Home phone wiring

A person can really save a lot of money by doing his or her own labor in many areas, but residential phone wiring is where many homeowners feel more confident because of the low voltage wiring in phone systems.

Phone systems are different than electrical wiring systems in the fact that the electrical current for phones comes from the phone company. Phones use their own power.

It’s much easier to wire a home that still has the walls and ceilings exposed during the new construction. The newer type of cable used for phone and network systems is called Cat5 cable. It has eight wires inside of different colors. This is the cable that is most often used in new homes.

There are two methods of running a phone line. The older method is called a “daisy chain” and the newer method is called a “hub”. A daisy chain wiring method starts at the box outside installed by the phone company. It runs in to the first phone jack and then on to the next phone jack in a chain manner. This uses less cable than the hub method.

The hub method has a line that runs from the box outside to a junction box that feeds each phone jack with a separate Cat5 cable. This uses more cable, but is more reliable over time.

The next step is to make circuit runs of cable from the hub to each phone jack. Almost every room in the house should have a phone jack. Phone jacks fit into regular electric boxes. These boxes should be the same height as electric outlets.

Be sure to secure the cables using a cable staple gun. This will make sure that the cable won’t move or be cut while doing finish work. Remember to run the cable where it won’t get hit with nails. Put protective plates over the cable where they could be cut.

It’s also important to keep all Cat5 cables apart from power cables to avoid interference.

Next, run a cable from the hub to the outside power box installed by the phone company.

Once the cable runs are complete we can wire the cable to the hub and then on to each jack. We will wire all the phone jacks first.

We will use only two wires inside the Cat5 cable for each phone line. The first two will be blue/white and white/blue wires.  The phone jack or mod jack will have four, six, or eight screws. We only need to worry about the screws with the red and green wires under them. The blue wire with white stripes will attach to the red screw. The white wire with blue stripes will attach to the green screw. Once this is done, the jack can be secured into the electrical box and a cover can be put on it.

The other ends of the Cat5 cables will need to be wired to the hub using the same color coding. If there aren’t enough red or green screws for each phone jack, you can always attach two or more of the blue/white wires to one red screw. You can do the same with the white\blue wires and a green screw.

Finally, the Cat5 cable that runs from the hub to the box outside will need to be connected. The box from the phone company will be coded using the blue\ white and white\blue wires. Just attach each wire to the corresponding color and the job is finished.

Test each phone jack with a phone and cable for a dial tone. Make sure all covers are put back on to all the electric boxes and mod jacks.

                      Larry Angell

            www.make-my-own-house.com