Phone wire question

We had a phone on the wall in our kitchen. The guy who lived here before us ran a wire from the point in the hall (apparently the *only* phone point in the house - is that normal?), over the door and hanging down so you had a spot handy by the kitchen door. It was great, because for some reason (this is another question, I suppose), I have huge amounts of trouble hearing people on our digital cordless phones but had less trouble on the corded handset we had in the kitchen. Great until yesterday when my son decided it would be fun to swing between the cord when mommy was on the phone and swung himself just hard enough to pull the phone off the wall. Unfortch, he ripped it so that the plastic bit that clicks into the phone was still in the phone and now the cable has the wires sticking out of it.

So my question is. Do I need to get a spark out to jig the wires or can I do it myself - I imagine the process is that I would get a new phone cable end, snip it to a couple inches or so, and strip the cover back a wee bit, strip the cover back on the one that travels under the door jam and floorboards back to the hall point, then match the colors and twist them together, tape it with some electrical tape, plug the new jerry-rigged cord into the phone, hang it back up on the wall and bob's your uncle! Am I on the right track or should I find a spark?

Also any recommendations on cordless handsets that have terrific volume that I could replace the current ones with?

I wouldn't bother with a sparky.
Why dont you just get a new cable?

The wire is at different points from the front hall to the kitchen buried under floorboards and the like - I don't relish the idea of ripping everything up and then putting it back again if it is easier to attach at new thing at the end of it. At the point where it goes up around the door, it is actually flush under the door frame, as if they put it there when they put the doors in. PITA to get out and is it worth it?

If I'm reading between the lines correctly, the extension to the kitchen doesn't end at a socket into which the phone is plugged, but instead the cord just runs straight into the phone, correct?  (Or at least it used to run into the back of it!    )

No, the line to the kitchen ended in a wee plastic thing that you plugged into the phone, but thanks to my son, that wee plastic thing and the phone cable parted ways which left the plastic thing in the phone and the phone line showing its wires. So I am wondering now how I can get the phone line to connect to a phone again, can I put another wee plastic thingy on it? Are you with me now?

So it's basically just a very long cord on the phone which has been fixed around the door etc. back to the jack.  That's what I thought you were describing, but I just wanted to be sure.   In that case the cord should be the "flat" type, i.e. if you cut the end square and look at it, all four conductors should lie flat in a line.

You could restore the system to how it was by buying a replacement modular plug and fitting it to the end of the cord:



http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=1433&doy=10m3

These are crimp-on plugs.   You need to start with a square end on the cord, trim off about a quarter inch of the sheath, then carefully fit the cable into the plug so that the four wires slide down the channels to the contacts.  You then just squeeze the contacts down so that the points inside pierce the insulation of the wires, making contact and securing the conductors.  There are special crimping tools we use to do that job, but with care you can do it with a regular pair of flat-nosed pliers.  You then squeeze down the little plastic retaining lug to clamp the sheath into place.   It's easy when you know how, but a little fiddly if you've never done it before.

You might find it easier to convert to a proper socket next to the phone.  You can buy a surface-mount jack to screw to the wall, connect the wires from the cable into it easily by way of simple screw terminals, then just buy a ready-made replacement modular cord which will plug into the back of the phone and your new socket.

Did you manage to repair it yet?

Paul, I haven't been into town for the shops yet, so what I have done is shifted everything (why do they only put one phone point in the house? When we had a spark come out he told us to get another phone point we'd have to have Eircom come out and do it as it had to be rigged externally; all he could do was, you guessed it, run another long wire to where we needed it to go). I moved the kitchen phone into the hall at the point and put the cordless base in the sitting room using the extra plug with the Sky box. The problem now is that if I plug the line that runs upstairs to the other Sky box (thank you, Spark), it kills the phone line, so that box is now not connected to the phone line, which I hope won't be a bother for Sky.

A temporary solution until I get things sorted for the dangling kitchen wire.

Also any recommendations on cordless handsets that have terrific volume that I could replace the current ones with?

We bought a Panasonic  Philips cordless phone which came with 2 additional handsets (that didn't require plugging in) which works great, we had some BT model before and found that the volume was poor and the battery life was really short.  Can't remember the model, sorry!

Edited because I got the brand wrong!

Paul, I haven't been into town for the shops yet, so what I have done is shifted everything (why do they only put one phone point in the house? When we had a spark come out he told us to get another phone point we'd have to have Eircom come out and do it as it had to be rigged externally; all he could do was, you guessed it, run another long wire to where we needed it to go).

Are you sure he didn't think you were after a second line rather than just another phone point?

Usually there is only one external connection per phone line.  Each extra phone point is then connected to it by 'running a long wire'.  The only thing odd about how you have described your set up is that instead of terminating the extension wire in a connection box they plugged it straight into the phone.

why do they only put one phone point in the house?

I think old habits play a significant part.   For so many years (in both the U.K. and the R.o.I.) all internal telephone wiring was installed, maintained, and owned by the monopoly phone service (Post Office or PTT).  Extensions were an extra quarterly charge, so many houses had just the single telephone point (and a single phone), which was typically located in the hallway.   

