Need help rewiring phone lines

[brmann]

I just isolated a bad hum in my phone lines to internal house wiring. Phone co charges $95 an hour and probably would make a project out of it. I can buy materiels at Wal-Mart for under $25 but am wondering.

Are there any tricks to rewiring phone lines?

Should I leave old line in place or will that cause induction?

Do I just daisy chain from first outlet to second outlet to third outlet?

Do I need to hook up all three wires or just two? Come to think of it the 100' line comes with 6 conductors. Guess that would be for two separate lines.

Any help/advice will be greatly appreciated.

Burt

[Neil Derryberry]

You only need two wires (one pair), unless you have some funky multiple number set-up.

Daisy-chaining or parallel (home run to central point) will work just fine... there's only one pair coming in from the street, so all of your phones are effectively daisy-chained at some point anyway.

It doesn't matter which wire pair you use in multiple pair wire, just be sure you connect that pair to the middle two wires on the receptacle (usually red/green). Polarity doesn't matter, either.

[Neil Derryberry]

Also, don't let the bell company run the lines... you can probably get a much cheaper price locally if you decide not to do it yourself.

[Neil Derryberry]

I moved this thread to the technical forum... while the original post was not specific to DBS, wiring extra phone jacks is an issue to be dealt with in that arena.

[Nick]

No tricks, but there are standards.

Red/Green (Christmas), middle pair;
Yellow/black (Hallowe'en) outside pair - and yes, polarity does matter in some apps. Might as well do it right.

If you're going to replace much of your wiring, you may want to consider upgrading to Cat5 or Cat5e (RJ45) for future home networking, multiple lines and other apps.

As far as the 'hum' you mentioned, check your incoming line from street, then each individual run, trying to isolate the source/cause of the hum. A little trouble-shooting may save you a lot of work and $.

You would do well to research the basics of home telephone wiring before you start.

Good luck.

Nick :smoking:

[Mike500]

Originally posted by Neil Derryberry


Polarity doesn't matter, either.

Polarity does matter, too. Red is called "RING" or grounded. "TIP" is positive. "RING" and "TIP" means the parts of the on the phone plug that the operator uses to make connections on the switchboard. On more than four pair cable, "RING" will be a solid blue wire. "TIP" will be a blue wire with a white tracer. If you get the polarities wrong, some phones will not work. For example, the original Western Electric 2500 desk set will not allow you to dial out on the touch tone pad. Thirty years ago, when I worked for the phone company, I'd have to make service calls on "customer" wired outlets.

[brmann]

Thanks for all the help. This is a little more complex than I originally anticipated.

Also, I did a little of research and it seems that the star configuration of wiring is preferred over the loop. If I understand that right, it would basically be using two separate cable pair from the master jack to location one and location two. That way, even if one should be eaten up by a rat (don't laugh - this actually happened to me in Florida) the other should be intact.

Opinions?

Burt

[Lightnin1]

Hello brmann,

take the advice from someone who is a DSL/Voice subcontractor for my local telco. Why not do it right the first time?

The way it should be done, instead of using 2 pair(red/green - yellow/black), use Category5 UTP cable. This cable has 4 pairs. The UTP stands for unshielded twisted pair. To meet Cat5 standards, the cable pairs must have at least 2 full twists per 1/2" of cable. The days of using the junk with red, green, yellow and black are over soon, hopefully. It has almost no twists, which makes it very suseptable to outside interference.

The 4 pairs that are designated by the TIA or Telephone Industry Association are:
1st pair - Blue/White & Blue
2nd pair - Orange/White & Orange
3 rd pair - Green/White & Green
4 th pair - Brown/White & Brown

You want to use the 1st pair always for the 1st line, 2nd pair for the 2nd line and so on. Or if you ever get DSL, you could isolate the DSL signal by using the 3rd or 4th pair. These are just examples.

Also, you do not want to "daisy chain" to each phone jack. Instead, run home runs to each jack and terminate them back at a pre-determined point. Home runs are standalone, separate runs. This way it will be a cleaner install, and you will have the capability to put up to 4 phone numbers, or isolate DSL to 1 jack. These are also just examples.

This is a cute story:
I went to install DSL in a $550,000+ home 2 days ago because the owner could not get a DSL signal. After seeing what kind of wire he had, I was not a bit suprised to see the crappy red/green, yellow/black wire, daisy chained to every freakin phone jack in the house. It took me 2 hours to find all the jacks and scotchlok the second pairs down so I get his DSL trained. It's really amazing how some of these electrician's keep there license wiring houses like this.

And oh yeah, rats and mice do chew on the wires:righton:

I hope this helps!!!!

[Neil Derryberry]

mike500, in my experience today, analog phones just don't care. I didn't mean to say that he shouldn't wire it with the correct polarity - he just doesn't need to obsess about it if he isn't sure if he is correct.

[Richard King]

Everything you ever need to know about wiring.....
http://www.wildtracks.cihost.com/homewire/

a picture of a cat5 installation (slightly messy):
http://www.pbase.com/image/1303325/original
One cat5 cable comes from the tele company, others star out to each outlet (a bunch of them) in the house. This is currently only being used for voice, but could be used for data at a later date.

[brmann]

I've got Good News & Bad News

The good news is that I've discovered the source of my hum and I don't need all new phone wiring. The bad news is that it's my computer. I put a new modem in about 2 months ago and it appears it's already eaten it fair share of lightening (mountains of NC). Strange, even with the power cord disconnected, as long as the phone cord is plugged in, I still get the hum. Unplug it, and all the phone lines clean up great. Guess I could put in another modem but computer really getting old (doesn't even have USB ports) so considering getting new one. Right now looking seriously at the Pavilion zt1155 notebook (dvd player with s-video out). I do know this however, whichever direction I go this time I'll actually get a modem surge protector.

Burt

[MarkA]

Look at computers from MicronPC for Windows systems. Also, seriously consider getting a Mac. Apple has some EXTREMELY nice laptops (ATI Mobile Radeon 7500 graphics, 1.5:1 aspect monitor, excellent graphics). Of course, they cost a fortune.

[Neil Derryberry]

I'm a thinkpad fan myself... I beat the hell out of mine, and it just keeps running. Great feature set and support for the price.