Rewiring Your Home Phone System? 81
the_2nd_coming asks: "Back when I moved into my house, the phone system was in need of immediate upgrade. The house was built in 1964, and it still had the original spaghetti phone lines running through the walls. The phone jacks were in odd places, and to top it all off, the line would melt after I would dial up to my ISP. I took immediate and drastic action. I pulled all the phone wires out of the walls, patched over the holes where the jacks use to be, and started drilling. I bought 2000 feet of Cat5 (I was going to be putting in a home network in the future). A day later, I was cursing and bitching because the old phone system used a 3 screw junction box to connect the house to the phone company, making it very difficult to have multiple jacks.What is the best way to rewire my phone system so that adding an extra 2 or 3 jacks would not be such a chore?"
"I eventually got all the wires hooked up, but very poorly due to the shoddy junction box. Since then I have added a phone jack, and will be adding 2 more in preparation for DirecTV service. My problem is that I did not set up the system to be expandable: just adding one jack was a hack job, and with 2 more on the way I have decided it is time to rewire this system with expandability in mind. I have looked around at Home Depot and Radio Shack, but all their solutions seem sub-par."
Uh, the local phone company? (Score:4, Funny)
NarratorDan
Ask the phone co. (Score:5, Informative)
Note that those thee terminals belong to the phone co!
In my last house (built 1955) I had similar problems. The wiring was crumbling, and I was getting a lot of noise and cross-talk between my two lines and solved most of my problems just by calling my phone co. and having them come out and install a modern demarcation point with capacity for 8 lines and modular jacks on my side of the demarc for debugging. I replaced all the wiring with Cat5, just in case, and this helped enormously.
Note that my current house (built 2001) isn't much better. Yes it has a modern demarc, but the builder skimped on the internal wiring and it's still wired the old fashioned way with only one pair of wires going to each phone line daisy-chained to other outlets. The house was "prewired" with Cat5 and RG6 but was not designed for flexibility as some of the outlets are in the wrong place for me, or don't have all the right connections. (e.g. I wanted a second RG6 and phone line for my DirecTV Tivo, but have so far been unable to find a way to route the wires there.My next house will have conduit in the walls
BalamRe:Ask the phone co. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, unless the contractor stapled the RG6 to studs you can just use the existing cable as a lead line to pull more through. You'll end up with some spare RG6 that way, but it's doable.
Odds are they did staple it though, at least if they put it in before drywalling. In that case you're pretty well screwed.
My next house will have conduit in the walls
Yeah, but unless you either supervise it or get one of the very rare builders with a c
Re:Ask the phone co. (Score:2)
That was my thought when we bought the house. How hard could it be. It's stapled, plus some of the walls don't line up from floor to floor, so it's not even a straight shot.
I know what you mean. ;-). In my last house I had some conduit put in behind my entertainment center from the attic to the crawl space when they were
Re:Ask the phone co. (Score:2)
Re:Ask the phone co. (Score:2)
Somewhat OT: Splitting Sat RG6 (Score:2)
Just by the by, the problem with splitting satellite cables is that the cable needs to carry a DC (Dish) or low frequency (DTV) signal back to the LNB to select which orbital position/transponder your channel is on.
Dish is pretty simple and you can pretty much put a switch anywhere you want, and the latest receivers have built in switches so you would only need one wire anyhow.
DTV is more complicated. To select all possible combinations from a 3 orbital position dish, you need a minimum of 4 wires at the
Forget rewiring.... (Score:5, Funny)
the line would melt after I would dial up to my ISP.
Forget rewireing until you get your modem looked at. It shouldn't by pumping out nearly enough amps to do that.
-- MarkusQ
66 block (Score:5, Informative)
Re:66 block (Score:5, Informative)
My house was built in 1982. For whatever reason the original builder/buyer overlooked a couple of small things -- like phone jacks and cable (cable is somewhat understandable, but phone jacks?!?!). Every single phone jack was wired to a surface mount receptacle. The one in the kitchen was punched up through the pantry and through both sides of a wall to get to the kitchen.
