rodney said:
I installed a battery operated wireless door chime.
Button next to front door
bell in the kitchen. (18 feet approx)
The thing will not shut up, no matter where I place it,
it rings about 5-6 times a day, randomly.
Any advice other than committing it to the garbage?
You have a number of options.
First, a common issue with *wired* doorbells, is the cable acts as a
longwire antenna, meaning, someone in Brazil runs up their power tool, causes
a false trigger on your doorbell.
The fix involves a bit of knowhow, to place some caps (.1uF or so) in
critical areas to stop random spikes from getting through.
Before you effect this fix though, be *REALLY* sure if you want to do it.
We have a musical doorbell that used to have this trouble before I got fed up
and fixed it. Trouble is, after a decade or so, I'm *REALLY* sick of the
tunes. I curse the day I fixed it, every day.
This also might be the case with wireless doorbells too.
The second, for wireless doorbells, is to check if you have a neighbour who
has the same type, and pick a different channel (if you have that option).
If you've already been through that, you need to determine if it's the
discriminator that is not as discriminating as it should be. Though if that's
the case, you're pretty well stuffed unless you're happy to re-design.
Third option is to kick the arses of the neighbourhood kids who are ringing
your doorbell and running off. Though, you can easily tell if this is the
case by looking for burning paper bags on your doorstep.