Phone jack in garage

[bookman51]

I had a phone jack put in my garage. However, when I hooked a cordless phone to it, the phone rings, I can talk and the caller can hear me, BUT I cannot hear the caller. I tested the phone on jacks in the house and it works.

On ideas on how to test the phone line and wiring of the jack?

Thanks in advance

Bookman

 

[the_saint]

Plug in a regular phone and see if that works.

How far are you from the main base?

 

[rodm1]

Check your wire. Maybe you have them crossed or bad connection.

 

[Boostable]

Wiring issue for sure, if your unfamiliar with phone jack wiring, compare it to a working one in your house. The jack itself is more then likely color coded as well.

~ Jack

 

[c4cruiser]

Who did the wiring? Sounds like there is a wrong wire connected to the garage jack.

For a single line, the red and green wires would be used on the center two pins.

 

[2LTim]

Who did the wiring? Sounds like there is a wrong wire connected to the garage jack.

For a single line, the red and yellow wires would be used on the center two pins.

your color picture is correct, But the red and GREEN wires should be on the middle two pins.

 

[Larwyn]

Try a different phone. It takes both wires to send or receive, if you can do either it is very likely that the line is good and the problem is in the phone. Each line only uses one pair of wires the red and green wires are normally used for line 1 and the black yellow for line 2. If you had a bad wire on the line, there would be no communication in either direction, the only way you would ever communicate over the one remaining wire would be to stretch it very tightly between two tin cans...

 

[Mystic142]

I ran cat 5e for both network and phone. Most applications I have seen doing this used blue/blue white for line 1 and orange/orange white for line 2.

 

[Larwyn]

I cannot imagine any reason to use cat 5 cable for a telephone but yes most people use the standard color code of blue/blue white as pair 1, orange/orange white pair 2, green/green white pair 3, and brown/brown white pair 4 when using cat 5e. But standard phone wire already has twice the number of conductors required for a single line (the most common application), why run 4 pair and spare out 3 of them?

 

[Mystic142]

I cannot imagine any reason to use cat 5 cable for a telephone but yes most people use the standard color code of blue/blue white as pair 1, orange/orange white pair 2, green/green white pair 3, and brown/brown white pair 4 when using cat 5e. But standard phone wire already has twice the number of conductors required for a single line (the most common application), why run 4 pair and spare out 3 of them?

I found that buying a spool of cat 5e when I wired the house for network was cheaper than buying what I needed. It did not make sense to me to go buy phone wire when I still had half a spool left.

 

[bookman51]

An electrician did the wiring. I will check the wiring from the information given here and see what I can do. Perhaps I will take a picture later today and post it.

Thanks
Bookman

 

[c4cruiser]

your color picture is correct, But the red and GREEN wires should be on the middle two pins.

OOPS

I shall invoke the Edit process....

 

[bookman51]

Here are a couple of pictures of the phone jack in the shop. Looks like a red and a green wire are connected but, as you will note, nothing else is. Hope this is helpful

Bookman

[/IMG]zps9554e2fc.jpg[/IMG]

 

[madosta]

You only need Red + Green - Ring and Tip for a typical POTS line. The others are for LINE 2.

You should get voltage on the Red wire - around 48v dc and ringing will be about 90v ac. Is this just a plain copper line from the telco? Or do you have VoIP from Comcast or something?

There is a certain number of ringer equivalence number if using VoIP and each phone should have this.

This is a weird situation.

 

[Slednut]

It almost seems like something is bothering the cordless phone while it's in the shop. If you have another cordless phone in the house unplug it from AC and try the shop cordless again. If you check the voltage using ground as a reference you could see as low as 35 volts DC. Some of the DSLAM equipment for DSL puts out a lower voltage. Like above, try a regular phone.

 

[madosta]

It almost seems like something is bothering the cordless phone while it's in the shop. If you have another cordless phone in the house unplug it from AC and try the shop cordless again. If you check the voltage using ground as a reference you could see as low as 35 volts DC. Some of the DSLAM equipment for DSL puts out a lower voltage. Like above, try a regular phone.

2.4Ghz - Wifi or Microwave?!

 

[c4cruiser]

What about the wire connections/punch down at the other end? Did the guy use the box provided by a phone company or did he splice in from an existing phone wall connection?

Seems to me if the cordless phone works in the house, it should work in the garage assuming that all of the connections are correct. Maybe there's a chance that a wire is broken in the sheath somewhere? A tone generator can confirm that or if the red and green wires are backwards at the other end.

 

[Larwyn]

I have never seen a case where reversed polarity or a bad wire would cause the symptoms described in the opening post. It could be that the receiver portion of the cordless phone in question worked for the last time when it was tested in the house, stranger things have happened. Since the phone rings and the other person can hear you talking but you cannot hear them, my guess would be a radio problem with the cordless set.

 

[ishiboo]

I have never seen a case where reversed polarity or a bad wire would cause the symptoms described in the opening post. It could be that the receiver portion of the cordless phone in question worked for the last time when it was tested in the house, stranger things have happened. Since the phone rings and the other person can hear you talking but you cannot hear them, my guess would be a radio problem with the cordless set.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Only two wires required and it's all or nothing!

 

[bookman51]

I tried an old cord phone this afternoon and it worked in the shop. So, must be a problem with cordless set.

Thanks for all the good ideas. This is a great forum with tons of expertise!

Bookman

 

[Jose G]

I have never seen a case where reversed polarity or a bad wire would cause the symptoms described in the opening post. It could be that the receiver portion of the cordless phone in question worked for the last time when it was tested in the house, stranger things have happened. Since the phone rings and the other person can hear you talking but you cannot hear them, my guess would be a radio problem with the cordless set.

x2 and if it's from a cable compagny... make it X3

 

[Motofixxer]

I cannot imagine any reason to use cat 5 cable for a telephone but yes most people use the standard color code of blue/blue white as pair 1, orange/orange white pair 2, green/green white pair 3, and brown/brown white pair 4 when using cat 5e. But standard phone wire already has twice the number of conductors required for a single line (the most common application), why run 4 pair and spare out 3 of them?

Cat5e is the standard for phone line now. With the current technology of dsl and ATT Uverse etc running through it, and price taken into account it only makes sense. The added advantage is ability to rewire as data. I wouldn't use any less. I haven't run across an electrician etc in the last 10 yrs or so that doesn't use 5e.

 

[Larwyn]

Cat5e is the standard for phone line now. With the current technology of dsl and ATT Uverse etc running through it, and price taken into account it only makes sense. The added advantage is ability to rewire as data. I wouldn't use any less. I haven't run across an electrician etc in the last 10 yrs or so that doesn't use 5e.

Okay, I did not know that, but here in the "backward south", it appears that we still use phone wire. At least up until a couple of years ago. The phone company has been here to repair the a problem with the dsl within the past two years and ran standard 4 conductor phone wire to replace what he decided was a bad customer owned wire (charged me for it too). Turned out the problem was not fixed until he replaced the antique phone company owned lightning protector on the outside of the house. I fixed it even better when I dropped DSL all together and went with the cable modem.

I have been retired for 6 years now and even when I was working, phone line work was essential to but only incidental to much of the protection and control equipment that I was responsible for. I do recall seeing some cat 5 cable used for phone lines in some new construction at the plant before I retired. The need to change over in my substations just never came up.