Phone line splitter

Stainless_Steel

Hi all, hoping someone can help.

I have one phone line entering the house at the hall. I want to split this and provide 5 lines to various rooms of the house. Is there a wee box I can buy to do this? I'm unsure if this would be the correct way in terms of signal loss issues.

Thanks

Mr. G

Hi,

In general the line is only capable of providing 1 channel (excluding 3 way party etc).

You should only connect a maximum of 4 phones as adding more could short out and the phones might not ring- Adding any more then 4 phones individually is <snip> (not recommended)

What you could do is add a phone system to your telephone line, although you will pay for this, it will prevent people on the other 3 phones listening to you. Other then that, you could also use 5 cordless dect phones which allows you to call each of them easily. It is safe to use dect phones as they only use 1 phone socket. This will also prevent the other 3 people listening to you and can easily be extended. You are however limited like any dect phone as to how many you can have, usually 8 or so.

Have fun!

Stainless_Steel

Thanks for your reply!

I should state what I'm trying to do. I only have one phone. It's a cordless, not sure if it's DECT.

The other 4 cables I need are:

Monitored house alarm
Sky+ Box
Sky box
DSL modem

Does this still mean I should only use a max of 4 cables?

My thinking was that I'd split into two first, run one to modem location then put a filter on the other and split into 4 for other devices.

Sound plausible?

Mr. G

Well get rid of the 2 sky connections altogether once they are installed. There should only be 4 devices connected to the line, excluding the DSL broadband (AFAIK). You can contact Eircom via 1901 Service Enquiry to confirm this.

You can buy cordless phones which use 1 line connection and 4-6 phones if you like around the house. So there shouldn't be a problem with:
-x1 Alarm
-x2 Sky
-x1 phone.

LLU

Mr_Grumpy wrote: »

You should only connect a maximum of 4 phones as adding more could short out and the phones might not ring- Adding any more then 4 phones individually is DANGEROUS.

why is more than 4 dangerous?

Solair

There's absolutely nothing dangerous about connecting several phones to your telephone line. The only problem is that if you have way too many devices on the line, your phones may not ring as there will not be sufficient power on the line to activate their ringing circuits.

As a rule of thumb, most eircom lines have a REN value of 5.
This means they can ring 5 standard old-fashioned telephones. Modern digital telephones don't have anything like the power requirements of old fashioned ones. So, in general you can probably connect more than 5 devices without any issues. An old phone actually had moving parts so they required a LOT more current than a modern device which would only use a fraction of that.

The actual ability of the phone line to ring multiple phones depends on a few factors: How long the line is (how far you are from the exchange) and how the line is fed (what type of exchange it is.. there are little differences!)

If you need a lot of telephones, get a DECT (cordless) system with multiple handset. It's far less complicated than wiring extensions and the entire system will only count as one phone on the line, regardless of how many portable handsets you have.

Connecting 5+ devices to the line, shouldn't cause any problems really.

If your phones stop ringing, connect fewer devices

There's no "danger" i.e. nothing will blow up or catch fire !

Just use good quality, solid core copper twisted pair cable like CAT5.

You can buy junction boxes suitable for telephone wiring in places like maplins.

Wiring for Irish phone lines uses two wires only. The terminals in your phone socket will be marked L1 & L2 ignore terminals marked R.

You can daisy chain from socket to socket, or use a star configuration... It really makes no difference.

Where possible, try to install a central DSL splitter and feed your voice extensions from the filtered side of that.
Although, if that's too complex, just ensure you have a plug in microfiber on every device connected to the line, and except the DSL modem!

Mr. G

Sorry, meant not recommended by Eircom. Electrical power would be different, however because of Eircom little power input to phones there isn't much of a problem.

Eircom say 4 devices.

Solair

Well, it's only a "rule of thumb". There are many variables!

The further you are away from the exchange, the bigger the voltage loss so the fewer devices the line will be able to make ring.
If you're close to the exchange the ring voltage will be approx 75V at 25Hz... the further away you get, the lower that voltage gets.

If your phones do not ring, then you've overloaded the line.

In general though, modern phones require very little power to ring and no power when they're on the hook, so the line can support quite a lot of devices.

4 to 5 is a good guide though.

LLU

Mr_Grumpy wrote: »

Sorry, meant not recommended by Eircom. Electrical power would be different, however because of Eircom little power input to phones there isn't much of a problem.

Eircom say 4 devices.

Whew, so it's not DANGEROUS and not even dangerous, that's a relief!