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another electrical question

K

K Effective

Well-known Member
Is there a standard for low voltage wiring colors, like those used for hard-wired doorbells? My son's home uses four conductor cables, featuring Red/Black/Green/Yellow.

The doorbell was identified as not functioning by their pre-purchase inspection last Fall, and they are interested in one of the front-door camera doorbells.

I was able to get both front and back door buttons to ring the proper chimes, but basically had to take it all apart and rewire it to my own concept. This provides low voltage and return to neutral at the buttons, as the camera setups require.


Also, it there a low-voltage tracer system like the breaker locating systems? There is a rats nest of telephone wires I would identify if possible.
 
We used to us 4 conductor wire like that in the phone business. The red/green was the primary pair and the black/yellow was the spare pair
my son bought one of those camera doorbells like that and I just used the red/green and it worked fine.
 
That sounds like standard 4 conductor phone cable. In residential phone wiring the red/green pair is used for the first line & the yellow/black pair for the
second line if any. In a 4 wire telephone circuit the red/green pair is for transmit & the yellow/black pair for receive. And yes there are battery powered
tracers for this kind of wiring, sometimes called toners, or tracers, or cable finders.
 
The Bell telephone companies had a standard wiring scheme. Modern telephones are generally networked, and also use a standard (of which there are two) wiring scheme. Anything will work, as long as you keep track of what is connected to what.
There are wire tracing equipment available; they are variously called "toners" or "fox and hound" devices. Basically, connect a box to a pair of wires; the box generates a tone. Take the receiver and hold near the wires you want to trace; the tone should sound at the receiver. One has to get within a few inches of the wire or ends for the device to work properly. In a 4-pair cable, one can distinguish each pair using the device, in the absence of a color code. Progressive Electronics is one vendor. I have a Model 620 transmitter and 200EP receiver I use frequently. If you use shielded cable, only the ends will have a signal, due to the shield around the rest of the cable. zuhnc

This post was edited by zuhnc on 01/23/2022 at 04:35 pm.
 
Here is an inexpensive cable tracer at Harbor Freight. I don't know anything about how well it works.

https://www.harborfreight.com/cable-tracker-94181.html
 
Here is an inexpensive cable tracer at Harbor Freight. I don't know anything about how well it works.

https://www.harborfreight.com/cable-tracker-94181.html
Click to expand...

Thanks, Ralph. I appreciate the effort, really. And I don't want this to sound flippant, BUT, it's out of stock until February 4th at HF, and half that price at Amazon Prime, delivered Tuesday.

Seriously, thank you for looking, though.
 
In the telephone world the answer is yes: In on-premises wiring the first or only pair of inside wiring and jacks are color-coded in green for the tip conductor, and red for the ring side. A second pair is
coded in black for tip and yellow for ring. Tip & ring refer to the plug of an operators switch board. One wire is connected to the tip of the plug and the other wire connected to the ring of the plug. As
a side note: The term ring as mentioned above has nothing to do with the sound the bell makes. I am unaware of any mechanical switch boards still in use by phone companies.
 

Thanks for the education, Tony, I would have assumed the bell ringer, not the operator plug. It is good to learn new or old things.

Thanks to all other replies, I appreciate the support.

I know a lot of old, hardwired doorbells used three wire thermostat wire, red/white/black. This installation had me confused for a while, as there is an extra cable from chime to transformer, none of it needed in my design.

Most of the telephone jacks have been replaced with blank cover plates, they don't have a land line, nor will they likely get one anytime soon. I suggested cleaning it all up and identifying each cable run, if for no other reason than to make the breaker panel area more organized when time to resell comes around.

This is an interesting house they purchased, built late 1970's by a respected local builder, it features both a gas and a wood fireplace, a two-car garage with no passage door to the outside, and a room behind a secret bookcase door.
 
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