Wiring
Well, I didn’t knock us offline for long while rewiring phones today. I’m not done, but the dangerous part is over.
Since we moved in, we’ve had a long phone cord plugged into a wall jack in the kitchen, where you’d hang a wall phone. It goes through the air, hooks over a screw on the wall, and goes down behind the microwave to the DSL modem, which has been on a second microwave cart we use for storage. From there a network cable goes around the corner, across the office floor, and up to a router behind my computers. From there a network cable goes into my computer (the one I use; the other is an old Pentium 200 that used to handle voicemail for me until the associated phone died), and another one goes back along the floor, around the corner through a foot or two of kitchen, and over to the laptop in the living room.
We have had to duck slightly on the way into the bathroom, under the phone cord strung through the air in the kitchen. I’d planned to ask if it was okay to wire the place, then the landlord saw it and asked why I hadn’t, which answered that question. I got 100’ of phone cable and a jack, then didn’t get around to it.
Today I decided to tackle it.
Despite having not brought the electrical snake home from the office to make it easier.
How it appeared was that phone wire came up from the cellar to the hall outside our back door, then in the wall to the vicinity of the wall jack. From there phone cable went up into the ceiling, across the kitchen, across the living room, to the bedroom where the other jack is.
Wrong.
First I tried to get at the theoretical junction of phone cables in the wall of the kitchen. No dice. Well, the cable running through the ceiling to the bedroom had a few spare feet of play, wrapped up neatly, so I unwrapped it and snipped the cable. The phone in the bedroom still worked. The internet didn’t. Oops.
That means the phone service, wherever it once came in, now comes in toward the front of the building, and the cable through the ceiling is was supplies the kitchen jack.
Oh well. With some wailing a gnashing of teeth I managed to get the three cable ends spliced. I’d have liked to solder them to say “and I mean it,” but I used the solder I had a while back and forgot to buy more for the once a year I might need it. This is why they make electrical tape. Well, I’d have used it anyway to keep the four wires apart, but I made sure those connections were not going anywhere.
Then came running it across the ceiling to the wall and finding an exising hole. Yes, there was an ideal looking one with an electrical cable running through it.
Well, you don’t think I could get the tiny little phone cable through, did you? Noooo. Eventually I did, after trying various things, including drilling a new hole that wouldn’t be shared with the electric cable. The solution involved a coat hanger and masking tape.
Then I had to undo that because the cord tangled. At least it was easy to repeat the feat, once I’d discovered the trick.
That’s where I stopped. I put all the ceiling tiles back in place and left the phone cable tucked up in the office ceiling, waiting to go the rest of the way across and, ideally, down the inside of the wall near my desk. I rapped on the wall and it sounds like the landlord is right; the inner walls are hollow. He recommended not running it through an outer wall because there’s insulation.
Alternatively, I can run it out of the ceiling down the outside of the wall in a less permanent configuration. That’s tempting at least temporarily.
Really, though, I should bring home the electrical snake and a roll of network cable from the office, finish the phone, and run network cables into the bedroom and living room. Beats having cables across the floor, even if I don’t put in actual wall jacks.
ok you need chicklets (thats what they are commonly called not sure the official name http://www.homephonewiring.com/route.html has examples at the bottom.. not exactly what I use but close). they come in 2 and 3 wire veriety’s and you put the wire’s you are splicing into them and clap them shut with pliers or something. you don’t even have to strip the wires most of the time. If you don’t find those you can buy those little electrical screw on caps. Get the smallest ones you can find. they are usually blue. Electrical tape will work but you won’t have as good a connection as you should. with plan phone its not a big deal but with DSL it can make your connection drop or just be slow. after you put the caps on you should tape the 3 cables together so that the caps are at the top of all 3 cables. this makes it so that if they wires get pulled on for some reason you are pulling on the tape wrapping them and not pulling the wires themselfs.
Posted by Wayne on 12/04 at 12:10 AMYeah, I really wished I had some of the caps. For all I know, I might somewhere in my “never throw anything away,” but it wasn’t worth searching.
Posted by Jay on 12/04 at 01:33 PM
Next entry: Happy Birthday
Previous entry: Preview of Sadie as a Teen