuit.

If you have not had any work done check the button it’s self. Many times the screws where you connect the wires to will become tarnished because of being exposed to the weather. If this happens the power will not flow through the button. To fix this take the button off and run a bit of sand paper over the connection points to take the tarnish off. Replace the button and see if the bell is working. If it is not then most likely you will need to replace the transformer.