Any Telephone techs? Need some troubleshooting advice...

[Gooserider]

Wednesday while we were not enjoying the snow and rain storm, we developed a problem in our phone lines - We could make and / or receive calls, by could barely talk to the person on the other end due to line noise - mostly a loud humming, not a crackle or crosstalk...

I went to the Demark box, and disconnected the house side, then plugged in with an ancient "Ma-Bell" touchtone - which sounded like it was making the same kind of hum, although not quite as loud, so I called it in as being out of order on account of line noise... Today the Verizon tech came by, and said he did the same test, and was getting perfect results from the Demarc back to the CO, but had a "partial loop" between the tip and ring wires on the house side.

He had an analog ohm-meter that he connected across the house lines, and was getting about 70x on whatever scale the meter was on (I'm not sure) - He said that a "good" system should be close to zero when all the phones were hung up, or 100 when a phone was picked up... He said the indication was that I either had a problem with corrosion or an old phone that was going bad...

We self-maintain our house side wiring, so he wasn't willing / able to do an excessive amount of troubleshooting, but we did verify that the line from the Demarc box to the patch panel is good. The house wiring is all relatively new, Cat5e cable pulled at the same time I did my network install, all home-run routed to a 110 punchdown block (punched w/ the proper tool) with new jacks, etc...

The problem I am having is that I can't duplicate the failure with my test equipment - I have tried a couple of different Digital meters w/ the same result - infinite resistance, whether I have a phone off hook or not... I am wondering if this is one of those cases where either there is more to the meter the tech was using than just an ohm-meter, or if it is just a case of the meter not having the power to reliably drive the phone line.

Any phone techs that can give me some specs on the meter, or offer any other advice?

Gooserider

 

[GVA]

Before going through all that, unplug every phone and or modems in the house.
Then start plugging them in one at a time and lifting the reciever to see which one makes the noise return.
Sometimes it's just a bad phone
My parents always had that problem when we would buy them cheap phones for Xmas. :-/

 

[Highbeam]

I'm not an expert but I have the same setup as you describe.

Since each line is home run and since the punch down panels are pretty fool proof I would start at each wall jack and look for shorts or loose connections at the jack. You can disable each home run one at a time until you find the culprit. Since they are all home run onto one block a short on any one line will bugger up the rest.

 

[seige101]

He more than likely had a megger. It's basically an ohm meter on steroids. A digital or analog ohm meter will only be able to use the 1.5-9volts that the battery is supplying. A megger will be a hand crank or a circuit kinda like a stun gun to produce up to 1000 volts, with a teeny tiny tiny amount of amps. These are used to test for high resistance shorts, and insulation integrity etc.

Check your terminations at the jacks and the punch panel, if you used a razor knife you could of accidentally nicked the insulation the that could be you problem.

Another thing to try is try switching the pairs one jack(and termination) at a time until the noise goes away

 

[semipro]

Wednesday while we were not enjoying the snow and rain storm,...

I went to the Demark box, and disconnected the house side, then plugged in with an ancient "Ma-Bell" touchtone - which sounded like it was making the same kind of hum, although not quite as loud, so I called it in as being out of order on account of line noise...
Gooserider

I still suspect the problem is external to your house based on what you did above and my personal experience. If you disconnected the house side, plugged a phone in to the box and still had noise, the problem is not in your wiring as you deduced.

Water frequently invades telephone conduits and junction boxes. We had the same problem at our house and I went through the same process as you. Turns out water was getting into the junction box near the road. The problem was very intermittent and its possible you're experiencing the same thing.

The telephone company tech that finally fixed it told me it was a common problem, water getting into boxes and conduits. He told me that's the reason you see tanks of inert gas laying on the ground near manholes. The lines are pressurized/flushed with the gas to dry them out.

 

[Gooserider]

Thanks for the many suggestions, but it's not quite what I'm asking... The telco tech definitely showed a problem issue on our line - I saw his meter reading, though I'm not sure what kind of meter it was, and it clearly showed problems on the house side... The problem is that the noise seems to have cleared up even before he was working on it(which does point to an outside issue) so it seems to be something that only shows up on his meter, so I need a meter to be able to tell when I find the problem (which I was planning to look for using the tactics suggested of unplugging phones and so on) as the meter reading should show when I get the "magic spot"

Gooserider

 

[kenny chaos]

Not sure what you're asking but I enjoy a little sleuthing, or troubleshooting
at times and a clue might be that you were not enjoying the "rain storm."
Hard rain here and the phone goes out for 12 -24 hours. By the time a
repairman shows up, there is no problem.
Good luck-

 

[Gooserider]

Not sure what you're asking but I enjoy a little sleuthing, or troubleshooting
at times and a clue might be that you were not enjoying the "rain storm."
Hard rain here and the phone goes out for 12 -24 hours. By the time a
repairman shows up, there is no problem.
Good luck-

What I'm looking for is the specs on the meter that the phone guy was using - If I can get the specs then I can try to get one for myself, or duplicate the effect of what it was doing, (i.e. put a voltage on the line and see how many amps it draws?) and go through the process of elimination while watching the meter to find the point where it stops showing the problem.

I feel like otherwise I'm just guessing at the source of the problem.

I may try the tactic of hunting for a service guy during the week and asking him about it...

Gooserider

 

[pastera]

My last house the Network Interface Box went bad - I had to disconnect my house wiring and get the tech there in the rain to prove it.

I would get crackling or no connection every time it rained - bypassed the box and had perfect signal - house was wired with Cat 5 but one splice to an old wire. I put a western union and soldered the splice - the technition tried to tell me that the compression quick splices were better and that was my problem.

One word of caution - They tend to get unhappy when you tell them you know it's the network interface because you bypassed it and the problem went away.

Aaron