Running Telephone Lines in the house

Okay...got a rental home that was a foreclosure. Has Telephone jacks in every room...however, I was told by the renters that the phone line was cut inside the walls somewhere.

Sooooo...I've gotten a live phone line put into the house...however, it is in the closet. Can I take that line and splice into one of the main lines up in the attic and then it will work throughout the house?

How hard is it to connect into existing lines?

How do I check to see where and how many of the other lines were cut?

Can I do it without calling the phone company? or am I going to have to pay to have someone come out?

Thanks.

rjcruiser said:

Okay...got a rental home that was a foreclosure. Has Telephone jacks in every room...however, I was told by the renters that the phone line was cut inside the walls somewhere.

Sooooo...I've gotten a live phone line put into the house...however, it is in the closet. Can I take that line and splice into one of the main lines up in the attic and then it will work throughout the house?

How hard is it to connect into existing lines?

How do I check to see where and how many of the other lines were cut?

Can I do it without calling the phone company? or am I going to have to pay to have someone come out?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Is there an Alarm system in the closet? There may be a RJ31X jack on that line. If so it may be stopping access to the other lines.

The lines are easily spliced. Just match the wires color for color.

If you want to trace out individual lines you can pick up a tone generator and inductive amplifier at Home Depot or Lowe's.

No reason to call the phone company. Telephone wiring is very easy to do in the residential environment.

Let me know if you have additional questions and I'll be glad to help.

zigzag said:

Is there an Alarm system in the closet? There may be a RJ31X jack on that line. If so it may be stopping access to the other lines.

The lines are easily spliced. Just match the wires color for color.

If you want to trace out individual lines you can pick up a tone generator and inductive amplifier at Home Depot or Lowe's.

No reason to call the phone company. Telephone wiring is very easy to do in the residential environment.

Let me know if you have additional questions and I'll be glad to help.

Click to expand...

Hmmm...alright.

Yes, there is an alarm system in the closet. What does the RJ31X jack look like?

Only reason that I think the lines might have been cut is that it was a foreclosure...and the old tenant told me that this was what the phone company told him.

As far as the tone generator/inductive amplifier...how much are we talking about?

Lastly...is the phone line the red one running around in the attic or the blue one? I figure one is the alarm system and the other is the phone line

As you can tell...I'm a do-it-yourselfer that has never messed with phone lines

rjcruiser said:

Hmmm...alright.

Yes, there is an alarm system in the closet. What does the RJ31X jack look like?

Only reason that I think the lines might have been cut is that it was a foreclosure...and the old tenant told me that this was what the phone company told him.

As far as the tone generator/inductive amplifier...how much are we talking about?

Lastly...is the phone line the red one running around in the attic or the blue one? I figure one is the alarm system and the other is the phone line

As you can tell...I'm a do-it-yourself that has never messed with phone lines

Click to expand...

The RJ31X looks like a normal surface mount jack. It has shorting bars inside. It should look like the picture attached.

As far as the color of the wire, I would hate to guess on that one. Trace the wire coming from the jack in the closet and that should be your incoming wire. There may be two wires coming from that jack. If so one is the incoming and the other is connected to the rest of the jacks in the house. If not, the installer used one of the pairs of wires as incoming signal and another pair as out going to the rest of the house. In that case it may or may not be a single cable throughout the house. Is it on slab? Have you seen cabling in the attic?

Plug a single line phone into the RJ31X. Leave it "on hook" then take another phone and check the rest of your jacks to see if they work.

Here's a little reading from a quick Google.


http://www.hometech.com/learn/rj31x.html

Keep asking questions and maybe I can walk you through this.

I almost forgot.

Check this link for an inexpensive tone generator and inductive amplifier.

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=183175-12704-62-140

zigzag said:

The RJ31X looks like a normal surface mount jack. It has shorting bars inside. It should look like the picture attached.

As far as the color of the wire, I would hate to guess on that one. Trace the wire coming from the jack in the closet and that should be you in coming wire. There may be two wires coming from that jack. If so one is the incoming and the other is connected to the rest of the jacks in the house. If not, the installer used one of the pairs of wires as incoming signal and another pair as out going to the rest of the house. In that case it may or may not be a single cable throughout the house. Is it on slab? Have you seen cabling in the attic?

