OK, so a new client has a very puzzling problem. Their doorbell stopped
working. I went underneath the house to find the transformer and wiring:
found *nothing*. Nothing in that crawlspace but phone wiring and some
(new, Romex) power cabling. Oh, and some old thermostat wiring, but
that's it.

The house is wood-framed stucco, built somewhere in the 1920s-30s, very
standard construction, mostly one story but with several levels (on a
hillslope). It's a quality-built home with nice architectural features.

I looked inside the one crawlspace opening into the attic, which is at
the back of the house: it goes basically nowhere. There's a wall
directly in front of the opening that prevents me from getting into the
section of roof where the doorbell wiring might be. The rest of the
crawlspace is too small to even get into, unless one is a midget.

Which leads me to believe that, since I cannot see *any* wiring below
the house, everything associated with the doorbell--transformer and
wiring--must be above the ceiling of the living room, which is where the
front door and the doorbell are. But there is absolutely no access into
this space, either inside our outside the house. The closet right behind
the doorbell has nothing in it, except the alarm system which was added
a long time after the house was built. The doorbell itself is original,
so I'm assuming the doorbell wiring was installed when the house was built.

I always thought that doorbell transformers needed to be accessible,
both for safety reasons and for possible replacement. But if this is
true, this one can never be replaced, at least without tearing open the
ceiling.

I'm advising the client to just get a wireless doorbell for now. But
this bugs me. Has anyone else here run into a similar situation?


--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)