Oddball Update

A few weeks ago, the phone jack in my office room magically stopped working. This was a real pisser, because I’m at my desk working most of the day, and when the phone rings, I like to be able to just peek at the caller ID and see who it is. I also recently bought a multifunction printer with fax capability, which of course was rendered inoperable by the dead phone line. Grrrrrr.

All of the other RJ-11 jacks in the house were working, so I knew the problem was with the internal wiring, and thus calling the phone company would be pointless. The next step was to either toss in the towel, call an electrician and open the checkbook, or try to do something about it myself. Historically I’ve been pretty incompetent about fixing anything that’s not computer related, but in recent weeks managed to both patch the stucco on our garage wall and replace the toilet seat hardware. So, still feeding off that high of handyman accomplishment, I decided to at least try to fix the phone jack before I passed off the task to somebody else.

I should have been working this afternoon, but I couldn’t take it anymore. This problem had been driving me nuts for weeks and I was unable to put it out of my head for another minute. The jack in question was behind my computer desk, sharing a wall plate with the power outlet — so I had to shut down and unplug everything. In other words, no more computer or Internet. Before this, I printed out a basic guide to troubleshooting phone wiring, since I wouldn’t be able to get online and refer to stuff during the job. Then I opened up the wall plate and took a look in there.

It looked pretty normal to me. Four wires — red, green, yellow and black — were hooked up to the RJ-11 receptacle, after coming off the four main white/blue and white/orange leads which are industry standard nowadays. There didn’t seem to be a problem there, at least nothing obvious like loose, broken or burnt wires. So I started by using a pencil eraser to clean the contacts inside the RJ-11 receptacle. It didn’t help.

Next, I got my multimeter and tested for DC voltage on the white/blue leads, which power our main phone line. (The white/orange leads are reserved for an optional second phone line.) Surprisingly, there were 50 volts there. In other words, the leads were receiving power and thus probably okay, so why wasn’t the jack frickin’ working? I figured maybe there was a problem between the main leads and the four-color wiring of the receptacle, so I decided to disconnect the receptacle and swap it out for the unused one in our kitchen.

During the process of this, the blue lead snapped right off. It and the white lead are simply wrapped around screws, which are tightened down onto the back of the receptacle, and the blue lead’s copper just broke in half. Okay, real good — now I need to get my wire stripper so I can reattach the remaining part of the lead. This is when I noticed that the blue lead was really damn taut, like some kind of monkey electrician didn’t measure the length accurately when they wired up the house. There should have been way more slack.

I swapped the receptacle for one in our kitchen, but it was no good. The office receptacle worked fine in the kitchen, but the kitchen one didn’t work in the office. I started to think that the blue lead breaking off was a clue. Because of the tautness of the lead, when the homebuilders installed the jack they might have tightened it down too hard and then twisted it while putting it into the wall, putting a big kink in the wire. Over time the wire became brittle and began to separate, and that’s when my phone died. Then, when I took it apart, it finally snapped for good.

So, I got the wire strippers and removed a bit of insulation on the ridiculously short remnants of the blue lead. Then came the oh-so-extreme fun of trying to wrap that cheesy thing around the screw and tighten it down, which probably took me half an hour of lying on my back, bumping my head on my desk, cursing and throwing screwdrivers around. FINALLY I got the damn thing tightened down, and immediately plugged in my phone to see if there was any difference. THERE WAS A DIAL TONE!

Now everything’s put back together, and the phone is thankfully working again. In the process of all this disassembly and testing, I discovered that while our homebuilder has a great reputation for strong and resilient construction, their electrical work leaves a whole lot to be desired. Mismatched, stripped or missing screws, crooked and shimmed receptacles, wires that are too short…bah, a real lousy job overall.

The only remaining problem is, I swapped my laser printer for my wife’s old inkjet, so I could have the fax machine working again. Now I have to swap them back.

Categorized as Life