Telephones! Yech!

[MikeA]

This IS "anything and everything".  If you are expecting anything about VP, skip on to the next message I had a problem.  I have a "business" line that comes into the house only in my office in my basement.  A couple of weeks ago, I bought a cordless phone set that includes one remote extension...also cordless.  I plugged the phones in, and everything was hunky-dory...worked perfectly.  However, with the "base transmitter" down in the basement, the range wasn't too good when I went outside.  I says to myself, "Self, why don't you run the wire from the basement up into your bedroom and use the "extension" phone downstairs?"  The response was an overwhelming "YES", PERFECT solution!I bought a wire "fish" to snake the wiring up through the walls and through the floor in the bedroom.  I bought 100' of phone line and bought two modular face-plates (prewired), one with one jack and the other with two jacks.  I needed the twin jack faceplate in the bedroom so I could utilize the existing wiring for my non-business number.  The single jack in the basement would just require a pigtail line from the existing outlet into the new box...or, in other words, just a neat way to splice the phone lines.No problem in the basement or in fishing the wire up through the walls and ceiling.  But, I ran into a bowl of spaghetti when I removed the old circular faceplate in the bedroom.  At some point, I deduced that the standard red/green wiring had dilapidated and someone switched from Red/Green to Black/Yellow!  In looking at the terminal posts, the Black and Yellow posts on the plate were wired with the Black/Yellow wires (two cables) plus a third pair that was Red/Green wired to that same set of terminals!  And, it was WORKING!So, I proceeded to wire in the new cable to the face plate using standard wiring conventions and with notes and actually pictures of the old face plate in hand, wired the new plate's second modular jack just like the old one and confidently plugged in both phones.  The new business line worked perfectly.  No static and great signal strength.Then I plugged in the non-business phone and didn't even get static!  Impossible!  It was wired EXACTLY like the old plate that worked!After a bit of head scratching, I finally figured out what must have happened.  Whoever rewired to use Black/Yellow must have thought it easier to change the routing of those little wires that run from the terminal posts to the pin-outs on the jack than to wire the Black/Yellow to the Red/Green posts!  The Black/Yellow posts had been changed to route to the Red/Green pins!  At least it was an easy task to switch the posts that the old wires were tied to.  Once that was done, the non-business line worked just fine.  Morale?  Phone wiring is now the responsibility of the homeowner and not the phone company!  There are probably enough people out there doing their own wiring who have no clue about standards nor the problems it can cause someone later on who might have to initiate changes to that wiring.  Just be aware that looks can be deceiving!

[faygo]

MikeA
 
One thing my Dad taught me as a youngster. When ever you are doing anything to the house, remember to look out for the guy that will someday have to deal with it. This has really stood me in good stead as usually I have been the guy to deal with it.