Telephone lines: going from 2 to 1

[bwv810]

I would be grateful for any assistance with the following:

Until about a month ago we had two conventional telephone lines in our home. We recently removed a business line from our home phone network, and now have one residential line. The business line had a 482 exchange. The residential line had a 972 exchange. Here is what happened:

The 972 line was in service for several years before we added the 482 line.

--972 line has conventional wall outlets throughout the house.

--482 was wired to service a single jack in the home office.

To make a long story short, we decided to keep the 482 line and discontinue service for the 972 line. My idea was to use a cordless phone and base that we would install in the 482 phone jack in the office, and then have cordless units throughout the house.

It worked for a while, but recently we have been having trouble with the cordless phones, and now I would like to alter the phone line wiring (presumably at the NID) so that the 482 exchange can be accessed at the various wall outlets throughout the house.

My assumption is that this is a relatively simple effort that involves switching the wiring at the NID, and possibly behind the wall outlet in the office. I have done some research on the net on this topic but have only found information pertaining to adding a line, not removing one.

The office wall outlet for the phones has two openings, one each for the 972 line and for the 482 line. See this following picture:

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I removed the outlet from the wall.

This photo shows an in focus view of the blue wiring at the top of the bar; all wires are connected properly, so I am assuming that this is the 482 line, which is giving a dial tone.

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--This photo shows an in focus view of a green wire that has detached from the grommet that connects it to the lower part of the bar. I have not yet reattached it, but I have to assume that it is part of the old

972 line:

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Here are photos of the wiring at the NID:

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The photo immediately above shows green and white wires that connect to another, much older interface device which links to a 482 telephone at an outbuilding on the property. Here is a photo that shows how that line is wired.

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Again, any help in figuring this out would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Go to a working phone. Dial 611 or 511. In most locales, you'll hear a computerized voice telling you the phone number of the line you're connected to. Problem solved.

[Beachcomber]

You should read the original post more carefully. S/he said that the

972 business line was removed and there now is only one line in the house.

To the original poster - Your first goal is to make sure that you have dial tone on your existing phone available on two wires at each phone jack location.

If you can buy, borrow or beg for the use of a telephone lineman's headset (basically a phone with clip-on wires), it will make the job much easier.

If this is not available, you can take a spare phone and plug it into what is called an RJ-11 phone jack (available from companies like Radio Shack, Jameco Electronics, or MCM in One Electronics) and connect two properly stripped wires to the RED and GREEN marked terminal screws. At your main house junction block you should hear dial tone when this phone is off the hook and the jack wires are connected to either the two nuts on the left (most likely) or the two nuts on the right.

Now the trick is to make sure that every jack in your house is connected to these two (working dial tone) terminals. You are sort of on your own here as we can't tell how your house is wired.

Once you have a working phone line with dial tone at each outlet, you need to connect the equivalent of the RED and GREEN wires for the jack (the color standard for one line or line# 1) to the wires that give you the working phone line.

Your old jacks look like computer RJ-45 connectors, which work for phones but they are overkill. You may wish to purchase some extra RJ-11 jacks and replace them. The latter is designed specifically for one line telephones. (For nit-pickers, I know that RJ-11 refers to a standard, not the jack, but I am using the designation that is almost

100% universal in common usage).

Beachcomber

[noname87]

OK, let me give this a shot.

1) The new NID services the 482 line. If you unplug the black jack, you should lose service. Correct? If so go to 2. If not repost.

2) The old NID houses the service to the 972 line. The picture show a rats nest which I can't clearly make out but I can try to give you guidance. Two of the wires connected to the protector (block with the posts) should be your inside 972 wires. Connect these to the two existing wires that come from your new NID. If this is outside, replace the two loose wires with a jacketed cable. DO NOT disconnect the outside wires from the old NID.

Thanks for the memories. In my prior life, I worked with the guys that designed these parts.

[e-mail] wrote:

[mm]

When you do your testing, you don't have to firmly connect the wires to the screws. Just touching them both to separate screws will give a dial tone, or the ability to hear whatever the phone line is saying.

In Chicago, when I was searching for a phone line among many, I would call the Weather, because in those days, the weather would play and play for hours I think without ever hanging up. In Baltimore these days, the weather plays twice and then hangs up.

Please stop putting punctuation or any other characters than a space before or after a URL. If you want a semicolon after the url, put a space in between. If you had done that, most of us could just click on the urls. Now I don't think many can. I can't, on the two above or several below. (The characters before http keep my software from considering the rest of it a url. Characters afterwards just make it an invalid url.)

[bwv810]

I have uploaded another photo showing the relationship of the two NIDs:

noname87, I could not figure out what you were trying to say in 2 below, i.e., "Connect these to the two existing wires that come from your new NID".

Using the new photo, can you give me more detail? Thanks so much.

[e-mail] wrote:

[Eric in North TX]

The easiest, perhaps not the best solution would be; get a 1 into 2 adapter and a short line cord, plug the adapter into the 482 line, run the short line cord from the adapter to the 972 jack, and the entire house should be 482, plug the phone at that location into the other side of the adapter.

[bwv810]

[noname87]

[Stormin Mormon]

Since the URL doesn't work if you start with a dash, I'll correct your mistakes.

[Stormin Mormon]

Yep, that's quick and dirty. Back feed the lines. The only concern is if someone later (telco guy) connects to the other line. Ought to been disconnected at the network interface, but then a lot of things ought to be.