house internal comms wiring - multiple phone points not all working

funnyname

Hi

Attached are some photos of the connection points in the house.

Main point in the hall under the stairs
Bedroom 1
Bedroom 2
Sitting room

Of the 4 points above only the first two are working, however I'd like to get the one in the sitting room working.

Hopefully you can see in the pics that there are two cables in the main unit, one white and one black, I don't know where the black one is going/coming from but I guess the white one is the main connection.

The bedroom 1 unit also has two cables, both white, so maybe one of these is daisy chained with the what I am calling the main unit.

Therefore does that mean the bedroom 2 and sitting room cables are not connected to anything.

Would it be easy for me to get the sitting room connection working or would I need an engineer in to do it?

Hopefully there is enough enough supplied but ask if you need additional info.

Many thanks for reading

FN

ED E

Main box is more properly called the NTU. The green/brown and white pair going onto the back of are the main drop wire into the house. Thats your phone signal and DSL signal. This is important as that socket is filtering DSL so it only goes to that socket, this is good as it typically gives you much better broadband.

What you wann do is this. Leave the drop wire connected to the same terminals on the back of the rear part, then connect all your extensions onto L1 L2 on the front part. Use a meter to determine which pairs go where and mark them with a labeler for future reference. You can put all the connections onto the same set of terminals and they'll all ring together. If you have a monitored alarm theres also space for that.

Also it looks like the sitting room is wired for ethernet not PSTN services, or at least has the extra pairs in place for that.

funnyname

Thanks ED E

What kinda meter would I need to get to check the pairs?

Also if I fully undertand you, I should do this say for bedroom 2

Blue colour pair is connected to the unit in the bedroom, make sure the blue pair of wrires are connected to L1 and L2 at the NTU?

Am I snookered for phone in the sitting room then given it'd not set up for PSTN? BTW what was the tell tell sign for that?

ED E

Continuity on a multimeter helps ID pairs, but you can do it by colour and trial and error if you like.

Connecting the blue/blue white as you say should be correct, remember to use the L1 and L2 on the front section, important for your broadband.

You'll need to determine where the sitting room goes back to, thatll tell you what it can do. If its straight through the phone could use it too, but if theres a crossover the phone wouldnt work.

funnyname

Thanks, do I need something like this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIGIFLEX-Testing-Digital-Multimeter-Voltmeter/dp/B003NEGZLS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415460549&sr=8-1&keywords=current+meter

ED E

Dont need, but they're quite handy to have around!

SpaceTime

What concerns me is your Bedroom 2 connection looks like there was some kind of serious overloading and overheating of the wire or very bad short circuit. Phone wiring usually doesn't have enough power to do that kind of damage!!

Was there lightening in your area when this went off line?

...

Phone wiring is quite simple really there are just two wires, the polarity doesn't matter very much in the Irish system either.

The two centre terminals of the socket are connected and the wires just loop in and out of the back that's why 2 wires are connected to the same terminal on each side.

On the sockets in your house the two centre terminals are marked with the Red and Green wires (old American colours)

The eircom socket wiring at the very back shouldn't be touched, that's the incoming line.
Don't connect anything here! L1 and L1 are for your main line and S1 and S2 are for your secondary line (if you had one).

All your internal wiring should be connected to two terminals on the back of the front plate marked L1 and L2.

Nothing else should be connected to the front plate.

You can ignore the "R" terminals, these are only used if you're using an old fashioned hardwired bell-ringer telephone from the 1970s or earlier. I don't know why they keep specifying them on these new NTU sockets. It's just pointless at this stage.


Also, on the extension sockets, tighten down any spare screw terminals and make sure that none of those spade connectors are loose as they're short circuit by touching other terminals together.

Don't leave any bare copper / metal terminals touching each other or close enough that they could move and touch.

If you've spare phone wiring, just snip the ends so that no copper is sticking out.

funnyname

Thanks SpaceTime

No idea re the lightning as we only bought the place during the summer, would I want to get a new wallplate for it?

I have a multimeter coming from amazon next week so I'll check all the connections and hopefully I'll be able to set up bedroom 2 and the sitting room to work.

SpaceTime

Definitely get new wall plates if any are damaged.

If you go to an electrical wholesaler pick up some decent quality ones too like Legrand or something of that nature.

Those brandless ones are just as expensive and usually not great.

The better ones have insulation displacement connections (IDC). You just slide the wires into little slots without paring them at all, turn a screwdriver in the back of the fitting and it simply slices into the wire with little blades at each connection terminal.