phone line short?

[Actr123]

Hi all. A friend told me this morning that he was trying to call me and
getting a busy signal (I have call waiting, so this is weird). Turns out, none
of my phone jacks are working. I called the phone company and they said they
detected a short, and they predict its inside the house. Now I think it was
working fine yesterday, at least I called in to see if I had any messages and
it rang, no busy signal, although since my answering machine didn't pick up on
the second ring I knew there were no messages so I didn't wait for it to pick
up. The painters were here yesterday, and they may have undid some of the
jacks to do a proper paint job, but then again the time I called was after the
painters left, at least I think.

Anyway, I have some experience with phone wiring, and I've had loos connections
before, and they never caused this. The worst that happened is that each jack
on the circuit was dead, but I have several independent circuits in my house,
and I don't think just a loose wire would cause them all to fail, not to
mention the busy signal thing. So what exactly can cause a short in the phone
wiring?

Thanks

[TDuffy1770]

actr, you wrote:

First of all, if you have a phone company interface on the outside of your
house, and you have no dial tone presently, disconnect the modular connector
wire going to your phones there. This will disconnect your house from the
phone system leaving you with that one jack to plug a phone into there.

Plug a phone in. If you now have tone, your problem is inside.

If you do not have an interface, disconnect the house's service at the first
connection inside the house; make sure you note which wires are connected to
where in the device you are disconnecting from. The wires coming in from the
phone company might not be red, green, black, and yellow. Take the red & green
wires from the telephone company side and connect them to a spare modular phone
connector you will have to obtain. Plug a phone into it. If you now have tone
the problem is inside the house. If after you try either of these methods, you
still have no tone, call the phone company, tell them what you have done to
ascertain that the problem is outside the house and that you need a technician
to check the line. Better yet, if you can call them on the line you
disconnected,have them check the line at that time again.

One problem that is hard to find with a short condition inside the house; check
all of your modular jacks. Look very carefully inside where the wire from the
phone clicks into the jack. Make sure that all the contact wires (there
usually is 4) are isolated from each other. I found this problem once after
checking an entire house's circuitry and still had no tone, but did when
disconnected from the phone system. Two wire contacts somehow were bent
touching together and shorting out the houses circuitry. This would be hard to
see unless you unplug each phone and check each jack.

Let me know how you make out! Good luck.
Duff

30 years in the IBEW

[Michael Baugh]

Remember that every phone is an electronic device.
Disconnect all lines from the phone. Run a single line from the inside
connection to a terminal block. Connect your answering machine to it.
Connect a phone into it, leave everything else disconnected. All lines,
all other phones.
Start from the beginning that way. Leave it that way for a few days,
and mark the phone you used as OK. Then use another one, and after a
few days, connect a single other line, put the OK phone on it. Takes a
while, but allows for intermittant problems with a phone.
Go on like that.
We had the same sort of problem. Phone company charged us 35 dollars to
tell us it was inside. After it had cleared up. Went bad a couple of
days later. Ended up being one of our newest phones, acting up every so
often.
Also, make sure you know how to check for signal at your outside phone
interface box, if you have one. If you don't, make one right inside, so
that house phone wiring can be easily disconnected, and phone line
checked for signal.
During those days, we sometimes had the answering machine, and a phone,
on an upside-down trash can, in the basement at the service entrance.
Until we resolved it, it was easiest to have everything else
disconnected, rather than wonder if something was screwing up.

In article <20010106165112...@ng-fi1.aol.com>,

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[Bill Johnston]

A friend of mine had this same problem (where two wire contacts in the jack were
touching). It took out his whole house (service).

[Dan Hicks]

The first thing to do is to unplug all the phones (but one) and see if
things work. Very often the problem is with a phone or with the
plug-and-jack connection. Failing that, see if you have a "network
interface" either inside near where the telephone wire enters our
outside. The interface will have a plug and jack where you can uplug
the plug, separating the house from the phone line, and plug in a "known
good" phone. If the phone works there then the short is in the house.
If not, contact the phone company and tell them they're full of s**t.

If you haven't found the problem yet, then I'd next check the outlets
the painters fooled with. All it takes is the tip of a wire touching
the adjacent screw terminal to create a short. Make sure that, for the
outlets the painters messed with, each wire is touching one and only one
terminal, and no wires are touching each other (except where wires are
doubled-up on terminals to feed the next outlet, etc).

If that doesn't do it then you'll have to do some real detective work.
Basically, you have to separate the wiring into sections by
disconnecting wires here and there until the short goes away. Then
disconnect things in the bad section to narrow it down further.

One thing to keep in mind, if the painters removed baseboard or some
such, is that a nail may have penetrated the wire somewhere between
outlets. This sort of short can be hard to find. But since most phone
cables have four wires, and you only need two (red and green), you can
sometimes substitute the other pair (yellow and black) and get a shorted
secion of cable to work.

[Mark or Lori]

Perhaps even faster, just look for boxes that have been moved. Wall
flush-mounted jacks are not your most likely culprit, but surface boxes
('add-ons') are probably the ones painters would wrestle with.

Look for a surface jack, open the jack itself and you'll find wires shorted
somehow... (pinched, or spade lugs touching, etc...)

Mark

--

"Actr123" <act...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010106165112...@ng-fi1.aol.com...

[Terry Sanford]

There have been some problems with corrosion building up between the two centre
connections of those mini jacks.
Especially if they are mounted in a cold outside wall etc. and can be subject to
condensation from warm inside air settling on them.
Unfortunately the telephone line is usually on red/green, the two centre pins of
these mini jacks which are only a millimetre or so apart.
What happens is moisture plus a steady 48 volt potential from the telephone
exchange causes 'tracking' between the two 'pins' (well they are actually little
wire contacts. I have seen a greenish discoloration on some jacks, it is very
difficult or impossible to remove it seems to permeate the plastic!. Why that
design was ever adopted?
The intermittent symptom may be indicative of the above problem. Also you may
get noisy connections..
Good luck.

[George W. Logue]

I've experienced similar and I suspect it happens when someone is on
the phone with two parties engaged. I think it's a Telco programming
issue in their switch. It doesn't happen often enough for me to be
concerned nor enough to do any solid problem determination.
...george