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Bitten by historic wiring
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Old 29-01-2011, 16:47   #1
Cambridge Paul
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Bitten by historic wiring

Hi
I'm attempting to sort out my next door neighbour's extension phones. He's with Virgin and we live in Cambridge. When I looked at the master socket, one of the two internal wires (6 core "modern" white sheath) was connected to the customer side of the socket via the press down terminals (but only 2 and 5) whilst the other was connected on the Virgin side to the screw terminals A and B. Going around the house there wasn't a slave socket to be seen, they were all masters, three BT and one Virgin (yes, a genuine master socket).
Tracing the wiring it very quickly went into pre 1970 Blue, Brown, Green and Orange. Then the tale becomes really tangled, because some of this wiring runs into the next door property because it predates the division of the structure (of which our houses form parts) into separate units.
My questions are
1) Should I continue with the two wire system (which is what this is) even though it's not kosher?
2) What is the status of the second Virgin Master box, as it's electrically on the Virgin "side", since if I try to put the whole system on to 3 wire, I will have to take the guts out of the master socket, leaving the faceplate to do the work.
Regards
Paul
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Old 29-01-2011, 18:18   #2
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Re: Bitten by historic wiring

You need to wire up three wires otherwise the phones won't ring (unless they are really old type and see note below) The incoming line should be connected to terminal 5 (A leg) amd terminal 2 (B leg) on a master socket. The outgoing wires to extensions with the "new" type plugs should go 2 to 2, 3 to 3 and 5 to 5. You should only have one master socket, if you want to use the other masters as extensions, simply clip out the capacitor (across 2&3), resistor (across 3&5) and surge arrester (across 2&5)

Note: with all your sockets as master sockets, your phones will ring but you are putting a high capacitance across 2&3 and low resistance across 3&5 which could cause problems with your line.

See http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wi...telephone.html for a pictorial display
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Old 29-01-2011, 18:52   #3
Cambridge Paul
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Re: Bitten by historic wiring

Thanks — I'm pretty up together with conventional 'phone wiring. Maybe I should have added
The master socket also has the two wires connected to A and B from the waterproof external wire.
There are only two wires available over some parts of the setup. The other two are being used by the next door property's system! I checked this by voltage testing to find 50V across two pairs, Blue/Orange and Brown/Green. When I unplugged next-door's master socket this second potential dropped. This must have been from the GPO days when all the wire belonged to the GPO and from when it was one big house. At the present both properties, like mine, use Virgin, but this could change.
Thanks for reinforcing my doubts about a multiplicity of masters. This was done to save having the third, ringer, wire. The only problem I can see is stripping out this property's side of the shared wiring will cut of part of the other property's system.
I will encourage both people to look at a total re-cable, along with an ethernet system at the same time. Wireless gets "interesting" with 9 overlapping WLANs!
As a matter of interest my neighbour only moved to Virgin 18 months ago, and the guy joined up his home 'phones. Presumably he did the minimum.
Again thanks for the advice.
Paul
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