With this junk blog, there will sometimes be something that looks like it may be useful. It's not junk is it? It has two perfectly good screws. It's an antique! Heath/Zenith made doorbell switches? Maybe this was from a pack with a doorbell you could put together yourself. Maybe the dirty linoleum counter it's on top of is older. Likely.
You see, I became a home owner. It that process, I learned all those pesky little things that need almost daily attention. Weeds to be pulled. Grass to be cut. Light bulbs to be changed. Toilets to be unclogged...and again...and again.... One of the things I needed to do was replace a door bell bonger on my side door. The plastic piece had given way and cracked and well, it was a natural mighty mini light and it was exposed to the world.
So, I went to my favorite blah blah blah and bought a door bonger and had to drill a new hole to make it fit, but then, it was good as new. I figured for the next 30 years, I wouldn't need to replace it.
Wouldn't you know it, pesky salesman, solicitors, and the occasional friend or relative like to push the door bell switch to hear that ever familiar "Bing Bong". Of course, when the doorbell is on the fritz, they think that they didn't push the fragile little switch designed to take 10,000 presses. I'm sure that some of the above used a HAMMER. Within 6 months, my new switch was in pieces. Meanwhile, my doorbell went DOA for good. Knock? Really? There's a switch to ring a bell. I gotta push it extra vigorously to make sure it's not my pushing. The bigger the pushin, the bigger the BONG. Or something like that. I found this spare a few years ago...
Needless to say, both my front and side door bonger buttons fell pray to "Vote for me for mayor" or "Come to our church" or "buy some bongers from the thrift shop to support your local thrift shop." With no doorbell and no good bongers, I used the old style worlds greatest duct tape made by Gorilla. It's really professional gaffers tape, but I'm not hooked up with those fancy Hollywood supply houses. Believe me, I think people still try to push the duct tape. Don't they know I have a 900 pound gorilla guarding my broken bongers? I'll call the landlord and have him replace the doorbell from one that goes "bing bong" to one that goes "drum solo from Caravan."
ARF! -Ric
Boomer
Watch out for transient peaks in your doorbell wiring, they get you every time!
I've had the same problem at my house, the mashing of the door switch, I guess it's a rite of homeownership. Our first doorbell button was a long tall one to fit a tiny space between the door and the stone entryway. It was lighted, it looked like neon. The switch didn't crack, but it started to miss contact, so the bonger would do half a ring, or a bouncy hesitant ding dong attempt.
Later the metal frame on the switch started to get loose and would come off, so mom started taping it on the top and bottom, but in a little while in the weather it would come loose again. We fixed it a few times, but the switches were never as good as even the first one, they'd all break in a year or less I guess, so I've gone switchless.
The bell itself is still there, in the kitchen above the fridge, a nice old one with a couple of bell tubes tuned to different frequencies for the classic 'ding-dong' when the hammers on a solenoid hit them back and forth. I think the date code in it is 1957.
I always like your Big Ben chiming bonger, like I was visiting London.. Another thing we had with the original system was another bell in the basement, not a ding-dong, but one with a bell with a little clapper ball on it that would ring like a mini school bell, in the laundry room, up by the power box for the bell in the ceiling.
That would make you rocket out of your shoes if you were doing the laundry and were surprised by it. You could literally answer the door like Lurch though, 'You rang?' because the caller really did.
I think people mashed my doorbell repeatedly, and I'm not so quick to kill myself running to the door when it knocks. I have to bark first! Then I do a retina scan on everyone who comes to the door before I open it. By then they've pushed the switch into the door frame and start knocking.
I just thought of a brilliant solution, have a loud bonger on the front porch, so visitors really know when they've pushed it! As an added bonus, you could have a switch on the bell inside to turn it off when you didn't want to be disturbed, devious.. :)
Boomer