Around 8 AM Sunday my dial tone went “Buh-By!” and none of my phones worked. They were getting juice but no dial tone. I have Verizon FIOS and called the support line on my cell phone.
The phone company put a box on the outside of my house so with the tech on the line I disconnected my house and plugged an old phone into the test jack. Instant dial tone. Swell.
What’s wrong with my house phone cabling? Well… what’s not wrong with it?
Dad and I used to run phone and network cabling for contracting jobs and Dad would always run the cables to a closet. Each of those runs were terminated on a 66 block. Dad never liked the 110 block, he was an old timer that way.
When we cabled up my old house we did the exact same thing: straight run to the basement closet for each line, terminated on a 66 block. The phone company was on that block too and a few punches later and the whole house worked. The network cabling went the same way and the hose phone closet was an organized thing of beauty.
Not so much with this house and the closet is a horror show and somewhere there’s a short. There’s no block mounted and all the phone lines are twisted together. I’m going to have to run new cable and that’s going to mean cutting holes into some walls. This is going to suck wind loudly but maybe I can use this to finally wire up the second floor as I wanted to for years.