Plug a single line phone into the RJ31X. Leave it "on hook" then take another phone and check the rest of your jacks to see if they work. Usually when a RJ31X is unplugged the conductors of the jack touch the shorting bars and stop the signal from traveling to the other jack locations in the house. That is if the RJ31X is the first jack in the sequence of jacks.

Here's a little reading from a quick Google.


http://www.hometech.com/learn/rj31x.html

Keep asking questions and maybe I can walk you through this.

Click to expand...

Thanks...appreciate the help.

It is a slab...and yes...I've seen cabling in the attic. hmmm...I'll have to check on the alarm...maybe I unplugged it in the box when the alarm got set-off and I didn't have the code and had to unplug some things to get the thing to shut-off.

Telephone wiring is one of the easiest DIY jobs you will ever do. You can buy the wire at HD.

If you've got carpet, the easiest way to run the wire is along the baseboards. Just use a putty knife to tuck it between the carpet and baseboard, and it'll just disappear. If you've got hardwood floors, you may have to take the baseboards down, run the wire behind them, then put them back up. Otherwise, you'll have to use a wire fish tape and run it up the walls into the attic and back down. This can be a real pain.

IIRC, only 2 wires are actually used in a residential phone system, red and green. If you've got one good jack in the closet, you can take it apart, attach a new wire to the red and green terminals, put it back together, run the wire to the next jack, attach it to the green and red terminals, and keep going.

Dead Eye Eddy said:

Telephone wiring is one of the easiest DIY jobs you will ever do. You can buy the wire at HD.

If you've got carpet, the easiest way to run the wire is along the baseboards. Just use a putty knife to tuck it between the carpet and baseboard, and it'll just disappear. If you've got hardwood floors, you may have to take the baseboards down, run the wire behind them, then put them back up. Otherwise, you'll have to use a wire fish tape and run it up the walls into the attic and back down. This can be a real pain.

IIRC, only 2 wires are actually used in a residential phone system, red and green. If you've got one good jack in the closet, you can take it apart, attach a new wire to the red and green terminals, put it back together, run the wire to the next jack, attach it to the green and red terminals, and keep going.

Click to expand...

DEE..What you've said is true except if there is a RJ31X involved and a security system. If you tie onto the green and red wire locations on that jack you will loose the security system override if another phone in the house is off the hook when the security system is activated.

On a RJ31X you will want to tie the outgoing lines to the slate and brown locations. Red wire to slate and the green wire to brown.


Connecting to green and red locations on any other jack will be fine.

My question is.....How did the phone lines get cut BEHIND the walls? Something doesn't sound right with that scenario.

I ran every inch of the phone lines in my house. My step brother gave me a big roll of it.....like 175 yards of the stuff. It's very easy to do.

Being that your house is on a slab, hiding the wires can be tricky. You can tuck it under the baseboards like already mentioned. You can also run it down inside the walls from the attic easier than it sounds.

Do you have one wire or several wire on the outside of the house at the phone company's interface box? If you have several wire on the outside then each wire more then likely runs to only one jack. If you have several phone jacks in the house and only have one wire on the outside of the house then you either have a distribution panel with a punch block in it some were, or more then likely it is daisy chained. If its daisy chained then one phone jack is linked to another, similar to cheep Christmas lights (if one goes out they all go out). The most common reason that we find for phone lines not working is that a wire is broken from someone using the wrong size wire strippers when striping the wire. This is normally found inside the wall box at one of the jacks. More then likely this will be the culprit. Just open every jack and check the wires to make sure one or more wires are not broken (check them carefully the wires are thin and break easy).

Also depending on the type wire used you will have either a wire with 2 pairs of wires that are red, green, yellow, and black for colors. In his type wire normally the red and green is considered a pair and yellow and black is a pair. Just remember Christmas colors and GaTech colors.

If thats not your wire you may have a nicer wire with a few more wire pairs in it. In that wire type, normally a Cat 5 wire with grey sheathing or cat5e with blue sheathing. The main colors used are the blue and white with blue strip for the main line and any other twisted pair for the secondary second line. If you are matching a cat5 wire to an older phone jack the blue wire normally goes with the red terminal then the white with blue stripe wire goes with the green terminal. The second pair can be any other twisted pair with the solid color going on the yellow terminal and the striped wire goes on the black terminal.

If you need any help just shoot me a pm and I'll send you my phone number and I'd be happy to talk you through it.

