Old telephone line

pyat

Hi folks,

I wonder if someone can help me with this...I'm getting my house done up at the moment (just bought it) and there seems to be an old telephone junction box (or something) just inside the the living room window....to be honest I'm not sure what it is but it seems to have the telephone line from outside running into it and the a line ruuning from it into the normal eircom/telecom eireann phone point...

The house is about 50 years old and I'd say this thing has been there from Day 1

The electrican I have in the house doing bits and pieces has never seen one before and doesn't want to mess with it...Eircom say that the line is working and they didn't seem to know either...they said they'd send a contractor out but I haven't heard from anyone...

The box is rectangular and about 3 inches long and one inch wide and is made of hard old plastic (bakalite?)

I'd leave it alone but where the box positioned prevents blinds going up which will be a problem...

Anyone any ideas?

Thanks a mil!

Borzoi

pyat wrote:

The electrican I have in the house doing bits and pieces has never seen one before and doesn't want to mess with it...Eircom say that the line is working and they didn't seem to know either...they said they'd send a contractor out but I haven't heard from anyone...

The box is rectangular and about 3 inches long and one inch wide and is made of hard old plastic (bakalite?)
!

Could be an old telephone bell box or junction box. Really you have to open up to check. Old boxes just had a single twisted pair odf wires in and out - though it sounds like the internal line has been replaced

Zapho

Yup, sounds like a junction box alright. If there's only one wire going in and one wire going out of it, you can just take the box off completely and run the wire direcly to your eircom box. If there's more wires coming out of it, its like that it serves as a line splitter to carry the phone line to somewhere else in the house. (like upstairs or something)

beller b

Don't know what sort of electrian you have that's afraid of a phone junction..
Presuming you only have 1 phone line into the house,open this box & disconnect the wires going into it.If your house phone still works then its safe to remove it,if your house phone doesn't work then take the pair coming from outside the house & get the electrician to reroute them to a better position for you,

murphaph

In the bad old days, the P&T used to install those junction boxes downstairs and run a pair of wires to the phone (usually downstairs) and also to an optional ringer box (usually upstairs or in a shed or something)! The reason was that the simple electromagnetically operated bell was so much cheaper than a type 709 phone (they were surprisingly expensive in their day). Since touch-tone phones became mass-produced this is all history. It's just a simple junction box and any sparks who's afraid of it shouldn't really be in the trade!

pyat

Thanks folks, just got another electrican to fix it, just took the unit of the wall and joined the wires and put in a new telephone point for me...no big deal...good to know that in advance of course!

cheers,

pyat

beller b

Good stuff.. btw what did the first electrician tell you???
"I only do plugs" LOL