Oddities of doorbells

[triskellian]

Our doorbell stopped working ages ago. At the weekend, we finally got around to installing a new one - it's cordless, the noise-making part of it is portable, and it has two different rings: an innocent ding-dong one and an irritating ding-dong ding-dong dong-ding ding-dong etc one. Naturally, we've set it to use the innocent one.

So it came as a surprise just now when the irritating one played. It was even more of a surprise when I went to answer the door and discovered no one there. And it just got worse when the thing played again, with me standing at the door pondering the mysteries of our new doorbell.

So it seems that our doorbell also picks up someone else's. I'm curious about whether their doorbell also picks up ours, and who they are (they're not either of our next-door neighbours) - I'm going to do some experiments this evening, since they don't seem to be at home now.

Comments

[chrisvenus]

Ah. We had that problem. Ours wasn't picking up the doorbell though. It was picking up the fridge. :)

We had a fridge in our hallway that was in the near vicinity of both our front door and our ringing mechanism. Whenever the fridge turned on and off (well, sometimes when it did) it would set the bell off. We decided it was probably some kind of radio thingy blasting out as the fridge motor kicked in on just the right frequency. Can't really answer on the type of ringtone though. maybe its just shit and doesn't really give you the choice at all.

Our eventual solution to this problem was to have a notice on the door that said "please ring twice or we will ignore you" or words to that effect. :)

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Rubbish! Plainly what was happening was that the fridge was trapping loose radio energy in its cooler, more lethargic form (it can collect in the salad trays at the bottom. More advanced fridges have 'sluggish radio wave drainage' holes in the bottom of the trays). When the radio energy slowly seeped out of the fridge it would warm up, and eventually reach a threshold value to trigger the doorbell reciever. Simple.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yay - new ant anim !

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

We all noticed that a while ago (last week, I think), but didn't tell you because we like cool secret stuff.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

They clearly haven't met you.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

That's irritation.

Or maybe irrigation.

Or litigation.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Does your doorbell not have a reange of frequencies you can set so it doesn't clash with neighbours?

Might be a good weapon in a neighbours war, get the same wireless doorbell as them ;-)