To answer your question about connecting a working line into a dead line that should work. It might not get them all working but it will get the ones working that are on that side of the cut wire.

Good luck

Well...I went to Home Depot last night and bought this

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FTADX0...e=asn&creative=380341&creativeASIN=B000FTADX0

They had a cheaper one, but wasn't sure if it would pick up the tone thru walls and I don't like having to buy the same tool twice..so I decided to get the middle of the road tool.

Anyways...went to the house and found the communications box (5 blue Cat5e lines) in the master closet right next to the alarm box. Opened both up and found the RJ31x jack. The line coming from the alarm was hooked into two of the phone lines (one in and one out) and all of the 5 blue Cat5e lines were looped together making a "ring."

Also, there was another dedicated line that was brought in from the outside box into the Master Closet.

Soooo...I hooked up the tone generator and all the lines had connectivity. Every room that had a jack, I was able to get a signal. So, apparently, the phone guy who came out, didn't know what he was doing. Nothing was cut....but again, why would none of the phone lines throughout the house work? Why would they run a hard line to bypass what the alarm was hooked into?

So...I came to the conclusion...the alarm (which was not hooked up power wise) was probably somehow causing the issue. Whether it was a bad RJ31x jack, bad alarm board, or what, I believe it was keeping the loop from being made. So....I just snipped the phone lines coming from the RJ31x Jack/Alarm and hooked the Cat5e lines together to complete the "ring." After doing this, the signal throughout the house on all the phone lines was much stronger.

Hopefully that will work. If the new tenants want to get an alarm, the alarm guy will have to re-hook up the phone line, but I don't think that will be an issue. He should know what he is doing...either way, it will be on the tenants' bill.

I'm a little frustrated at the last phone guy who didn't know exactly what I was doing. But hey...I think I fixed the problem, was able to justify a new tool purchase to the wife , and learned a lot in the process.

Thank you to everyone who responded...Zig, Bass, jon, deadeye...appreciate the help. This forum never ceases to amaze me.

rjcruiser said:

Well...I went to Home Depot last night and bought this

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FTADX0...e=asn&creative=380341&creativeASIN=B000FTADX0

They had a cheaper one, but wasn't sure if it would pick up the tone thru walls and I don't like having to buy the same tool twice..so I decided to get the middle of the road tool.

Anyways...went to the house and found the communications box (5 blue Cat5e lines) in the master closet right next to the alarm box. Opened both up and found the RJ31x jack. The line coming from the alarm was hooked into two of the phone lines (one in and one out) and all of the 5 blue Cat5e lines were looped together making a "ring."

Also, there was another dedicated line that was brought in from the outside box into the Master Closet.

Soooo...I hooked up the tone generator and all the lines had connectivity. Every room that had a jack, I was able to get a signal. So, apparently, the phone guy who came out, didn't know what he was doing. Nothing was cut....but again, why would none of the phone lines throughout the house work? Why would they run a hard line to bypass what the alarm was hooked into?

So...I came to the conclusion...the alarm (which was not hooked up power wise) was probably somehow causing the issue. Whether it was a bad RJ31x jack, bad alarm board, or what, I believe it was keeping the loop from being made. So....I just snipped the phone lines coming from the RJ31x Jack/Alarm and hooked the Cat5e lines together to complete the "ring." After doing this, the signal throughout the house on all the phone lines was much stronger.

Hopefully that will work. If the new tenants want to get an alarm, the alarm guy will have to re-hook up the phone line, but I don't think that will be an issue. He should know what he is doing...either way, it will be on the tenants' bill.

I'm a little frustrated at the last phone guy who didn't know exactly what I was doing. But hey...I think I fixed the problem, was able to justify a new tool purchase to the wife , and learned a lot in the process.

Thank you to everyone who responded...Zig, Bass, jon, deadeye...appreciate the help. This forum never ceases to amaze me.

Click to expand...

Glad you got'em working!!!! Sounds like it was the RJ31X. You did the right thing by taking it out of the circuit if the alarm was not going to be used. That tone generator will come in handy down the road as well.

rjcruiser said:

So, apparently, the phone guy who came out, didn't know what he was doing. Nothing was cut....but again, why would none of the phone lines throughout the house work?

Click to expand...

It doesn't surprise me, it was more then likely the quickest answer to get him on his way.