atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring basement phone wiring cleanup

Today I got to clean up the phone wiring in our 80 year old house in Toledo. We currently have phone service from Buckeye CableSystem.
Before:


After:

Nice upgrade to a nasty-looking bunch of wires.

Personally I would have cut down the I/W's on the other side of the block, and used bridging clips for trouble-shooting.

Thanks, Arthur. I thought of doing that but in my haste to pack a bunch of stuff for moving back to Toledo, I did not bring my whole box of parts...which has bridge clips and all that other good stuff.

Nice job Jeff. But I sill would have used bridging clips. It looks like you punched over your loop commons. You can't do this on a 66 block. Maybe my eyes are bad based on the photo. But if you did this never do it again. Trust me!

It looks like they used to have two lines. I hope you kept the incoming pair with the ground to the old protector. The new outside ones are junk.

Always check the ground wire. Ive seen ground wires disconnected because PVC pipe was installed.


It reminds me to bring my camera before I threw up and nothing worked and then get hugs and kisses from the customer. Now that's service!

An electrician called me not long ago to fix a customers problem that he wired. One of the biggest taped up wire nut jobs in the history of telecom. I looked at him and said, "See these scissors in my hand watch what I do." I could see the nervousness of the electrician and the customer.

This did not prevent me from resolving this service call at all costs. Surgery concluded with a quadruple by pass of wires while the customer was left dead on the operating table. All the time keeping my Harris TS21 on mute so I could faintly hear a ring two feet away.. Oh, it was a doctors office.

Surgery and outpatient services resumed.


Chop chop and start over and rewire every jack in the place. Then I asked the Electrician if he did Data Cabling......He said yes.. One only knows?

About four hours later everyone was happy. No lost calls and operations resumed. I thought the doctor was going to have a heart attack.. After all his faithful sparky messed it up.

The system was one of those common Ge four line non ksu systems with 10 phones in a giant splice ball with unbalanced pairs. You would not believe it.

Jeff, you should have cut down all the pairs and used bridging clips and loop the common on the other side with clips. This is the way it should be done. I would have also eliminated the scotch locks.

Im not picking on you but an old timer would yell at me if it ended up your way. Good job anyhow.

I'll amen that!........

Okay guys, you have given me some good advice. When I get the rest of my stuff from home I will redo it.
The only reason I used scotchloks on the one pair is because that wire would not reach the block.
The angle of the camera makes it look like I punched over the cross connect, but I did not, I actually connected all the wires and then mounted the block up to the rafter.
The wires from outside are still there but because we are using digital phone from Buckeye, I just left the wires hanging in the ceiling.

Whatever happened to "Punch down all those damn pairs?"

Whatever happened to 89B brackets?? That whole wire thing on the bottom could be hidden.

Uh, Jeff, is that run coming from the right SATIN SILVER? I would think that you'd have discovered the problems that SS + punch blocks create. John C. (Not Garand)

No, that is two pair cat 3 that Buckeye Cable ran outside...