I got a 110 block from my brother-in-law (if you're not so lucky, RadioShack, CompUSA, and Best Buy carry them. Best price will probably be from eBay though -- used ones work just fine), put it in a central location, ran the cable from the demarc to it (it wasn't long enough, but 3M has some cheap patch buttons for doing this kind of thing; work fine), and every place I put in phone jacks was run to the network closet (cable and cat5 are run there too). It's made adding more jacks easy, and I've gone from 3 poorly wired phone jacks to over a half dozen well wired ones (and I still need to add a couple, but drilling the holes is non-trivial for these locations).
Do yourself a favor -- everywhere you want to put in a phone jack run the cable for the phone, 1 or 2 coax (RG-6 Quad Shield only!), and 2 cat5 (for network) at the same time. The difficult bit is always running the cable. Get it all done at once - it's just as easy to pull 5 cables as it is to pull one. I used Leviton wallplates and connectors... they're a bit expensive, but work well. If you need to drill through wood, do yourself a favor and get an auger bit -- spade bits take forever, and if you're drilling through joists the cleanliness of the hole doesn't matter much (note -- US electrical code does not require low voltage cables to run through the joists; you can staple them to the bottom of the joist).
I do have my limits though. That wire is still punched up into the pantry and through two walls into the kitchen. It works.
Re:66 block (Score:1)
Re:66 block (Score:2)
With cable, a splitter is fine. You may want signal amplification for more than a few outlets. Also check for compatibility with cable modem/digital cable boxes.
Re:66 block (Score:2)
Do you know of any other these multiswitches that DOESN'T require a diplexer at the output end to split the antenna/cable from the satelite. I was thinking of using one of these ( and I would be only using the satelite inputs; no cable/antenna ), but that drawback is a major PITA.
Re:66 block (Score:1)
You don't need them (Score:2)
You don't need a diplexer at the receiver end unless you want to get that antenna signal off the wire. You can feed the combined sat+antenna signal into a receiver with no ill effects whatsoever. The sat receiver isn't tuning the
Correction (Score:2)
Re:Correction (Score:2)
Re:66 block (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a guide to wiring a house [swhowto.com] using structured wiring.
Re:66 block (Score:2)
You can do the whole patch panel thing for coax, but unless you're doing really funky stuff it's probably overkill (they're also still very expensive). I can certainly see the need in some cases though (whole house video distribu
Re:66 block (Score:2)
Re:66 block (Score:2)
That and last time I looked I couldn't find a structured wire with just the cabling I wanted. A lot of the higher end bundles start throwing in fiber and stuff too, which doesn't help the price.
Re:66 block (Score:4, Informative)
Re:66 block (Score:2)
Re:66 block (Score:1)
I don't think that is too kosher, especially when following the TIA/EIA 568 standards -- which is what you *should* be doing (Actually, homeowners should be following TIA/EIA 570 which refers to the 568 standard).
Phil
Gigabit (Score:2)
Re:Gigabit (Score:2)
On another note have you noticed how the price of gigabit items have come down? That means that someone in marketing talked to an economic advisor and realised that they make
Re:Gigabit (Score:2)
You didn't get all 8 wires punched down in the first place when you had it installed? I would have thought it would have been much cheaper in the long run, and easier to boot, to just punch down all 8 at once. I know with our patch panels, you would have to contend with about a 1000 different wires in the way...and then you still wouldn't have great access with a punch down tool.
I don't want to think of the extra cost to go around to the wall jack
Re:Gigabit (Score:2)
the wall jack are all punched down.
Re:Gigabit (Score:1)
Re-wiring.... (Score:5, Informative)
On block "B", in the forth row, I punched down every jack in the house. I labelled every pair, and had a map of where they were in the house.
You then run patch cables from column 4 block "A", to column 1 block "B", and use the metal clips to complete the circut. Thus any time I wanted to change out wires, all it took was a small run of wire from block A to block B. The original wires from the phone company or to the jack, never had to be touched to manipulate the system. You want to get the wires from the phone company, and the wires from the jack so you, never ever touch them. It makes trouble shooting lots easier, and you'll never run out of cable.
I might have introduced some line noise due to the way I duplicated the lines on block A, but I don't use dialup, so that was never an issue.
Now, if you want to get really fancy, wire each cat 5 cable into a patch panel. Thus you can put phone, or ethernet to any jack in your home. Now you can skip block "B" (the patch panel acts like the punch down block). Now, use row 4 of punchdown block A, and take phone jacks straight to the patch panel. You'll have eight copies of each line to distribute around the house as you see fit. When you want to move a line, just change the port it's plugged into on the patch panel. Unless you do phone, and network, this is really overkill. Just running the punchdown blocks will work great.
I figure that if the phone company uses punch down blocks, they are good enough for me. The tools are kinda expensive ($50-80 for a punch down tool, and the heads you'll need to do it). The punchdown blocks themselves are dirt cheap, like $8 bucks a piece. The patch panels are pretty expensive.
Kirby
Oh....GRAYbar (Score:4, Funny)
Go to the hardware store and get old work boxes (Score:2)
Of course, run wire up/down first, then cut, then mount the expandable box. Ask the person at the hardware store for more info. (Level the rectangular holes, first.)
You could cap off or cover up the 1964 era boxes, or leave them alone.
Re:Go to the hardware store and get old work boxes (Score:2)
You will have to remember that the box gets turned around so you have to make the openings for the tabs opposite to where they are when the box is against the wall but it's a very fast and easy way to mark your opening (import
Re:Go to the hardware store and get old work boxes (Score:1)
thanks though.
Connecting blocks and wiring tips (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't want to spend the $$ on a "real" 110 punchdown tool you can get a cheap (~$3) plastic one and cut the wires with diagonal cutters.
If you have a crawl-space you can use a trick an electrician friend showed me. Cut the bottom part off of a bunch of coathangers so you have a long straight piece of stiff wire. Find the studs on either side of the spot where you want to mount the jack then chuck a piece of the coathanger wire into a drill and drill right in the corner of your baseboard or just above the baseboard - whichever works well for you. When you go to the crawlspace you can find the wires sticking down and check to see if there are any obstructions to drilling then use the wire as a locator to drill up into the wall space. It's easy and you are far less likely to drill through a hardwood floor than if you tried measuring the locations.
Re:Connecting blocks and wiring tips (Score:2)
Re:Connecting blocks and wiring tips (Score:2)
Well, yeah... but you can also take a 66/110 block, take some cat5/telephone cable, strip out the individual wires, and then run them between each section of the block. Voila, you have distribution.
For the love of God, don't try this for ethernet.
If you don't want to spend the $$ on a "real" 110 punchdown tool
Re:Connecting blocks and wiring tips (Score:2)
The other is to drill the wire at a steep angle, so it will hit the floor about mid-wall. It's pretty easy to eyeball this.
Then, once you have verified from below that the positioning is acceptable, cut in your box and drill your hole from above or below depending on conven
Re:Connecting blocks and wiring tips (Score:1)
Re:Connecting blocks and wiring tips (Score:3, Insightful)
Man, you gotta get one then. It makes the job so much easier. Electrical suppliers often carry them. Get one like 12"-16" long. Your original post talks about putting the wire in the chuck, but I really don't see hanger wire drilling through plywood
You'd be surprised. I've been installing phone and network wire for ye
Re:Connecting blocks and wiring tips (Score:2)
Double Adapters? (Score:1)
To get more phone jacks, have you considered using double adapters (one telephone socket becomes two)? This is very similar to a double adapter at a power socket. Adapters are very cheap and reliable.
Use two or three double adapters near the junction box. And the new wires you plug into the double adapters can be wired through the walls/roof/floor to the location where you
Get a new box (Score:3, Informative)
I've done this a half dozen times (rentals, and now my own house) and they've always prompty replaced the equipment at no cost. Plus the linemen are usually quite friendly and if you show some interest and/or knowledge in phone wiring, they're usually delighted to give you free advice about setting up a your home runs and planning out your extensions. They might even slip you some equipment for the inside wiring.
Re:Get a new box (Score:2)
For brownie points, call them up and tell them you need a new NID (network interface device) thats what the box is called... unless you get an old school technician who will call it a demarc.
Re:Get a new box (Score:2)
Reasons for a new box -- (Score:2)
I'm sure there are others, too, but those are the ones I can think of.
I bought my house, and was scheduled for an install before t
Structured Wiring How-To (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Structured Wiring How-To (Score:2)
Wiring (Score:3, Informative)
For phones CAT5 is fine, but CAT3 is cheaper and just as good. Run all the wires directly from the Telephone company's network interface box to the outlet. Don't splice into them if it can be avoided.
CAT5 has 8 wires (4 pairs). The Blue pair is usually line 1, the orange pair line 2.
The phone company will install a new network interface box if you order more phone lines (at least BellSouth will). The new boxes have nice little gadgets on them that require no tools to crimp a wire pair into place. Just slip in the wire pairs and close it with your thumb.
The only difficult part is getting the wire down the walls. Inside walls are usually not insulated and therefore easier to work with. Drill a hole in the top-plate above the area you want to install the jack. Feed the wire down the wall. Have someone downstairs listening to make sure the wire made it all the way down the wall before cutting a hole for the jack. Sometimes there are 2x4 braces which block the wire from going all the way down.
You could do like the phone company generally does and use thin 4 conductor wire and staple it along the base boards, but it looks shoddy and CAT5 would look horrible.
You could probably also go to a mom-and-pop alarm installation company and ask one of the installers what he'd charge you to run the wire as a side job. You could probably get it done for $150.
Re:Wiring (Score:1)
Cat 3 is all you need for phones, keep the phones and network on physical lines, it drastically lessons cross talk. once you use cat 5 for phone it can't be used for network, because the phone compnaies in the USA use a 50volt ring and that will screw your connection up well whenever the phone rings.
As for location hire an election to drill and cut the openings. it will still cost you, but it will be done right.
First mistake (Score:4, Informative)
Really, the daisy chain is the telephonically-correct way to wire. If you do a star topology, like they did in my house, it's a big impedence mismatch. Of course, the fact that it's ok to have multiple unknown ringer equivalencies on the line means there's some leeway.
Anyway, run the CatV or whatever from where you have signal to where you want it. Terminate it where you want it, and connect the other end to the signal source. Then, plug in the equipment you want on the phone system (at the aforementioned terminations). Note: There are several types of wall terminations. The only one's I've seen are screw terminal and insulation-piercing quick-installs. For POTS, the screws are better. If you're putting RJ45s all around, so each jack might be phone or ethernet, the quick-installs are actually a bit better for a while (the drier you climate, the longer that is). Note: You can use one CatV to carry ethernet AND up to two POTS signals. The blue and Brown pairs are dead in standard wiring, so you might as well split them out and make them available for other purposes. I wouldn't recommend it for 1000bT (in some implementations, all 4 pairs are used anyway), but for a home 10 or 100 network, it's just good economic sense. Radio Shack carries a dual-jack outlet - RJ45 & RJ-11 (though an RJ-11 plug will work just fine in an RJ-45 jack). Of course, if you're doing the whole house, you're probably buying from a real supplier(it took me 2 trips a week apart to get two of those wall-plates).
Re:First mistake (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, if you want that jack to never work as an RJ-45 jack again. The plastic ends on an RJ-11 plug will damage the outermost pair of contacts on an RJ-45 jack by bending them so that they won't make contact on an RJ-45 plug anymore.
Not to mention that it's just more user-intuitive and safer to have things wired properly to begin with. The last thing you want to do is accidentally plug yo
Re:First mistake (Score:1)
Re:First mistake (Score:2)
They make jacks that are notched in such a way that its hard to mess up the outer pins by using a narrower plug, but the pins can still get bent if you wiggle the narrow plug around instead of plugging it straight in.
Re:First mistake (Score:1)
Wiring and crap (Score:4, Informative)
Wiring Code:
for 66 blocks
(primary in bold)
Pr 1:White Blue | Blue White
Pr 2:White Orange | Orange white
Pr 3:White Green | Green White
Pr 4:White Brown | Brown White
Pr 5:White Slate | Slate White
Pr 6:Red Blue | Blue Red
for 'biscuit' jacks and wall plates
Wire from Cable | Wire on Jack
White/Blue | Green
Blue/White | Red
White/Orange | Black
Orange/White | Yellow
White/Green | White
Green/White | Blue
When it comes to wiring the jacks, only the green/red wires are really necessary. These wires carry the dialtone that everything uses. The Black/Yellow wires are for a seccond line, or data as in the case of a phone system. You will fid black/yellow hooked up more commonly on houses with two lines. This is how they make two line phones that have only one cord. Just as a suggestion, wire them all up as if you were putting two phone lines everywhere. This will make it easier if you decide to go to a phone system with extensions, etc. (Psst.. if you do go to a phone system, get an Avaya/Lucent/whatever their name is Phone system called the Partner system. It's one of a rare few that you can connect a home type telephone/cordless/modem up to and use without additional hardware. You can get them for good prices on Ebay.)
Hope this helps
The sneaky way... (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't want to do the wiring yourself, just ask the phone guys for a reccomendation of a guy to do it off hours...they'll say "Oh, we can't reccomend someone...", then you say, I was hoping one of your retired buddies could come ou t and make a few bucks...and so forth. Or one of them will pull you aside to tell you to either screw off or to set up a time on the weekend to come out.
For the house, run cat5 to a few places, wireless the rest and save a bit of time, money and elbox grease. It sounds like you did the right thing by ripping out the old wiring, we had the same problems on some old lines in our place (built in 1936) and a modern demarc will allow you to hook up a ton of lines, you can go the 110 route if you like, but it seems sort of a hassle.
Chris
Great equipment at 9thtee.com (Score:2)
Kris
Home Exchange (Score:2, Interesting)
Chee
Not to troll.. (Score:2)
Good Resource (Score:2, Informative)
When I've done this type of thing, CAT5 is the way to go, and make sure to use the same color code (placement of the wires when putting together the jacks and blocks), otherwise you could have some fun on your hands. The most common today that I have seen is the standard 568-B. You'll notice it most easily when you are wiring jacks an
Just done this myself! (Score:2)
Rewired the whole house (50 years old). I put RJ45 sockets in various rooms, and CAT5 from them to where the fuse box is. Bought a 19" rack case from a music shop, and managed to get a 19" RJ45 patch bay from work that they were going to throw out.
So far, so good. Connecting a hub or switch in is easy, but the question is about the telephone, so here's what I did: I got ISDN. ISDN devices use RJ45 connectors too! They only need 4 of the 8 strands in CAT5, and if you move a phone you can repatch the s
Re:Just done this myself! (Score:2)
Re:Just done this myself! (Score:1)
What about a wireless solution? (Score:2)
Has anyone used any of the current multi-handset wirless phones? My brother-in-law has a Sony cordless phone setup that has a base station that he has centrally located (from which you can answer and dial with a handset) with two wireless handsets, one that he uses "upstairs" and one that he uses "downstairs". Adding an
Re:What about a wireless solution? (Score:1)
Re:What about a wireless solution? (Score:2)
Re:What about a wireless solution? (Score:1)
a supplier for some of what you'll need (Score:1)
This wiring distribution block uses 110 connectors and has 4 punchdowns for cat5 to rj45s (for ethernet) and has 10 punchdowns that are all wired together (for telephone). I would probably have more like 6 and 6 but whatever.
Milestek also has good pricing on rj11, rj45, and coax wall plates & connectors, as well as whatever tools you'll need. Their cable prices are a bit high, as are most of their computer equipment prices.
http://www.mile
Here, here, wireless! (Score:1, Interesting)