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WIRE REHAB
If you have a wiring rat's nest on your premises and find it difficult
to make heads or tails out of what is what, I can probably remedy that for you. This can be done by reorganizing
your wiring and connecting it to wiring blocks on a permanent basis so it never has to be moved again.
This will not only provide easier access to your wiring for adding additional
service for dial tone talk lines, fax use, dial-up modems or DSL service or for whatever you may have in mind, but, will
also make it easier for you to maintain your services and to shoot trouble should you have a problem.
Below are some pictures to show what can be achieved with reorganizing
premises wiring. In this particular example, not only did the electrician who did the wiring work twist the bare
ends of the phone wiring connections together and wrap them all up in a ball of tape, but, he also crammed the Cable
TV wiring into the basement ceiling space with the phone wiring.
It was virtually impossible to do any work on these connections
because they were so intertwined and movement of the mass of wires threatened service interruptions and disconnections of
either the phone lines or Cable TV service or both without it being realized. Unfortunately, I didn't take a "before"
picture to show what a mess it was.
While this example is in a residence, the same wiring solution can be
invoked for most business situations, especially smaller businesses. This first picture, immediately below, shows
the area of the basement ceiling where the wiring problem existed. As I said above, all the wiring for both the telephone
and the cable TV coax was balled up and pushed back into one spot, in this case, the space where the two white blocks
are located on the left.
After reorganizing and separating the wiring, the coaxial wiring is now located between
one set of floor joists and the telephone wiring between another set. Now there is no conflict with wiring, intertwined
as it was, and less probability of any problems if one type or the other requires work.
In this next shot below, the two new wiring blocks for the
telephone wiring can be seen. The small white one, again, is for the phone line feeds from the service provider.
The longer white block holds all the telephone jack station wiring in the house. This wiring is permanently attached
to the block so that every pair within a given wire run is fully accessible but never has to be moved or touched again.
The gray box in the lower right of the picture is of the Cable TV
company box. The white wire at the bottom right of that box carries the dial tone feed from the cable company's
coaxial cable which goes to the customer wire side of the local phone company (in this case, SBC) interface where
it is bridged to the former feed wire that goes to the white telephone line feed block on the joist in front
of it.
This last picture is a close-up of the station wiring block. The
top of the block has the wiring cross-connection bringing the service from the feed block, via the blue-yellow wire,
and is looped to the various jack wire runs.
The white devices in the center of the block are bridge clips that bring
the service across the center of the block to each of the station wires terminated on the bottom row of the block. With
this arrangement, each wire run can be isolated for testing purposes, simply by removing the bridge clip, without taking
all of the station locations out of service. These bridge clips are analogous to a fuse without actually being a
fuse.
Now if the homeowner wants to add another line, it's a simple matter
to place a cross-connection from the service feed block to any or all the station wires where he requires it. This is
a very flexible arrangement and provides for the least wear and tear on the wiring.
The pictures below are of a project in which I was involved recently.
This involved a split-level house wherein it was entirely gutted and all new walls and ceiling drywall was installed along
with other building upgrades.
The gutting of the house gave us the opportunity to wire every room for
telephone service, including the bathroom, and, while we were running the telephone wire we also pulled coaxial cable from
all rooms save one and, of course the bathrooms.
Once the wiring board was in place, connecting blocks were installed
and the wiring was terminated on the blocks. In these particular pictures you'll note that we even marked right on the
blocks the jack locations which were served by any particular wire run. This saves having to make-up a separate sheet
with these details which might be lost.
This manner of wiring prevents ever having to move the jack wiring as
cross-connections are used rather than connecting the ends of the various wires together to get the service where it's needed.
When that is done, at some point you are going to lose wire as it gets trimmed shorter and shorter in making the direct connections
rather than using cross-connections. This is the best method for installing and connecting telephone wiring.
Due to the various problems which can be involved in straightening out
wiring problems such as this, all work is done on a time and material basis. Charges can be found at the Pricing link
on the sidebar on the left.
If you have any questions concerning all this, feel free to contact me.
Click on the Contact the Telephone Man link on the sidebar for information.
Regards,
Bill
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