I recently replaced the chime at my sisters house that had been painted completely over while the cover was removed. While the painter she had hired was intelligent enough to take off the cover so as not to paint it he was not intelligent enough to mask the guts of the chime in any way. He liberally coated it into unworking fixedness with light blue paint.
As long as I was going to replace the chime I figured to replace the door bell button which had weathered and whose plastic had fractured leaveing half of the actually push button uncovered.
I selected a nice chime unit to go with her decor and got a new lighted antiqued bronze recessed bezel pushbutton for the front door and cut it into the brickwork there.
Upon my first try the chime gave out a fairly weak single "dong" instead of the expected "ding-dong". Not only that but my lighted pushbutton gave off a glow that could barely be seen. After assureing myself that I had indeed mounted the chime in the proper "UP" orientation, (most electro machnical chimes must be mounted in a specific orientation so that the return springs are effective), I sought out the transformer.
I located the transformer in a closet under the stairway mounted to the side of a 3" surface octagon extension ring. After scapeing away layers of paint I discovered that the transformer was a 10v. 5w. model. This house was built in 1966, upon further review I found that many homes built during this time period had the same 10 volt transformers, most of only 5 or 10va, (Watts).
One look at any modern doorbells packageing will tell you that they require a 16volt transformer of at least 10volt-amperes, (Watts). 16 volt transformers are now the standard but they did not used to be petey c. I suggest you locate and examine the transformer that is being used to feed these two bells and determine if it is at least 16 volt. If so then since you are asking it to actuate two sets of elctromagnetic coils simultaneously now that you should also check the va rating.
While a 16v 10va transformer is capable of actuateing one coil in almost all chimes, when connected to two of them it probably cannot withdraw the plungers sufficently against the springs in order for them to bounce back and strike the tone bar(s).
Standard bell transformers nowadays are all 16v and come in 10, 20, and 30va models. Get the 30va model and replace the existing transformer. With a 10va model you simply do not have enough power to energize both coils sufficently to draw back the plungers in two chimes.
With the short length of run you have stated here (60') to the farthest chime there is no reason to step up the voltage, you aren't lacking that as evidenced by the fact that either chime will work alone but not when combined together on the circuit. What you are lacking is POWER (watts).
Hope this helps.....greg
