How to Add Phones, Do Your Own Repairs

The telephone has been called “the greatest nuisance among conveniences, and the greatest convenience among nuisances.” Now that we own the telephones and wiring in our homes, it’s up to us to make the nuisance more convenient.

You can save money by repairing your own telephone wiring or adding to the wiring system in your home.

According to Pacific Bell spokesman Michael Runzler, the company’s rate for inside wire repair service in residences, effective March 1, is $45 for the first 15 minutes and $16 for each additional 15 minutes, per visit.

(Pacific Bell also has a per-month rate for inside wire repair service, which costs 60 cents a month. Under this plan, a repair person will come to your home and fix the inside wiring at no extra charge.)

There are also independent companies that offer telephone repair services.

Here are some common phone line changes or repairs and how to go about them if your decide to do the work yourself:

Switching to Touch-Tone

All residential telephone lines in San Diego County are now preconditioned for touch-tone. So, if you want to get rid of your old rotary dial phone, you can now simply plug in a touch-tone model with no problems.

Modular Connectors

If you intend to add more telephone wiring and jacks in your home, AT&T; Phone Centers, Radio Shack, Montgomery Ward, Sears Roebuck, home improvement centers and various drug store chains in North County sell do-it-yourself wiring and modular accessories.

But some points should be considered before you buy a bunch of modular jacks and wire junctions or string telephone wire all over your house like Christmas decorations.

Plan jack locations carefully for convenience, accessibility and appearance. And avoid locations where the jacks and phone cords could be damaged or interfere with electrical wires. Most people use the surface mounted type of modular jack. Flush mounted jacks recessed into the wall are available and give a neater appearance, but they require more work.

The instructions included with the package of modular jacks and other accessories are usually descriptive enough for the novice handyman, so don’t be afraid of trying to add an extension.

Here, for example, is a small rewiring job I recently completed:

In order to combine the location of the electric and telephone wires for my telephone answering machine, I used a “Modular Jack With Electric Faceplate.”

To install it, I ran a length of station wire from an existing modular jack, at the other end of the room, along the baseboard to the new jack location at the electrical outlet. I connected the wires following the directions included in the package, then removed the old electrical faceplate and installed the combination faceplate.

The result is a tidy arrangement with the electric and telephone wires now in one place. This rewiring job took me about an hour and cost $16.14, including tax, for the wire and the jack--and I still have 35 feet of wire left over for future use. The tools required? A screwdriver, wire cutters (or scissors), hammer and staples.

Rewiring Your Home

Many books have been published on rewiring your home and installing more telephones. But most of them go into great detail about how the telephone central office and the public network works--when all that most homeowners want to do is add, or relocate, one or two extensions.

For small wiring jobs, here is all you need to know about telephone wire:

The most commonly used modern wire, called “D-station wire,” (or just “station wire”) for home telephone use contains four color-coded conducting wires: red, green, yellow and black. (If your telephone wiring is so old that it is color coded differently, call in an expert, unless you really know what you are doing.) The red and green wires are normally used for the basic telephone line. The yellow and black are used for either a second telephone line, current for a lighted phone, or as spare wires if a problem develops in the red and green wires. Just be sure you maintain the color-coding continuity throughout your system--red to red, green to green, etc.

But a word of caution if you want to avoid trouble and noise interference on your line: never twist-splice telephone wires. Use the Federal Communications Commission-approved accessories, such as wire junctions and modular jacks. Wire junctions are connectors that allow you to branch off an existing station wire to different locations throughout your home.

How Many Phones on One Line?

The ringing current from the telephone company central office is usually sufficient to ring five telephones. But, according to Runzler, “Every device that can connect to the phone network has a Ringer Equivalency Number or REN. We (Pacific Bell) will guarantee that the line will work properly as long as the total of the REN’s on one line remains five or less,” he said.

To determine the number of telephones you can install within the REN limit, add up the REN’s of all your phones and any equipment connected to your telephone line such as answering machines, modems, FAX machines, and any new devices that you intend to add. This information is usually on the underside of the instrument. If the total is five or less, you should be OK. If any of your telephone instruments have no REN listed, you can contact the manufacturer for this information.

Trouble-Shooting

If you experience trouble with your system, try to isolate the trouble before calling a repair service and, if you’re lucky, fix it yourself.

First, check your telephone by plugging it into a friendly neighbor’s system and listen for a dial tone. Then dial a local number. If the phone works, disconnect all telephones, answering machines, FAX machines, etc., on the line that is in trouble, then test each jack.

If you find a bad jack, after verifying that the problem is not lose connections or broken wires in the jack, disconnect it and run a new wire to a good jack. Or, if you can trace the wire back to a good jack, try switching the spare yellow and black wires with the green and red wires in the length of wire that’s bad.

If none of your jacks work, run a temporary wire from a jack to the telephone company protector, located at the point where the outside telephone wires enter the house.

If, after connecting the red, green, yellow and black wires to the proper terminals in the protector, you get dial tone at the jack, the trouble is in your wiring, so isolate and replace the bad wire.

If you still don’t get dial tone, the trouble is in the telephone company wiring and you should notify the telephone company. If you have a network interface (Pacific Bell started installing these about five years ago), the inside wiring can be unplugged and a working telephone plugged into a modular jack on the device to determine where the trouble lies.

If all the jacks work, then test each telephone accessory separately. If you find a bad instrument, swap the line cord and the handset cord from the working phone to see if that corrects the problem.

Safety

When working with any electrical device, observe all safety precautions for working with electrical equipment.

A telephone line that is not in use carries 48 volts DC. When the phone rings, the (ringing current) voltage ranges from 90-110 volts AC. Because there are minimal amps on the line, however, the possibility of harmful electrical shock is diminished, Runzler said.

But even though the normal telephone voltage is low, the ringing current can zap your fingers and there is always the possibility that the wire could be touching another higher voltage line. So it’s a good idea to test the line by using a voltage meter.

When working on your telephone line, unplug it at the network interface, if you have one, which is located where the telephone company lines terminate at your home. Otherwise, if you have another set on the line, take it off the hook and ignore the high pitched sound or the recording imploring you to hang up.

Though telephones in bathrooms are not uncommon, in its guide to installing telephones and accessories, AT&T; advises:

“Never install jacks in locations that would permit someone to use a telephone near a bath tub, laundry tub, wash bowl, kitchen sink, swimming pool, or in wet areas such as a damp basement. Jacks installed in a kitchen should be located a reasonable distance from grounded surfaces such as sinks, refrigerators and ranges. And persons with pacemakers should never work on telephone lines.”

Through the ingenuity of the manufacturers of modern telephone equipment for the home, most of the mystery of installing it has been removed and, for the most part, the instructions are user-friendly.

If you want to change the setup of telephones in your home and feel confident of your abilities, doing the work yourself will probably save enough money to make it worth the effort.

HELP FOR DO-IT-YOURSELFERS

The following are some of the books available for the do-it-yourselfer who wants to tackle more ambitious telephone wiring projects:

* “The Telephone Book: The AT&T; Guide To Installing Telephones & Accessories,” sold at AT&T; Phone Centers. Price: $4.99.

* “Installing Your Own -Telephone,” sold at Radio Shack stores. Price: $5.95.

* The following books are available in the County Library System:

* “Chilton’s Guide to Telephone Installation and Repair,” by John T. Martin.

* “How to Buy, Install, and Maintain Your Own Telephone System,” by Joseph La Carrubba and Louis Zimmer.

* “Step-by-Step Telephone Installation and Repair,” by Joe G. Penna.

* “Your Telephone: Operation, Selection, and Installation,” by Martin Clifford.