Tidying up telephone wire

[JimLoskot]

This is the current ugly mess on the side of my house:

Phoneline1

• JimLoskot
• 26 Sep 2011
• 1

Phoneline closeup

• JimLoskot
• 26 Sep 2011
• 1

Is this BT responsibility or mine and who has to pay for it?
I have an IDC tool and have done a fair bit of work with internal phone lines and would rather tidy it up myself as I'm a bit of a perfectionist.
Unfortunatly I am unsure what would be the best type of connection box for this.
Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance
Jim

 

[TicklyT]

As that is before the master socket, it is your service provider's maintenance responsibility.

IIRC the top of those old round insulators unscrews. They were made with enough space inside to house crimps joining the dropwire to the lead-in. There are usually cable entry holes under the insulator skirt to bring the cables in and out through.

Just pushing the crimps up under the insulator skirt, and putting a cable tie around the curved bracket would make it less offensive to the eye, and offer some weather protection.

 

[JimLoskot]

Thanks very much, I'll get my ladder out and have a look at doing that

 

[bernardgreen]

Ask BT ( Openreach ) to fit a terminal box such as this to protect their crimped joints and reduce the risk of them failing due to vibration in the wind.

Untitled

• bernardgreen
• 26 Sep 2011
• 1

The top of the ceramic insulator does not unscrew. The insulator is one solid piece. The groove is where the bare copper wire was wrapped before insulated cable was used. Known as "open wire" the two wires were bare and had to be properly tensioned of prevent them touching and shorting out the line. The insulators came is pairs, mostly one above the other, your top one has been removed. Some of them did unscrew from the metal bracket to enable replacement in the insulator broke.

 

[JimLoskot]

Thanks, very interesting.
I'll give BT a ring and see what they say, probably want me to pay them to fix their bad work tho.

 

[bernardgreen]

Suggest politely that doing properly will maybe avoid them having to come out to restore service when the wire breaks. Loss of service means they may have to refund line rental for the time you have no phone service as the fault is due to poorly installed external plant ( plant = anything such as posts, wires. street cabinets and telephone exchanges etc )

 

[JimLoskot]

good point. Thanks again for all the info

 

[cajar]

The top of those ceramic insulators do unscrew.

 

[JimLoskot]

Contacted BT by phone which wasn't very fruitful so have emailed them the details and expressed my concern about loss of service due to damage from the elements. Have looked at a few of the other older houses in the street and they seem to be more or less the same botch jobs, only mine protrudes from the house a lot more than the others as it on the corner.
Will update when I get a response for anyone thats interested or has a similar issue

 

[JimLoskot]

Bt bounce me over to openreach, they aren't interested either.
What a waste of time.
Think I'm just going to buy a BT16a external telephone connection box and sort it out myself and maybe put some new gel crimps on.
Least I'll know its done right

 

[tomy]

bt16 is obsolete now , accidently break one wire so your phone is off then report it to your sp who will test the line as faulty , then when openreach come out they will put it into a new gel "sausage" shaped protector

 

[JimLoskot]

do you mean one of these?
http://www.mastersocket.com/telepho...nal_telephone_cable_jointrepair_kit_P682.html
if so I'll get one myself and fit it, will probably be easier in the long run

 

[tomy]

yep that is what we use now

 

[JimLoskot]

great stuff, thanks again

 

[Infidel]

What you have is a bit of grey dw 3 the span across to the pole crimped to a bit of new dw 10 the lead in to the house and nte.
As stated if you can do without the phone for a few days break one of the connectors (wiggle the wire until it breaks) and openreach should renew from the nte all the way back to the pole in a continuos length of spanking new dw10.(depends on the engineer who turns up).
And Bernard you can unscrew the tops of those insulators, originally there would have been another one on top on the upward arm for open 40cc copper wires and these were then nibbed onto the 2 core black and red lead in.