Even though I’ve found people will text me to say they’re at my door despite there being a doorbell, when my doorbell stopped working, I felt compelled to fix it.

At first the doorbell just sounded a bit muted, then it turned into a single ‘ding’, and finally it just stopped making noise. I had resolved to just get rid of broken things–instead of holding onto them to fix them later–so I threw out the old chime without troubleshooting it and figured that surely I had something on-hand I could use.

I did some research and learned that doorbells are generally on a 16v-24v circuit (due to a step down transformer, see below image), so doing it myself wouldn’t be dangerous. I double-checked this with a volt meter.

I first wired up an old, metal, circular alarm bell that I just happened to have. It was incredibly loud, and I decided it might be way too alarming for a doorbell. I then remembered I had some buzzers in my electronic component stash.

I wired up two buzzers, tested it from the front door–several rooms away from the buzzers–noting that it was a healthy buzz so I’d definitely hear it wherever I was, and went about my life. Then, one day I was in the same room as the buzzers when someone rang the bell. I screamed.

I removed one of the buzzers, and it still scares me, but at least it’s not as loud.