Need Help with Telephone Wiring Fault

[TromboneAl]

There's something wrong with our phone system.

If I plug a phone directly in to the box where the phone line comes in, everything is fine.

However, if I plug in the plug that connects to the wires in the house, it acts as if a phone is off the hook. This is true even after I've unplugged all the phones in the house.

My conclusion is that there's a wiring fault somewhere. Sound right?

My Googling suggests that somewhere the red and green wires are shorted together. Yes?

I'm off to measure resistances. Let me know if you have any tips.

Thanks,

Al

 

[bld999]

You should get 50volts dc on the center pair of pins in any phone wall jack. That is red and green [old color code] or blue and white [new].

 

[Bikerdude]

Do you have one of these? If so, do you have signal here?

 

[TromboneAl]

OK, thanks.

I solved it. Even though we have our phone through the cable company, the lines go outside to the original AT&T junction box.

One of these things:

The cable company just uses it as a place to connect the different lines that go to the phones in the house.

There must have been something funky (like a spider) in that top junction. After much, much trial and erroring, I found that that if I bypassed that thing by just twisting the wires together, everything worked fine.

Once I knew that, I just transferred things down to the junction thingie below that, and now things work fine. That was tough, but I'm glad that there isn't some fault deep in the walls someplace.

 

[Meadbh]

Delighted to hear the problem is solved without cost. Critters do get into things. Years ago at my old house, where there were telephone poles, I had a problem with squirrels chewing through the wires. That was the phone company's job to fix.

 

[TromboneAl]

"Outside" is a problem for things here. The cable comes in the house, then the wires go out to this box, then come back in the house. It might be a nice project to get everything inside, with a nice, modern, box. Maybe next time it fails I'll do that.

 

[bld999]

In corrosive environments, stuff like this can work well:

GC Electronics - 10-8101 - Chemicals - Silicone - Allied Electronics

Auto parts stores sometimes have a version of it.
Direct-burial cabling sometimes is called "flooded" , which means the sheath is grease filled. Keeps the moisture and oxygen out.

 

[ray1617]

You either have broken wire in the jack in the house (open) or a short in the jack wig prongs where you plug in your extension cord. Buy a jack at radio shack and remove your old one making sure you attach the wires the same way to the new jack. I was a telephone repairman for many years. Inside jacks were the main problem.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum