This article is written for the serious do-it-yourselfer. I’m telling you that because the casual tinker will probably not want to invest in the test equipment that I’m going to recommend that you purchase. Most telephone problems can be solved without such sophisticate gear by using a trial and error method but these tools makes the job go quicker and they make you look more professional when your friends start calling you instead of the telephone company. Besides that, we love new toys, right?

Before I send you off shopping for your new DIY toys, I want to tell you a true story about a real life telephone line problem. When I bought my slightly used manufactured home last summer the lady that I bought it from told me that there was a real problem with the telephone wiring. The noise on the line was so bad that you could barely hear what a caller was saying and they could barely understand what she was saying. She told me that the telephone company had checked their lines and said that the problem was on the house side of their NID (Network Interface Device) which is also known as the telephone company’s Demarcation Point. She told me that she had crawled under the house and ran all new wire but the problem still persisted so, in her opinion, the problem had to lie with the phone company’s wiring. The day I moved in I went to work on the phone wiring. I clipped my Butt set on the telephone company’s side of the NID and got a strong, clean line tone. I dialed the operator to test the line and her voice came across crystal clear in my ear. The trouble was with the house wiring after all even if the want-a-be “Be Jane” did run all new wiring. I plugged my telephone line analyzer in at the jack furthest from the NID and the Loop Condition was in the red. Using my butt set at the same jack, I was certain that I was hearing an induced 60 cycle hum. At that point I was certain I knew what the problem was, “Jane” had run her new wiring too close to 110 volt wiring. I was right. Rerouting the wiring solved the problem completely. Determining the cause of the problem took only a few minutes, rerouting the wiring took several hours because of the tight crawl space under the house. My point in sharing this story with you is to point out that with a little knowledge and the right tools you will be able to handle any telephone problem that comes your way.

Essential test equipment and hand tools

· Fluke 3000 tone generator and probe set ($95.00)

· Fluke/Harris TS19 Basic Butt set ($110.00)

· DMM (Digital Multimeter) w/frequency measurement ($49.00)

· Multi-function telephone line analyzer ($35.00)

· Fluke Need-L-Lock Crimping Pliers ($28.00)

· Acme Staple Gun w/staples ($48.00)

This is a hefty investment at $365 but you could easily earn it back by becoming your neighborhood telephone man. The telephone company charges the consumer $100 to come into their home and fix the phone wiring. Most problems take a few minds to find and less than a half-hour to fix, so most people gladly pay you $25 to $35 dollars for the same service. All of these items are available on line from The Phone Geek at the above discounted prices and that includes free shipping anywhere in the United States.

Troubleshooting a dead phone line

Back in the days when I was operating a radio and TV repair business, my favorite type of problem was the completely dead set-no sound, no picture, no raster-because that told me that the problem was with the low-voltage power supply circuits. A completely dead set was always the easiest to troubleshoot. Much the same can be said when it comes to troubleshooting telephone problems.

· The first thing you need to check if the complaint is a dead line, a line with no dial tone, is the phone company’s line.

· Open the NID or Demarcation Point box located where the phone company’s line enters the premises. This box is usually white, grey or black in color and located on the exterior of the home. In some cases it may be located in the basement.

· Clip your Butt Set on the company’s side of the NID, observing the proper polarity. (You have read all the instruction manuals that came with all your new toy, right? If you haven’t, please do so now.)

· If you hear a clear, strong dial tone in the Butt Set, the telephone company’s wiring is fine and your problem is on the house side of the NID. Most like likely you have a bad cable or a bad connection at the first jack downstream from the NID.

· Disconnect the Butt Set and clip on the Fluke 3000 Tone Generator. The tone generator places a tone on the phone line that can be tracked with the Fluke 3000 Probe. This is a non-contact instrument that detects the tiny electromagnetic field radiating from the phone cable which acts like the transmitting antenna of a radio station. Run the activated probe along the phone cable from the NID to the first jack and then continue on until you reach the last jack on the line. When you reach the point where the tone disappears, you have found the problem area.

· If the tone disappears over the cable itself, the problem is a broken conductor in the cable. As a rule that doesn’t happen, but if the cable was stretched to taut during the installation, a conductor can break eventually from the constant stress placed on it.

· If you find a broken conductor, you have several options as to how to repair it. If the cable has been fished through the walls, ceilings, and/or floors, and the home only has one active phone line, you may want to substitute one of the spare conductors in the cable for the broken one. Until recently all residential phone wiring used four conduct station wire consisting of one red, one green, one yellow, and one black insulated conductor. The green and red conductors formed the “Tip” and “Ring” circuit for line 1 and the black and yellow conductors formed the “Tip” and “Ring” circuit for line 2. Newer wiring use what is called Cat-5 cable which has 8 conductors forming 4 twisted pairs. With Cat-5 wiring the blue on white conductor and the blue conductor replace the older green and red conductors; and the orange on white conductor and the orange conductors replace the older black and yellow conductors. The Cat-5 wiring has a big advantage over the older station wire in that the pairs are twisted together which makes them more immune to induced signals from other sources, like the power line hum that I had.

· If you substitute a yellow or black conductor for a red or green conductor stuff a note to that effect inside the boxes so that the next person that comes along knows what you did. If you have Cat-5 wiring switch pairs because you want to maintain the shielding effect of the twisted pair.

· If the break is in a cable that is ran in the open, such as in an unfinished basement, an unfinished attic, or in a crawl space, you may choose to splice the cable using your Need-L-Lock Crimping Pliers and the appropriate UR splice connectors. If you are making the splices in a damp area, such as a crawl space or a basement with a moisture problem, use the UG type connectors because they are gel filled and seal against moisture which can cause future problems.

· You should now have a dial unless there are still other problems to find and solve.

Troubleshooting a dead line that traces out good with the tone generator and probe.

· The Fluke 3000 is a great test instrument for checking the physical continuity of a phone line or for locating the line you want if there are a number of phone lines ran through the same space but there are numerous other potential problem that it can’t detect i.e. reversed polarity. Reverse polarity occurs when the tip and ring conductors are reversed. As a rule the problem of reversed polarity doesn’t occur naturally, it’s a manmade problem.

· A few months ago a neighbor asked me to take a look at her phone system. She told me that everything was fine until her teenage son added a phone jack in his room. My first assumption was that he had made a mistake when he connected the new jack. He had but it wasn’t his fault. He had connected it according to the wiring schematic that came with it but the person who had installed the original wiring had reverse the tip and ring conductor all the way back to the NID. When her son saw that he assumed that the original jack was reversed so he reversed the wiring and knocked out the dial tone. I could have spent hours looking for that problem if my telephone line analyzer wasn’t screaming “Reversed Polarity” at me as soon as I plugged it in. When I asked her son if he had changed the original wiring in the jack he tapped off f he told yes because it was wired backwards. I smiled. Reversed the green and red wires coming into the original jack and everything worked again. He looked puzzled because his shop instructor told him to always follow the instructions that came with what he was installing. He didn’t understand why the wrong way was right and the right way was wrong until I took him outside to the NID and showed him how the original installer had reversed the wiring at that point.

· The phone line analyzer also checks the Loop current and voltages, the tip and ring signals independently; it actually checks the line all the way back to the phone company’s substation. The Analyzer also enables you to check telephone instruments. That’s an important feature because if you plug a defective telephone in one jack it can kill the entire phone system.

· A word of caution is due here. Be careful when working on telephone wiring because you can get a nasty shock if someone rings in while you’re touching the bare conductors.

The Acme Staple Gun is the ideal tool for running telephone cable in the open because it allows you to staple it directly against floor joists and other wooden framing. It has a guide that straddles the wire and prevents the staples from penetrating the cable and prevents the staples from cutting through them by limiting the staples depth of penetration. If you run a lot of phone cable this stapler sure beats the old hammer and staple method.