Pulled a cover off an interior wall in a 1920s Bungalow and found this staring me in the face ...

Any ideas? Phone, electric, or something else?

It's kind of by the front door. Could it be the original doorbell?

Is there anything under the tape? The red/green wires indicate phone to me, but then there are three wires so I'm not sure what that would be about.

Interior or Exterior (kind of looks like painted stucco). Could be door bell or, if exterior, could be abandoned wiring for lighted street number for the house (I have the original that came off our house).

Got a voltmeter to check if it's hot?

Old thermostat connection?

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I'd say doorbell too. The three wires might be to distinguish between the front and back door: ding dong for the front, ding for the back. At least that's how my 20's bungalow doorbell was.

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Age of house? Three wires indicates power to me. Are there other covers like this one around?

Putin's eavesdropping bug.
How long have the Russians been listening in on your conversations....

Quote
chopper

I don't know about power. Old houses I've worked on had two wires.

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Definitely check and see if it's live.... houses tend to have old transformers sitting around happily providing 16VAC to nothing at all...

Should be Red, Yellow, Green from that era - one was a ring wire back then.

It used to take 90V to ring a phone. Rural areas had batteries up on the poles to boost the voltage to about 130V to extend the ability to ring phones long distances. You could get a nasty DC shock off of one if the phone rang while you were working on the lines.

I've seen that wiring quite a number of times before. We used to just cap off the yellow and terminate it at the demarcation point outside the house as since DTMF phones started being more common, it was rather useless.

POTS lines have gone the way of the dodo. Verizon is even eliminating landlines in many areas, going wireless only (not thinking that's such a great idea myself) but it's too expensive to maintain copper underground anymore if it's just one house or a small neighborhood.

(too many years as an electrician many moons ago....)

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Good Luck!
Jamie Dresser
Other World Computing

Reddit's What Is This Thing sub might be able to help. A fun read if nothing else.

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Those wires appear lower gauge than doorbell wires. Again, anything similar in the house probably gives some clue.

1920s Bungalow
just my 2¢, but wires with vinyl insulation aren't from the 1920's.
I'm voting with the 'disabled doorbell' theory.

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39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

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Yeah, definitely not from the 20s, same with the conduit they are in.

What's the scale? I've got a 20's bungalow and the original wiring that hasn't been updated is knob and tube. Someone did a quick and dirty electrical tape job on whatever that was.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2016 07:44PM by Wags.

I think it's a water alarm for that leaking valve