Drillng through UPVC door frame?

We’ve got a Ring doorbell. It’s ok when it works, but it can take AGES to get to the phones. It has been suggested that things would improve if it was wired up for power rather than running off battery, which would also allow us to install a chime.

Which Video Doorbell ?

We’ve got a UPVC doorframe. It was installed before we moved in 13 years ago, so it’s probaby out of warranty by now. Will I face MASSIVE problems trying to drill through it? I’m anticipating that there’ll be some metalwork inside the UPVC, but I can hopefully work around that. I’d rather go straight back through behind the doorbell plate and have wires running inside the house, if possible

The edge of the window unit will contain a 5-10mm aluminium spacer and any hinge mechanisms will be metal, but the rest of the frame will just be hollow extruded PVC sections. You could just start of gently with a really small drill bit and see if you get through without hitting anything. If you do, just use white mastic to fill the hole and it will hardly be visible.

Door frames tend to have very little outside of the locking mechanism strip, you can see where the bolts are via the internal strip, so drilling between these will be easy enough, it’s just plastic in the main.

Guessing you’ll be aiming at the top left hand side of the frame anyway, not much up there as it’s been thermally joined, don’t think you’ll have an issue drilling through the channel of the join area.

Get a magnet?

When we moved into our house it had a upvc back door that i needed to install a cat flap in.  I psyched myself up for a lot of graft going through metal etc. In the end it took 5minutes as it turned out to be two thin sheets of plastic and nowt else…

Safe to say the door is long gone as they are about as secure as a wet cardboard box…

You could just start of gently with a really small drill bit and see if you get through without hitting anything. If you do, just use white mastic to fill the hole and it will hardly be visible.

This, chances are you’ll be absolutely fine and just going through plastic-void-plastic assuming you’re in the middle of one of the side panels (the kind of place a doorbell normally is)

We’ve got a Ring doorbell. It’s ok when it works, but it can take AGES to get to the phones. It has been suggested that things would improve if it was wired up for power rather than running off battery, which would also allow us to install a chime.

Before you drill holes, have you checked that a wire will solve things? I would have thought the delay is more the network/wifi/server delay than the amount of power to a switch… IANADE

Was going to say, it will run off a given power supply surely? Probably 5v DC or similar. Whether that’s provided by a battery or a mains transformer it shouldn’t really matter. I am in no way a Ring doorbell expert.

Don’t these doorbells contact a Ring server (could be located anywhere in the world) using your internet, which then has to ping your phone or app or whatever? I think thats why it takes so long

I’ve got a Ring Pro wired up and it’s still very slow to respond, despite home network being 100mbs+ and answering on a strong 4G connection.

The link between doorbell and your phone will still be an aeon (I have a wired one). However the traditional chime on your hallway wall still bings immediately upon pressing pressing the bell. So it will be an improvement, but the ring video doorbell feature will still be broadly useless.

Don’t these doorbells contact a Ring server (could be located anywhere in the world) using your internet, which then has to ping your phone or app or whatever? I think thats why it takes so long

What a time to be alive!

Well, I got it sorted yesterday. There IS metal in the frame, there’s a square aluminium extrusion running down the centre of the frame, but it was easy enough to drill through anyway. After MUCH faffing I managed to get the wire running down INSIDE the UPVC frame, but it took some effort – it kep getting caught on something inside the frame, possibly screws coming in from the other side relating to the quarterlight window? I ended up having to put a rod UP from the bottom and use that to hook the wire and draw it down. It now enters right behind the ring doorbell, and exits right down at the bottom. Means it’s nice and neat at eye level in the house, and invisible outside.

The electric chime now rings immediately when the button is pressed, and while the ring app does take a little time to respond, it’s noticeably quicker than it was before the power supply was added. The ring doorbell can be set up for old style metal chimes or an electronic one with various tunes available

Someone mentioned power – chimes are either 230v with a built in transforer, or expect an external 8v transformer to be fitted. I went for the former. Either way they should provide the same power supply to the push