In the U.K., the situation didn't change until the early/mid 1980s when internal wiring then became the responsibility of the customer, with BT controlling everything up to the NTE (Network Terminating Equipment, otherwise known to most people as the master telephone socket -- the first jack the line goes to after entering the house).   I'm not sure exactly when internal wiring was deregulated in the Irish Republic, but I think it may well have been later, certainly into the Telecom Eireann era (predecessor to Eircom).

Many people still don't make provision for extra telephone outlets, even on new builds, so you'll often find a new house in which BT/Eircom has installed the master jack but that's it.  I've often had wiring projects where the client has made out detailed lists about fancy lighting and so on, but it's not until I've prompted him about telephones that he realizes  he's completed forgotten to make any provision whatsoever.

But back to the problem at hand.....

When we had a spark come out he told us to get another phone point we'd have to have Eircom come out and do it as it had to be rigged externally

Are you sure he didn't think you were after a second line rather than just another phone point?

It sounds very much as though he was thinking along those lines (excuse the pun).   You could sometimes run extension wiring outside the house and back in again if it makes the job easier, but that would still be down to you to do, and the wiring should be connected to the network interface inside the house.   Extension wiring actually connected to the line at a box outside disappeared with the era of the Post Office/PTT monopoly.

I'm not sure if Eircom will still accept responsibility for extension wiring from older-style network interfaces, but I doubt it.  They might carry out internal wiring for a price (with you still owning/having responsibility for it afterward), but it would almost certainly be more expensive than an independent telephone guy.

Do you have the current NTU 2001 style master jack installed?  It will look something like this, with a removable lower panel (somewhat similar to the U.K. version, but it accepts American-style modular plugs):

The problem now is that if I plug the line that runs upstairs to the other Sky box (thank you, Spark), it kills the phone line, so that box is now not connected to the phone line, which I hope won't be a bother for Sky.

That sounds as though something isn't connected quite right.  The Sky receiver should work perfectly well without a phone line connected, so long as you don't need to use it for those pay-per-view services.

A temporary solution until I get things sorted for the dangling kitchen wire.

By the way, if that extension to the kitchen is still connected (either directly into the back of the NTU or still plugged into the front), just exercise a little caution with the bare ends of the wires when you start trying to reconnect them.  Although the power is limited, there is enough voltage on a telephone line to give you a bit of a bite, especially when it rings on an incoming call.  Make sure kids and animals can't get hold of them too.

The only thing odd about how you have described your set up is that instead of terminating the extension wire in a connection box they plugged it straight into the phone.

Definitely a DIY job.  The other difference would be the wire type.  I'm assuming the wire installed is "flat" telephone cord for terminating into the modular plug.  Fixed wiring to an extension jack would normally be done with round cable which has solid-core conductors.

The problem now is that if I plug the line that runs upstairs to the other Sky box (thank you, Spark), it kills the phone line, so that box is now not connected to the phone line, which I hope won't be a bother for Sky.

That sounds as though something isn't connected quite right.  The Sky receiver should work perfectly well without a phone line connected, so long as you don't need to use it for those pay-per-view services.

One thing to watch out for is that the Sky contract (in the UK at least) requires you to have the phone line attached and they 'reserve the right to charge' if you don't.

AFAIK they don't check or really care if you only have single room Sky but I've heard that they are quite hot at checking if you have Mutli-room - I think it's to stop people sharing cards.

I wouldn't be too worried (my Sky+ box is unplugged at the moment) but it is something to be aware of and if you have multi-room I'd get the phone fixed sooner rather than later.

Hiya

Even if you have sky multi-room (as I do) you can't 'share' cards between boxes. The ID on the sky card itself is 'tied' to the box it's used in. You can't just pull a card out of a sky box and plug it into another and watch.

By contract, yes you're supposed to have a telephone line connected to the box(es) but it doesn't really matter if you don't. It's easier for them (Sky) to send re-set commands to the box if needs be for technical purposes, but this can be done via the satellite signal itself as well. the 'updates' they send along the phone wire is the reason they want it connected, pay per view services are also in there as well. I had an interesting 4-5 hours on the phone to Sky when I got my multi-room installed, had the phone line connected up and still had issues. Eventually got them sorted and now I just have one box connected to the phone line. So all seems to be ok.

Cheers! DtM! West London & Slough UK!

Hi Dennis!!!!! Your right about the card but you could take that card and box and plug it into a different dish and it would work so they use the phone line to stop people doing that.

I'd be willing to bow to your superior knowledge but I'm almost certain that they don't do software updates over the phone line only OTA.

Yes, I understand that with the multiroom subscription they can be pretty hot at sending out warning letters if the receivers miss a few call backs to their monitoring center.  They're trying to stop families, friends, etc. from sharing the multiroom cards between different houses.  With a single receiver, once it's outside the initial contract period it's not an issue.

So far as I'm aware, firmware updates are only done over the air.  The control center can definitely send out a signal via satellite for a particular box to "call home" for resets and other diagnostics though, so it's possible that they've modified the programming to allow some phone line updates.   I haven't followed all the latest Sky developments that closely.