Need to rewire Eircom Phonewatch line

Samson

I have made a bit of a balls-up of the telephone line wiring going to my Eircom Phonewatch box, and now I have a "Comm Fail" on the alarm panel.

Up until recently (a few days ago) I had two telephone lines via an Eircom ISDN box, but have only ever had a single pair coming in to the house.
I cancelled the ISDN as I had no need for the second line and I wanted to cut costs.

As soon as Eircom advised me that they had switched the line back to a standard single channel back at the exchange, I took out the ISDN box and all the cabling between the telephone line entry point in the hall and the ISDN box, and put in a new cable (using a single pair) between the hall and the connection box in the sitting room (which the Eircom Phonewatch installer had run a cable into from the alarm). I plugged a phone in to the box and I had a dial tone, so I assumed all was fine!

Yesterday, purely by accident, I discovered that my alarm has no comms. When I got home the alarm had been activated (the dog got in to the front room where there is no pet lens on the PIR), however, I had not been contacted by Phonewatch. I rang the house number to see if the alarm would "pick up" after a certain amount of rings as it used to do, and it did not.
I also checked the log on the panel and saw there was a "Comm Fail" message.

Obviously, I've wired things incorrectly as far as the alarm is concerned.
Can anyone advise me of how the wiring should be?

Thanks in advance.

altor

Hi Samson,
If you tell me what system you have installed I will tell you how it should be wired in the panel.

Samson

Thanks altor.
It's a Simon XT.

altor

You will need a RJ 45 adapter plus phone crimp if the installer crimped the cable for the phone himself. In the RJ45 it will be the center two for line in and the outer two for line out.

If he used the cable supplied with the panel you will use green/red main phone line in, grey/brown phone line out of the panel to phones.

If you scroll to systems programming, enter your user code, this will allow you work on the panel.

Any problems, let me know.

indie armada

hi samson, usually the line to the alarm panel is the blue/blue white pair and the return is the orange/orange white pair. so the main line comming into the house connects to the blues and the feed for the house phones comes back on the oranges. this way the alarm has priority.

Samson

Thanks for the advice guys.

Wiring now seems correct, however, I'm still having trouble:
Still getting "comm fail" message on the panel, plus I'm not getting an output to the telephone socket.

Here's what I've got at the moment:
The phone line (single pair) comes in to a junction box (not a socket) in the hall. In the junction box two cores of a six core cable are connected to the line - blue/white to the positive and blue to the negative. The line voltage is 50volt.

The six core cable runs to the phone socket box on the wall in the sitting room and the blue/white and blue cores are connected to the same colours on the (six core) cable running out of this socket to the alarm panel.

In the alarm panel, four cores of the six core cable are spliced onto a short bit of the cable with the RJ45 plug on it as follows:
blue/white to green
blue to red
orange/white to brown
orange to grey
I have checked the middle two pins of the RJ45 plug and I am getting 50volt, so the integrity of the cable seems okay.

Then running back in to the phone socket from the alarm panel the orange/white is connected to the green, and the orange is connected to the red, so the middle two pins of the RJ11 are connected.

If I now plug a telephone in to the phone socket box on the wall, or the RJ11 socket in the alarm panel I have no dial tone. Yet I did have a dial tone in both when I had things wired incorrectly.

I'm at loss, any further ideas guys?
I have included a couple of photos, which may help explain things.

altor

If i was you i would take the cables in the socket apart and start again. Get your meter and get the main line at this point, should be 50v. Connect it to the green/red in the panel and check for voltage. The cable coming back from the panel should now have 50 volts. Connect this to the green red terminal in the phone socket. Do not connect any phone off the original line going to the panel. just use the return and it should work.

Is the cable to the right side of the socket the cable going to the alarm ?

Any problems let me know..

Samson

Yes, the cable on right is going to the alarm.
I'll try again.

altor

Samson wrote: »

Yes, the cable on right is going to the alarm.
I'll try again.

From a EN50131 point of view the cable should be in protective trunking as it is below the required height. It is what the monitoring station uses to monitor your alarm, without this cable you may as well not have the alarm monitored. If someone was to break into your house it is only a mater of cutting the cable. I would get on to them to have it done.

indie armada

lookig at the photo.....what i presume is the main line comming in at the bottom left it looks to me that you might have the white cores mixed up. unlike the newer cable on the right the white cores dont seem to have the coloured dashes that the newer cable is, therefor making them harder to distiguish. when doing these type of connections i use a test phone with croc clips and its never failed me.

ps check the rg11 connection on that box, there notorious for the little springloaded pins comming out of their tracks and shorting out the line.