What makes a telephone ring?
bilagaana:
Quote from: SteveInWA on June 21, 2017, 08:14:10 pm
Either your house wiring is still connected to the telephone company's outside wiring, or there is a poor connection or wiring error somewhere in the wiring in the walls. If you have the electrical troubleshooting skills to trace the connections throughout the house, you should be able to find it.
I really appreciate the responses and info.
Below is (assuming I uploaded it correctly) a pic of the box on the side of my 80's vintage house labeled "TELEPHONE". The cable with the alligator clips is the pair attached to the wall jack in the room where the OBi is located. Beyond that, I'm not sure where any of the other wires are going. I take it my first priority should be to make certain my system is disconnected from any telco wiring. Is there a standard connection scheme for this type of installation, which would tell me which conductors are most likely to be incoming from the telco and which are more likely to be routed to the rest of the house?
Thanks, again.
SteveInWA:
I can't tell, because the wires are so dirty, it's difficult to be sure. You should be able to identify a two-wire or four-wire cable that doesn't look like the indoor, eight-conductor cable shown in my diagram. It will probably have a different-looking insulation. The four objects in your photo with the UL logo are lightning arrestors. The wires from the telco are attached there. One or more 8-conductor cables will be attached to the other side of that block. The 8-conductor cables go to the house wiring. You'd need a meter or "toner" to trace the cables.
You can do an internet search of phrases like "telephone demarcation box" or "demarc box" or similar, to see photos.
azrobert:
The wires on the left look like the house wiring. A solid color wire is paired with a wire with alternating white and the same color, as shown in Steve's diagram. I only see 2 house wires connected to the left terminals. I would disconnect those 2 wires and connect them directly to the wires going to the OBi. Now test the house phones. If you don't have service in parts of the house, disconnect any other wires on the left terminals and connect them to the OBi wires. I assume the wires on the right terminals are to Telco.
This is how I wired my house. I disconnected the house wiring from the demarcation box and left the Telco wires connected.
SteveInWA:
Quote from: azrobert on June 22, 2017, 03:52:06 pm
This is how I wired my house. I disconnected the house wiring from the demarcation box and left the Telco wires connected.
The problem with assuming that, is that the photo doesn't adequately show every wire coming into and going out of the box. The wires on either side of the lightning arrestors look brown to me. Perhaps cleaning things with some spray contact cleaner would better show the color scheme.
In the case of my house's demarc box, for example, there were several different in-house loops that were joined at the demarc box. There was also a kludge of splices using 3M Scotchlok connectors. Simply disconnecting everything at the demarc box breaks all but one of the loops' connections to the rest of the house.
It's at least one way to start troubleshooting, but I'd be careful to label and photograph every wire before starting to take things apart.
bilagaana:
All good suggestions. I've acquired a line tester and plan to clean up the wires and identify which go to which telephone jack. All this will take a while but I appreciate the help and will report back as soon as possible.
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